III - Pentecostalizing Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero

Summary

In February 2009, I decided to produce Soyinka’s comedy, The Trials of Brother Jero. It was to celebrate the fifth anniversary of my company, Arambe Productions, (Arambe), Ireland’s first African theatre company. Mindful of my Irish audience, particularly the feminists, who could (mis)construe Soyinka’s comedy as a creative endorsement of domestic violence or wife-battering, I decided to adapt it, using what I termed ‘the pervasive phenomenon of Pentecostalism’ in modern-day Nigeria as a backdrop. I sought and obtained Soyinka’s permission, and immediately went to work.

Instead of a Brother Jero, a charlatan Bar Beach prophet, the protagonist in my version is Pastor Jero, a psychology graduate and a founding member of the Fountain of Flame Pentecostal Church. My Chume is well spoken and Amope, his wife, is also a university graduate. However, I heightened her aggressiveness to the point where she becomes a caricature, duly deserving of the spiritually sanctioned spanking for which Chume is seeking the permission of Pastor Jero to eventuate. The performance of the new version, which ran for nine days at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, inside Trinity College Dublin, was warmly received by critics and audiences alike. While Irish people represented the largest number in the audience, many Nigerians and other African people could also be seen nightly in the auditorium.

In April 2009, I was invited to Nigeria to direct my Pentecostal Jero for the benefit of Nigerian audiences using Nigeria-based actors. The production was a tripartite collaboration between Arambe, the University of Lagos, and the National Theatre. Little did I know when I was booking my flight to Nigeria that the performance of the play was the National Theatre’s offering for the 2009 Democracy Day, which happened to fall on the 30 May 2009. I would like to briefly share my experience of returning home, after having lived in Europe as at 2009 for a total of 16 years, to produce, in collaboration with UNILAG and the National Theatre, what I had publicized in Ireland as a modernization of Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero.

The audition and rehearsal for the performance took place at UNILAG, Akoka. It had also been agreed that the play would preview for two nights at the Main Auditorium at UNILAG before it transferred to the National at Iganmu for a four-weekend run, culminating in the final performance on Democracy Day.