Plays one

This is the first major collection of plays by Kene Igweonu. He has been described as a ‘young and visionary playwright’ (Professor Sunday Ododo) and ‘one of the most creative talents that have come out of the Performing Arts Department of the University of Ilorin’ (Professor Olu Obafemi). The longer length plays show him to be a moralist, with a passion for social change, employing Brechtian techniques that inspired post-Soyinka writers such as Femi Osofisan and Bode Sowande, who were adapting committed theatre for a popular audience, providing counter-narratives to established myths and norms. Like the major plays of Osofisan, Igweonu challenges Soyinka’s notion of an individual saviour of exceptional qualities and opts for a communitarian solution to society’s ills. Hence Igweonu’s plays deal with the perennial problems of leadership and followership, and the attendant individual and collective responsibility that comes with it. In short, this collection represents Igweonu at the beginning of his writing career. Despite the variety of artistic approaches, the themes of leadership and followership and of moral responsibility are constants in this his preliminary body of work.