On Wednesday, the global internet search engine Google celebrated the 84th posthumous birthday of playwright and academic the late Professor Olawale Emmanuel Gladstone Rotimi, better known as Ola Rotimi, with a doodle.
Rotimi, who died on August 18, 2000, was born on April 13, 1938. He was a prolific playwright and the founder of the Ori Olokun Theatre.
The dream project he was working on before his sudden death at the age of 62 was a play that a revived Ori Olokun Theatre would have staged with a strong cast of 3000 performers.
He wrote ‘The Gods Are Not to Blame’, ‘Kurunmi’, ‘Ovonramwen Nogbaisi’ and ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again‘. The others were ‘Holding Talks’, ‘Grip Am’, ‘If: A Tragedy of the Ruled’, and ‘Hopes of Living Dead.’
According to theatre director Dr Bisi Adigun, Rotimi’s most significant contribution to the development of Nigerian theatre “was how he domesticated the English language to foster linkage between the town and the gown. His raison d’ être as a theatre maker, therefore, was to bridge the gap between the so-called popular theatre tradition [exemplified by the likes of Hubert Ogunde and Duro Ladipo] and the literary theatre tradition [epitomized by the works of Wole Soyinka and JP Clark] by creating a populist theatre that resonated not only with university dons on campus, but also the entire populace of the community of Ile Ife town.”
