Dialing Love, Tori-Tori loud at LTF 2018

Young people’s art ensemble, Kininso Koncepts, has kept up the gospel of theatre with its performance aesthetics and is ready to groom a new generation of thespians through instilling positive values.

These would be on display at the forthcoming British Council-inspired Lagos Theatre Festival (LTF) 2018 that starts March 27.

The group is an embodiment of youngsters-in-art, who left life in the streets to use art for self-empowerment and to project the strength of Africa and its cultural richness.

Its areas of strength include dance, theatre performance, drama directing and performance, content/script writing, dance and drama workshops/training and short film. In relation to their vision, Kininso performed a few works recently in partnership with the Ministry of Justice, Lagos Judiciary, J4A (Justice For All), NSRP, among others.

According to its found, Joshua Alabi, “Our vision is to have a standard repertory theatre just like our foreign counterparts, whose government believes in the art as a tool for reconstruction.

At Kininso-Koncepts, situations in society are transformed into performances that even lay people could understand with the aid of dance, drama, music, movements and poetry that make it accessible at conventional and unconventional performance spaces.

“We are a young, creative and exciting organization willing to collaborate with stakeholders to establish mutually beneficial relationships. We hope these relationships would serve our local communities and proactively encourage our people to getting involved in the arts.

We also hope to, with sponsorship, develop innovative and high quality training and productions and spread the message of ‘Nigerian Theatre’ in a fun way. A nation without theatre is a voiceless nation.”

This February and early March, Kininso Koncepts will perform Paul Ugbede’s Dialing Love at Lagos Theatre Festival. The play was first performed in 2016 at the same festival; it recorded a large number of mentions, tweets, tags and reviews on social and print media as the best play.

The success of Dialing Love in 2016 was achieved through the creative skills and aesthetic-driven talent of the director, Alabi, and a team of wonderful, experienced and grounded industry professionals. The theatre company has again been invited, due to ‘popular demand,’ as a site-specific theatre piece at the festival in 2018. The performance would take place at Freedom Park (beside Grill Station) on and 7pm daily.

Also, in collaboration with the Commonwealth, Kininso Koncepts would perform Tori-Tori, a socially realistic play about the hopes and freedom towards a common future.

It tells different stories from various perspectives about an ongoing construction, which seems to be doomed to fail due to its baseless and shallow foundation by the early constructors. It lampoons every system that embraces misappropriation and sheds light on the need for a common future that is all-inclusive.

Tori-Tori is also a tale from different views that covers social, political, economic and cultural issues. They are issues that are relatable to various societies and to different regions.

It is a call for change and hope for the greater good and common goal of humanity. It is inspired by the stated goals of the Commonwealth of Nations and the burning desire to speak and be heard for a positive impact.

The performance will take place also at the LTF 2018 at City Hall on February 28 and March 1 at 6pm daily. Entry is based on online registration.