Femi Elufowoju , jr is a busy man. As artistic director of the pioneering theatre and touring company Tiata Fahodzi (theatre of the emancipated), he is committed to bringing to the stage work sourced from people living within British African communities. On top of that Elufowoju, jr continues with an acting career that recently saw him feature alongside a stellar, predominantly black, cast in the critically acclaimed BBC1 series Moses Jones. Andrea Enisuoh caught up with him between rehearsals for Tiata Fahodzi’s latest production Ìyà-Ilé (The First Wife), playwright Oladipo Agboluaje’s prequel to the hugely successful The Estate.

May/June 2009

Femi Elufowoju, jr

The Estate was a success both in critical acclaim and audience popularity. Why do you think it was so well received?

The Estate represented a slice of Nigerian life, a snapshot from the perspective of a close knit family in Nigeria. It is important for us to put such lives under the microscope and clearly the audience agree. We then decided it was important for us to continue the story. The Estate focused on bereavement and what happens when your life-source – the bread-winner – is gone. The first wife has to deal with the fallout, the rows and the debts brought about by her husband’s absence. Ìyà-Ilé is about what happened before. It is about what led up to The Estate. Ilya is the first wife, and this play is about how she gets supplanted by the second-wife. It’s a political comedy set within a warring family in 1980s Nigeria.

Was it always the plan for Oladipo Agboluaje to write the prequel?
Not at first, and it certainly wasn’t the plan to look at a trilogy, which is what we are doing now. Half-way through the run of The Estate we realised that we wanted to create a full state of the nation type trilogy. We wanted to show the way Nigeria, or any other African nation, can be. We wanted to explore different parts of our lives: the challenges, the tribulations. It was only after I sat down with Oladipo and discussed it that we realised just what we wanted to chart. We knew the stories for part one and part two. Part three is now under commission.

Tiata Fahodzi seems to have been going strong for over ten years now. Why did you decide to set up the theatre company?

As an actor I looked around at black theatre. I looked at places like Theatre Royal Stratford East and looked at the work that was portraying black life from a Caribbean perspective. Work from a distinct African perspective was negligible in the mainstream, or even at the grassroots. African theatre was only marginal and I wanted to redress that. I wanted more visibility for the various permutations that come out of the Diaspora. Of course the demographics contributed to the situation. There are more Africans here now than ten, 20 or 30 years ago. London especially is burgeoning with a very rich tapestry of cultures. I wanted to set up a theatre company that would demonstrate the cultural highlights of African heritage through theatre. We all know those highlights exist; many of us experience them on a daily basis. There is a complete code of conduct such as the oral tradition. So in 1997 I set up the company with a very specific brief.

Which was?

To produce new work that constantly explores the richness and heritage of theatre sourced from people living within British Africa communities. Every core activity we are involved in emanates from that underlying objective. Or work is aimed at an all inclusive British audience.

What have been the biggest challenges or obstacles?

Resistance to the work. We always wanted to include African-inspired work that would become a part of the general scheme of things in the landscape of British theatre. British theatre at times can be closed. It can be restrictive and prescriptive at times. It’s a struggle to wedge open those doors. It was also difficult working with actors who were sometimes unaware of the African tradition. Some were oblivious to it and actually saw the work as second-rate or unauthentic. When actors question the particular idiom it can be challenging to convince them of the overall ethos: an African perspective. It can be quite arduous, but you can have breakthroughs. Also about five years ago we realised we had to slow down and reassess our ambition to conquer the world. Yes, we wanted to penetrate the national consciousness, but we had to take a step back and refocus. Then we realised we needed to robustly localise our targets.

What exactly does that mean? Are you talking about abandoning the regions and concentrating your focus on London?

We probably wouldn’t be around here today without the regions, we realise that. Due to our remit as a theatre company, we built up a huge portfolio out of the work we have shown the regions. From 1998-2001 we were pretty much the only touring national theatre of diversity. But we over-stretched ourselves. We tried to take on the world and ended up exhausted. It was not that we were compelled to do it. We needed to do it. There were very few black audiences that were coming out to appreciate the work. We spent a lot of time simply pressuring venues to book us. Then in 2001 we had a blip and we hit the ground with a bump. That was when we realised that the best way forward for us was to do as a well-known politician [former Prime Minister John Major] once said and ‘get back to basics’. That was the only way we were going to fulfil our mission statement.

So you had a wholesale rethink?

Pretty much. We decided to identify who our partners were and decided that the best thing to do was to create a kind of division of labour in terms of marketing especially. We knew that realistically there were only a handful of theatres that would commit. But when we decided to identify our partners and came up with three or four it meant a lot to us. So over the last three years or so we have worked consistently with theatres like New Wolsey Theatre (Ipswich) , South Hill Park (Bracknell) and Contact Theatre (Manchester). They have given us a good geographical spread and helped to solidify our work in these regions.

And London?

Well London for us is the fourth region. Here every single theatre is interested – we are spoilt for choice. So although we are in bed with some particular theatres, we are keen to work with others when the opportunity comes up.

In terms of theatre spaces, where do you consider home?

I consider home the actual auditorium that is compatible with the work. That is always going to be home: a place that for two hours or more allows an audience to invest confidence; a place where we can find a sense of bonding, comfort and security.

At the moment that appears to be Soho Theatre.

You know, it has been two-and-half years since we were last there and I must admit I missed the place. We went off to Ipswich and The Almeida, but I missed Soho Theatre for the intimacy. There the work can impose itself on the audience and there is a cross-fertilisation. We are going to use it to the fullest. We did it last time with our production Joe Guy, written by Roy Williams to mark our tenth anniversary. This time we are going to do it to the extreme.

As an actor you have performed at the Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre, and have recorded over 100 radio plays for the BBC. Do you think you will continue to act as well as direct?

When the chance to train as a director came I took it, but for some funky reason the lure of being on stage, or in front of the camera, is hard to resist. Quite frequently I do have a preference, but ultimately I would like to do something like Alan Shearer did, become a player/manager. I would also like to write, but I realise that in this arena sometimes you have to respect the boundaries.

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