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It was a gathering of thespians and theatre lovers last Monday, March 27, 2017, at the prestigious Crab Theatre, at the University of Port Harcourt, as the National Association of Nigeria Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP), Rivers State Chapter joined the global community to commemorate this year’s World Theatre Day.
The National President, Israel Eboh in his speech thanked the theatre Arts practitioners for overcoming the unfriendly and hostile environment in which they have operated where neither government nor public corporation is their friend.
According to him, for them to be heroes they must be ready to chart new territories if their art is not to become stale, saying that as taste changes their offerings must reflect these changes. And that they must recognize their qualities of yesterday mean nothing if there is no jaw dropping quality today.
He said in this time of recession and hardship the theatre must be the hero by bringing smiles to the people’s faces. Where people have started jumping into the lagoon and canals to end it all, the artiste must be the hero that gives them hope to keep on.
Mr. Adiela Onyedibia, in his lecture, said theatre encapsulates all aspects of human progression, even if it be through some stages of regression, from nation to nation, culture to culture, from one civilization to another, including the ambitions of individuals within these human formations, Nigeria, not excluded. So, if humanity is all but theatre and theatre is all but humanity, then “we are all involved in our ways, in live theatre, without exception”, he said.
He remarked that it was worrisome to note that the theatre in Nigeria, particularly in Rivers State, is faced with certain factors and called for concerned efforts by government and relevant agencies to reinvent theatre creatively and remodel or reshape and unite the society and destroy all the negative attitudes and life styles that arc hampering the great future of the Nation because theatre is an art for continuous human revolutionary discovered and rediscovery and ultimate galvanization of human and national progress and identify.
He noted that as people finally and fully understand and appreciate the purposes and sagacity of theatre in the progress and development of humanity, everywhere, then theatre will be awaken in Nigeria, the propensities of the culture and rekindle them so that they never dwindle into extinction.
