The Jos International Festival of Theatre wrapped up on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, at Alliance Francaise, Jos, Plateau State, featuring the premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, adapted into Pidgin English as Spirit. The festival also saw a critically acclaimed performance of Vaclav Havel’s Protest the previous day.
The five-day event, which opened with pre-festival performances for students and teachers on May 14, drew a diverse audience of theatre enthusiasts, diplomats, policymakers, politicians, students, teachers and participating actors.
The 2025 headliner was Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. Two Italian brothers set out for the US in search of their dreams. Life had become increasingly difficult in Italy hence the need to search for greener pastures. They board a ship which transports them illegally to the US and they stay with their cousin Beatrice’s family in Red Hook, New York. Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman, is married to Beatrice and Catherine; her niece lives with them. Soon the younger Rodolpho fixes his attention on Catherine very much to the displeasure of Eddie whose predicament is a deeply felt but dangerously unacknowledged desire for Catherine. Eddie reports the two cousins to the authorities. They are arrested and released on bail. Rodolpho still believes that he can get married to Catherine hence he would not be deported but Marco’s own predicament has no immediate solution as he has a family starving in Italy and plans to return after working illegally for several years. They face imminent deportation and in a final confrontation, Marco kills Eddie who has truncated his American dream.
Mark Musa’s I Do (Do I?) which was written and directed by him was set in the household of Eric, a mining site engineer who lives with his wife, Iddy as the children had long left home to pursue careers and raise their families. As it usually happens in such situations, a seemingly innocent conversation between the couple leads to Iddy questioning the course of her life and how much of her dreams she has been able to achieve. In her estimation, this has not been much because apparently she has used her life to chase Eric’s dreams. She actually accuses Eric of being a dreamer. Eric decides to take her out to dinner which was one of her grouses with him and the dinner ends up as a fiasco that threatens to end their marriage. It was also a night when Iddy realizes that in all their years of marriage, Eric had never listened to her to find out what her dreams were. Fortunately, they were able to roll back their contentions and settle for a life of bliss after deciding to live peacefully for the rest of their lives despite their travails.
Coincidentally, the third play of the festival was another play set in a matrimonial household. Though this was a younger couple, their lives were also full of interesting twists and turns that ended in three deaths with a priest entangled in the entire matrimonial drama. This was the setting for Uvie Giwewhegbe’s This Was How The Day Ended. She also wrote and directed the play, making a member of the audience ask if that was a qualification to have a play in the festival. But it was merely a coincidence. Abe and Hata are a young couple beset with problems including childlessness. Abe’s bosom friend, Fr. Ralph is his confidante in all his marital woes. But he was to take advantage of this as in his earlier life before the priesthood he had dated Hata. Their family Doctor, Lina, has fallen in love with Abe and their closeness has been a source of discomfort for Hata. Lina actually thinks that Hata is not deserving of Abe’s love considering all that Abe tells her. But Lina and Hata were friends before Hata got married to Abe. She decides to poison Hata as she has become pregnant for Abe who has gone to tell Fr. Ralph about his fears and abounding love for Hata. While there he gets a call that he should come home urgently. He leaves to meet Hata dead and Lina professes her love for him and also tells him that her pregnancy belongs to him. He refutes this as an accident as an infant had rendered him incapable of fathering a child. He kills Lina and takes his own life. Fr. Ralph blesses the audience and life continues to go on. Unfortunately deep at the heart of the couple’s problems was a lack of trust and adequate communication in trying to iron out their problems. Instead they relayed their problems and challenges through third parties who took advantage of them.
Vaclav Havel wrote Protest to as a semi-autobiographical play on his experiences in Communist Czechoslovakia. He has just been released from prison and he visits his old boss at the brewery who incidentally is the subject of his previous play Audience which is part of the Vanek Trilogy. Protest is in this category. Vanek just out of prison has been invited by Stanek to help him stimulate a signature protest to free his son-in-law from detention. Stanek has retired to a life of growing flowers but he still works for the government even in his retirement. The play examines how individuals, through various strategies, either adapt to the system or resist it, highlighting the dangers of conformity and the importance of personal responsibility. The play, often described as a “play of the conscience,” delves into the complexities of “living in truth” within a repressive society. It was well received with the intellectual discussions of the two characters stimulating comparisons with the Nigerian society and how easy it is for societies to evolve into police states. The Czech play was attended by a team from the Czech Embassy led by the Ambassador to Nigeria, Ambassador Kredji and the Political and Economic Counsellor from the Czech Embassy. Protest had its Nigerian premiere at the festival.
The second Nigerian premiere at the festival was the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts which had been translated into Pidgin English by Osasogie Efe Guobadia. The play now re-named Spirit, was a dramatized reading of the Pidgin play to the accompaniment of drums. The original play, written in the 19th century, dealt with very serious and contentious issues like religion, incest, venereal disease and euthanasia. According to a member of the audience, with the exception of euthanasia, we have all the other 19th century problems in abundance in Nigeria. There is also the issue of economics and making ends meet as the father in the play was trying to convince his daughter to come and work in his short time lodge taking care of the lustful needs of travellers. The son of the house, whose healthy mental state is in doubt, eventually asks for the impossible from his mother – he wanted the sun and this must be given to him! This was the request that made the cast and the audience begin to doubt the seriousness of the breakdown of his health.
The Jos 2025 festival was organised in collaboration with the US Government Exchange Alumni Association of Nigeria, Plateau State Chapter and was supported by the DeVos Institute of Arts and Non-Profit Management, Washington DC and other supporters including Inaju U. Inaju, Jos Business School, Zmirage Multimedia and Maisie Pearl House and individuals including Hon, Nicholas Kemi Nshe, Osasogie Efe Guobadia, Mr. Ezekiel Gomos, OFR and Hon. Chidi Duru, OON. According to Dr. Patrick-Jude Oteh, who leads the Jos Repertory Theatre, the 2025 festival caught us unawares as we had planned to hold it in March but the lack of adequate logistics and the delay in getting some semblance of local funding contributed to a delay which had proved to be fortuitous especially as the Jos Repertory Theatre is set to celebrate its 25th anniversary as a theatre company.