Yemi Ajibade

Yemi Ajibade (28 July 1929[1][2] – 24 January 2013[3]), also credited as Yemi Goodman Ajibade or Ade-Yemi Ajibade, was a Nigerian playwright and actor who, after settling in England in the 1950s, made significant contributions to the British theatre and the canon of Black drama. In a career that spanned half a century, he directed and wrote several successful plays, as well as acting in a wide range of drama for television, stage, radio and film.

Biography

Adeyemi Olanrewaju Goodman Ajibade was born a royal prince of the house of Ọ̀ràngún from Ìlá Òràngún,[4] in the south-west of Nigeria. He attended Abeokuta Grammar School, and later pursued studies in London, at Kennington College of Law and Commerce (1955), at The Actors' Workshop (1960), and from 1966 to 1968 at the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School),[1] where he was a contemporary of filmmaker Horace Ové (who has recalled that they were the only two black students in the school at the time).[5]

From early in his stay in the UK, Yemi Ajibade acted in radio drama for the BBC African Service. As producer Fiona Ledger recalled in 2007: "It was back in 1960 that the late BBC producer John Stockbridge was asked by the Head of the African Service to devise some kind of drama for African listeners. He came up with a series, a soap opera set in London. No copy survives, but" Yemi Ajibade "took the role of a social worker, moving around England and settling quarrels."[6]

Continuing to develop his acting career, he was hailed in 1963 as "one of the most promising actors from West Africa".[4] Alongside performers who included Yulisa Amadu Maddy, Leslie Palmer, Eddie Tagoe, Karene Wallace, Basil Wanzira, and Elvania Zirimu, among others, Ajibade featured in a production of Lindsay Barrett's Blackblast! filmed in 1973 for a special edition of the BBC arts and entertainment programme Full House devoted to the work of West Indian writers, artists, musicians and film-makers.[7][8]

Ajibade's acting portfolio would eventually encompass roles in television series such as Armchair Theatre (starring in 1963 in "The Chocolate Tree" by Andrew Sinclair, together with Earl Cameron and Peter McEnery),[9] Danger Man (1965), Dixon of Dock Green (1968), Douglas Botting's The Black Safari (1972), The Fosters (1976), Prisoners of Conscience (1981), and Silent Witness (1996), and work on the stage – for instance, in "Plays Umbrella" at Riverside Studios in August 1980 (in association with Drum Arts Centre),[10] and Nicholas Wright's plays One Fine Day[11] (1980 at Riverside Studios) and The Custom of the Country (1983 at The Pit, Barbican Centre),[12][13] and in Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs (Royal Exchange Theatre, 2001)[14] – as well as film appearances including in Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1968), Monte Hellman's Shatter (1974),[15] Hanif Kureshi's London Kills Me (1991),[16] Skin (1995, written by Sarah Kane),[17] Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) and Flawless with Demi Moore and Michael Caine (2007).[18]

In 1966 Ajibade led a delegation of British, West Indian and African members to the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal, directing a production of Obi Egbuna's play Wind Versus Polygamy; at the 2nd World Black Arts Festival in Lagos in 1977 Ajibade was supervisor of Drama Events.[1] In 1975 he was appointed as a tutor by the Inner London Education Authority, and he also became artistic director of the Keskidee Centre in north London,[1] where he directed a production of Wole Soyinka's The Swamp Dwellers (13–23 March 1975).[19]

Among Ajibade's best known work as a playwright is Parcel Post, which had 29 performances by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in 1976–77, directed by Donald Howarth,[20] with a cast featuring the likes of Rudolph Walker, Christopher Asante,[21] and Taiwo Ajai (who has said that her own acting career started by chance "when she stumbled across Yemi Ajibade on a production").[22] Ajibade's subsequent plays included Fingers Only (originally entitled Lagos, Yes Lagos when it was broadcast by the BBC in 1971 and published in Nine African Plays for Radio in 1973),[23] which in its 1982 production for the Black Theatre Co-operative (now Nitro) was directed by Mustapha Matura at The Factory Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre,[24][25][26] and Albany Empire. Waiting for Hannibal opened in June 1986 at the Drill Hall, followed by a national tour,[27] with Burt Caesar and Ajibade directing a cast that included Judith Jacobs, Wilbert Johnson and others;[28] and A Long Way From Home was produced by Nicolas Kent[29] at the Tricycle Theatre in 1991, with Ajibade himself heading the cast.[30][31] Ajibade also worked in Ibadan during the late 1970s,[32] as a writer and director (1976–79) with the Unibadan Masques, the University of Ibadan's School of Drama acting company.[23][33]

In February 2008, at an All-Star Gala held at Theatre Royal Stratford East on the 10th anniversary of Tiata Fahodzi, Ajibade was honoured as a leader of British-African theatre, alongside Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, Dotun Adebayo, Dona Croll, Femi Oguns, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Hugh Quarshie and others.[34][35]

Yemi Ajibade died in the UK on 13 January 2013 at the age of 82.[20]

Plays

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Africa Who's Who, London: Africa Journal Ltd, for Africa Books, 1981, p. 82.
  2. ↑ Later sources give his birth year as 1933.
  3. ↑ Yemi Ajibade at Aveleyman.
  4. 1 2 "The African Scene", Negro Digest, October 1963, p. 32.
  5. ↑ Josanne Leonard, interview with Horace Ové, 5 October 2007, Caribbean 360.
  6. ↑ Fiona Ledger, "History of African Performance", BBC World Service, African Performance 2007.
  7. ↑ Cast and credits, Full House (03/02/73), BFI.
  8. ↑ Full House 03/02/73, BFI.
  9. ↑ Leonard White, Armchair Theatre: The Lost Years, Kelly Publications, 2003, p. 103.
  10. ↑ Plays Umbrella: A season of five specially commissioned new plays. Riverside Studios, August 1980. In association with Drum Arts Centre.
  11. ↑ Cast list in Nicholas Wright, Five Plays, Nick Hern Books, 2000, p. 81.
  12. ↑ Cast list in Nicholas Wright, The Custom of the Country, RSC Playtexts, London: Methuen, 1983, p. 26.
  13. ↑ Cast list in Nicholas Wright, Five Plays, London: Nick Hern Books, 2000, p. 149.
  14. ↑ Les Blancs, UK Theatre Web.
  15. ↑ Brad Stevens, Monte Hellman: His Life and Films, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, p. 96.
  16. ↑ Credits – London Kills Me", in Kenneth C. Kaleta, Hanif Kureishi: Postcolonial Storyteller, University of Texas Press, 1998, p. 275.
  17. ↑ "Skin (1995)", IMDb.
  18. ↑ Yemi Ajibade page at IMDb.
  19. ↑ "Swamp Dweller's, The - By Wole Soyinka", National Theatre, Black Plays Archive.
  20. 1 2 Femi Elufowoju Jr, Yemi Ajibade obituary, Other Lives, The Guardian, 18 April 2013.
  21. ↑ "Parcel Post by Yemi Ajibade", Black Plays Archive, National Theatre.
  22. ↑ "Nigeria: CORA Celebrates Taiwo Ajayi-Lycett @ 70", BHR, 2012.
  23. 1 2 Review of Ade-Yemi Ajibade, Fingers Only and A Man Names Mokai and Parcel Post and Behind the Mountain (Ibadan: Y-Book Drama series, 2001), in Ernest Nneji Emenyonu (ed.), New Directions in African Literature: A Review, 25; p. 161.
  24. ↑ "Fingers Only", Black Plays Archive, National Theatre.
  25. ↑ "Records relating to 'Fingers Only'" held at Future Histories – Black Performance and Carnival Archive, The National Archives.
  26. 1 2 3 4 Yemi Ajibade at Dollee.com
  27. ↑ "Waiting For Hannibal, 1986, By Yemi Ajibade. National Tour." Nitro Archive, 14 October 1986.
  28. ↑ "Waiting For Hannibal", Black Plays Archive, National Theatre.
  29. ↑ Nicolas Kent Productions.
  30. ↑ "Tricycle Theatre (1991), A Long Way From Home", Theatre – TRPW.org.
  31. ↑ "A Long Way From Home", Black Plays Archive, National Theatre.
  32. ↑ "My Happiest Moment In Acting" – interview with Olu Jacobs, Naijarules.com.
  33. ↑ "Post Dra 310", Dra 310.
  34. ↑ "All African Stars Gala", 2008, Tiata Fahodzi.
  35. ↑ "Tiata Fahodzi", Naija Konnections, Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2008.

External links

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