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Funsho Alabi, Mohammed Danjuma, others honoured at theatre festival

By Omiko Awa
21 April 2019   |   4:11 am
The New M&M Event Centre, Area 11 Garki, Abuja, will tomorrow, Easter Monday, be lighted up, as it hosts the maiden edition of Solo Performance Festival.

A Spoken Word performer on stage

The New M&M Event Centre, Area 11 Garki, Abuja, will tomorrow, Easter Monday, be lighted up, as it hosts the maiden edition of Solo Performance Festival. The festival, which promises to bring together the three disparate arts of solecism — solo drama, comedy and the spoken word — will see Grace Okonkwo perform The Prime Minister’s Daughter, an adaptation of Greg Mbajiorgu’s The Prime Minister’s Son. A University of Nigeria production, the play will be directed by Greg Mbajiorgu (the playwright) with Danlami Baba of the music department, as the music director.

Also, the chairman, Festival Organising Committee, Awaritoma Agoma, will perform his solo play 5, 6, & 7 with support from the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Abuja, while the celebrated father of stand-up comedy in Nigeria, Alibaba, is expected to thrill guests at the festival. The famed spoken word artiste, Dike Chukwumerije, will equally do one of the things he is known for.

Aside from this, there will the conferment of African Solo awards to five most outstanding icons of solo performance in Africa. They are: Tunji Sotimirin (pioneer of solo performance in Nigeria), Greg Mbajiorgu (published the first monodrama and edited Africa’s first critical source book on one man show), Alibaba (for creating the platform that engendered the growth of stand-up comedy in Nigeria), Benedict Binebai (for creating the first Nigerian gender friendly monodrama) and Dike Chukwumerije (spoken word guru).

There will also be posthumous awards to Funsho Alabi (King of Solo Performance) and Mohammed Danjuma (veteran stand-up comedy in Northern Nigeria).

There will be generous doses of performance by upcoming comedians and spoken words acts.

The festival is held in collaboration of Baziks Theatre Abuja, Seat Edge Entertainment and New Things Media, with supports from MTN Nigeria, Abuja Body of Comedians (ABC), and Association of Nigerian Talkers (ANTS). Other supporters are University of Abuja, The Department of Art and Culture, Abuja, and Cockerel Fast Food, Abuja.

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