New Theatre started in March 2003. Our Nigerian partners are Jos Repertory Theatre and its director Patrick-Jude Oteh. The British partners have been poet, novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele, and director and playwright John Binnie. The newest partner to the project is Mari Binnie, a director at the macRobert Youth Theatre in Stirling, UK, and of Clyde Unity Theatre.

Participants in the project have been young writers and actors representative of Nigeria’s cultural diversity, meeting at two workshops in Jos and Kano to create theatre that addresses themes of identity and place, and which will be able to reach out to audiences both here and in Britain.

Our House was premiered at the first Jos Festival of Theatre in March 2004. It was then toured across Nigeria until March 2005, playing for 19 performances to over 3,500 people. Our House will play to British audiences in Scotland in July 2005. While in Scotland, the group will work with Clyde Unity Theatre and youth actors on a brand new collaborative project for a play called My Friend Matt, which will be premiered in Nigeria in late 2005.

The story of Our House

In March 2003, a group of young people met in Jos, the Plateau State capital to try to identify subjects that were peculiar and or disturbing to young people in Nigeria. These issues could serve as a foundation for creating a new work. For five days under the guidance of Biyi Bandele, a Nigerian novelist and playwright based in the UK, the  participants, from students to the unemployed, to journalists, to television producers and presenters, to actors/actresses and script writers, were able to identify issues that bother our very existence.

In February 2004, playwright and director John Binnie came in from Britain to facilitate the scripting phase.

The third phase of the project, the premiere of the play, involved a core group of writers, actors, John Binnie and Jos Repertory Theatre Director Patrick-Jude Oteh. This team polished the writing and performance for the world premiere of Our House at the maiden edition of the Jos Festival of Theatre in March 2004.

The fourth phase was the Nigerian tour, so that Our House could been seen and debated in post-performance workshops by young audiences within reach of British Council offices in Kano, Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt. Each tour covered one week with five public performances. The first tour in Kano was attended by Mari Binnie from Scotland and two colleagues who assisted in the production, and gave workshops to the cast on ways of achieving audience participation in the event through post-performance discussion. An important part of the project is the use of Our House to trigger debate with the audience on the themes that have been identified by the writing group.

For further information write to info.kano@ng.britishcouncil.org