Esiaba Irobi's Legacy: Theory and Practice of Postcolonial Performance

Abstract

By the death of Esiaba Irobi (1960–2010) on 3 May 2010, contemporary African theater lost a distinguished playwright, stage director, actor, literary theorist, and scholar. Educated at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and at the University of Sheffield and the University of Leeds, both in England, Irobi’s specialization was drama, film and theater studies. Theater practitioner and scholar Irobi at various times taught at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; the University of Leeds and the Liverpool J. Moores University in England; New York University, Townson University, and Ohio University (Athens, Ohio), all in the United States of America. He was on a fellowship at the Freie Universitat, Berlin, Germany, at the time of his death. However, if Irobi’s life was a restless search for new horizons, his deep anchorage in the oral tradition of his Igbo ethnic group, its rituals of self-renewal, myths and legends of enigmatic and daring deity-heroes, its lore of the mysteries of life and transcendence of the human spirit, its rousing chants, masquerades, and dramaturgy remained the indispensable source of creative imagination and critical thinking. In a tribute read at Irobi’s graveside at Amapu Igbengwo Umuakpara Osisioma Ngwa in Abia State, Nigeria, on 16 July 2010, his friend and colleague, the veteran stage director Eni-Jones Umuko, highlighted Irobi’s talents as actor, stage director and playwright. Umoko described in fascinating details Irobi’s role as Elesin in a production of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman that Umoko had directed, and as Styles in Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi Is Dead in a production of the play directed by the renowned theater scholar J. A. S Amankulor (whose extensive and engaging work on traditional Igbo performances was to have an enduring influence on Irobi). Deeply moving and explicitly panegyric as most graveside tributes generically strive to be, nonetheless Umoko’s oration in describing Irobi’s acting generally as “trance-like” and his role as Elesin specifically as having a “hypnotic” effect on the spectators offers a sober and critically insightful assessment consistent with Irobi’s own account of his interpretation of that role. For Irobi himself was certain that the role of Elesin, which he played first as a final-year student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1983 and then several times more between 1985 and 1989, was clearly the most “satisfying role” he played