|
|
Introduction
A NEW AUTHORISED AND COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE COMPANY IS IN THE ALL AFRICAN STARS 08 SOUVENIR PROGRAMME. COPIES STILL AVAILABLE - SEE LINK ON HOME PAGE.
Tiata Fahodzi produces new work that constantly explores the richness and heritage of theatre sourced from people living within British African communities.
Every core activity emanating from this underlying objective, explores with its participants, a specific cultural perspective and its compatibility with the British stage.
Tiata
Fahodzi’s work is aimed at an all
inclusive British audience.
Tiata Fahodzi was founded in
1997 under the aegis of Theatre Royal Stratford
East, where the company’s founder and current
artistic director served as a trainee director.
Productions
Tiata Fahodzi's maiden production Tickets &
Ties that year focused on stimulating
enthusiasm for the theatre amongst sectors of
the West African theatre communities living in
London. The show examined the realities, experiences
and conflicting values redolent in a typical West
African extended family resident in the capital.
It was devised through master classes and workshops
and culminated in a full stage production, with
British actors whose roots were in Nigeria, Ghana,
Gambia and Sierra Leone.
In the same year, the company conducted national
research, investigating venues possessing consistent
and strategic policies for the programming of
British West African work. Also explored were
places where access for a creative fusion of African
theatre practitioners with artists and educators
were welcomed.
During
the summer of 1998 Tiata Fahodzi
devised its first London Arts Board Project Funded
production Booked! The play related
the experience of six migrants to the British
Isles, who on reaching London are confronted by
a wall of resistance to their presence which compounded
their attempt to assimilate new social nuances
and cultural behavioral patterns which the host country
presented.
In 1999 came Bonded and after
a successful four week run at Oval House, Tiata
Fahodzi embarked on its first National
tour of England. The award winning play by British
Nigerian playwright Sesan Ogunledun was project
funded by Arts Council England for the
regional tour and received both a Production Fund
and Diverse Arts award from the London Arts Board.
The play, a piece about loss of innocence, charted
the friendship between two inseparable girls,
Dolapo and Caramel, and the complex relationship
they bore with their respective mothers. Set between
the Eighties and the present day, the tale begins
in Nigeria and plunges into the surreal, when
a mysterious man with a peculiar motive suddenly
abducts Dolapo and takes her to England. This
production was highly applauded by the press and
public alike, and its critical acclaim quickly
established the company as an emerging tour de
force amongst existing culturally diverse national
touring theatre companies.
Tiata Fahodzi's 2000 production
Makinde followed the same pattern
as Bonded, opening at Oval House in London before
touring 10 regions in England.
The play chronicled the saga of a young British
graduate who is summoned to his West African homeland
where he’s thrown into a long-running local
conflict and hailed as a messiah. The piece sought
to highlight the conflict of love and loyalty
and the role of the supernatural in contemporary
Nigeria.
In
2001 Tiata Fahodzi produced Abyssinia,
an extraordinary and fascinating piece that examined
the relationship between Queen Victoria and her
surrogate son, Alemayehu, a young Ethiopian Prince
who lived and died within the court of Windsor.
Thematically, the project marked a departure for
the company, with its exploration of contributions
of other parts of Africa to the grand design of
contemporary Britain. Written by first time writer
Adewale Ajadi, Abyssinia explored Victoria's England
and Tewodros II's Abyssinia,
and the implications of the demise in that relationship
for Ethiopians living in London today.
Tiata Fahodzi, departing from
Oval House, the company’s London home for
three years, relocated to London's Southwark Playhouse.
The new venue and its new audience, proved to
be a positive development for the company, provoking
important questions about future development of
the company's artistic remit.
Abyssinia remains the company’s most successful
achievement to date and much of this is attributed
to the major injection of new subsidy from the
then London Arts and Touring department of Arts Council England.
Sammy, the brainchild of Paul
Sharma, and Tiata Fahodzi’s
2002 touring production explored the life of a
man with extraordinary talent and Tiata
Fahodzi’s rendition aimed to use
Davis jr’s history to tackle relevant contemporary
issues - racism and the lack of personal, economic,
and social freedom facing black people in the
arts which prevent them from developing or reaching
their full potential.
Education
Following the appointment of an Education director, Steven Downs, Tiata
Fahodzi joined up with the Lawrence Batley
Theatre/Hudawi Centre partnership in Huddersfield,
and during the summer of 2003 the company developed
the playwriting skills of local writer Angie
Smith. This culminated in the eagerly
awaited autumn community show entitled Steppin
Out produced and directed by the company
at the Deighton Centre over two Sundays in November
2003. Steppin Out chronicled
the history of the West Indian Blues dance scene
in Huddersfield from the late fifties to current
times.
The Steppin Up initiative in Huddersfield was formulated to consolidate the work covered in the previous year with Angie Smith’s development ie developing writing skills of two local writers and subsequently producing community plays from the resulting work.
The plays It Takes a Whole Village by Audrey Henry Quarcoo, directed by Steven Downs and Appointment at Diamonique's by Mel Mills, directed by Femi Elufowoju, jr were staged at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in November 2004 to rapturous audiences.
As well as the Hudawi/Lawrence Batley Theatre partnership in Huddersfield, the company joined up with other theatre practitioners at the 2004 National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough with the sole objective of encouraging albeit on a small grand scale the proliferation of African Drama amongst young people.
Tiata Fahodzi’s artistic
director over the period of the festival explored
Nigerian Performance style using Ola Rotimi’s
critically acclaimed text The God's are Not to Blame (Sophocles Oedipus Rex transposed to African
soil) as a springboard. He rehearsed sections
from the play and staged the finished work in
the culminating festival showcase Parting Shots.
It is the overall intention of the company’s
presence at the festival to fill the void of diverse
representation; and through regular participation
over the forthcoming years, encourage, increase
and improve the number of young Black and Asian
recruits to the country’s many drama schools.
New Writing
Tiata Delights was a week long
festival of play readings from African writers
resident in Britain, kicking off at the Arcola
Theatre in the Summer of 2004. The week’s
activities within the company’s
history will probably be remembered as its finest
hour to date. Six emerging writers were selected, working with professional actors and directors, their scripts were workshopped and edited during the day and presented in the evening as semi-staged rehearsed readings.
The
success of this artistic programme is translated
not just in unprecedented demographical audience
figures for the venue and company, but also real
interest from companies and organisations, in
the writers and Tiata Fahodzi
itself.
Staff
biographies
Artistic
Director (1997-Present)
Femi Elufowoju, jr
‘Makinde marks the coming of age of Tiata
Fahodzi as the
home of African-oriented productions. It also
heralds the
emergence of Femi Elufowoju jr as one of the most
potent
creative forces in African drama in England today’
Obi Emelonye African Post Issue 9 (2000)
British born to Nigerian parents, Femi first performed in theatre at age 10 in a school production of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' as the Ogre. His family moved to Nigeria at the age of 12, where he then was prepared to be a solicitor for the supreme court of Nigeria before finding his element in the dramatic arts. He studied for three years at Bretton Hall, Leeds University. He worked for six years as an actor, performing at the Royal Court and making radio plays for BBC. Femi later trained as a Regional Theatre Young Director in 1996 at Theatre Royal Stratford East before forming Tiata Fahodzi in 1997.
Production credits for Tiata Fahodzi include:
Joe Guy (2007), Tiata Delights (2007), The Estate (2006), Tiata Delights (2006), The Gods are Not to Blame (2005), Appointment
at Diamonique’s (2004), Tiata Delights at Arcola Theatre, Dalston (2004) and National tours of Abyssinia (2001), Makinde (2000), Bonded (1999) and Booked (1998) and Tickets & Ties (1997).
Other theatre credits include:
Medea, Off Camera (West Yorkshire Playhouse);
Dealer’s Choice (Salisbury Playhouse); Tickets
& Ties (Theatre Royal, Stratford East and
Sweden); It’s Good to Talk (with Jude Akuwudike
and Patrice Naiambana, Theatre Royal, Stratford
East)
Femi has numerous credits as an actor in film,
television, radio & theatre including over
100 plays for the World Service and Radio 4, seasons
at the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Court:
Marching for Fausa (1994) directed by Annie Castledine,
The Stubborn Corpse (1997) and Daughters (1998)
both directed by Ramin Gray. Film includes: Little Miss Jocelyn (2006), The
Legend of 1900 (1998) directed by acclaimed Italian film
director Giuseppe Tornatore; best foreign film
Oscar winner for Cinema Paradiso.
Education Director (2002-2005)
Steven Downs
Ex Head of Drama at Shelley College, Huddersfield, now working as a freelance writer and theatre director. Specialising in youth and community work Steven works regularly at the Lawrence Batley theatre, Huddersfield and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. In 1998 Steven was awarded the National Student Drama Festival special award for services to educational drama. As a Youth theatre writer and Director, Steven's work has been showcased at the Royal National Theatre on several occasions.
Tiata Fahodzi Board
Janice Acquah
Olu Alake
Fiona Burtt
Jo Cottrell
Adeboye Gbadebo
Archie Graham (Chair)
Chris Wilson
A
list of venues where Tiata Fahodzi has performed
Midlands
Arts Centre, Birmingham
Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Wilde Theatre, South Hill Park, Bracknell
Theatre in the Mill Theatre, Bradford
The Old Vic Theatre, Bristol
Kuumba, Bristol
Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds
The Hawth, Crawley
Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield
The New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
Studio Theatre, Leeds
Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester
Everyman Theatre, Liverpool
Oval House, Kennington, London
The Palace Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue, London
Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London
The Tabernacle, Westbourne Park, London
Soho Theatre, London
Contact Theatre, Manchester
The Green Room, Manchester
Live Theatre, Newcastle
Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham
Pegasus Theatre, Oxford
The Playhouse, Oxford
Portsmouth Arts Theatre, Portsmouth
South Street Arts Centre, Reading
Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
The Other Place, Stratford upon Avon
Theatre Royal, Winchester
|
