After Lagos, Abuja Fringe 2022 returns for third edition, targets ‘New Narratives’

* Features hugely successful experimental play Esther’s Revenge, Bridezella show

By Editor

JUST after a week’s interval when Lagos Fringe Festival came to a close, the Kenneth Uphopho-led Pawstudios Africa takes Nigeria’s fringe festival train to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as Abuja Fringe Festival returns for its third and 2022 edition. This time Abuja Fringe aims at exploring ‘New Narratives’ as theme in the Nigerian creative space. The theme, perfectly suited for the budding culture city of Abuja, according to Co-Founder and Director, Mr. Uphopho, Abuja Fringe, is focused on supervising how things work in Nigeria’s creative space, alongside developing new skills, new connections and new collaborative work spaces.

Abuja Fringe 2022, a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural festival programme, opens on Tuesday, December 6, 2022 and runs through December 11, 2022 across multiple venues such as Mambaah Café, The Sync Hub, Shehu Yar’adua Center, 6ixx Lounge, Aiivon Hub, AFS Vocational Hub and Fraser Suites. Time is 11am to 9pm daily.

To achieve this noble objective, the festival will host exchanges and empowerment programmes with special focus on technology for creative practice, audience development, marketing and communications with established facilitators from the US, UK and Nigeria. These trainings, to be delivered virtually and physically, aim at re-strategizing audience engagement and reframing conversations in positive ways to make for a more resilient and inclusive artistes’ communities.

To this end Abuja Fringe Festival activities will include a collaborative project tagged Wales’ Good Cop Bad Cop and titled ‘Glimpses From The Edges’, facilitated under the British Council Culture Connect Initiative. It will exhibit outcomes of the project at the festival and in Wales. Creative facilitators such as CC Hub Nigeria’s Ojoma Ochai, poets, Dike Chukwumerije and Bash Amuneni, Nadine Patel UK, Erwin Maas and Victor Gulley from the US, and Brighton Fringe CEO, Julian Caddy, will engage participants in working forums and workshop discusses that will highlight key issues, potential solutions as well as demonstrations of transferable practice. They will also proffer facilitated debates and reflections on key emerging issues from the festival’s theme.

Festival guests are also in for an entertaining ride with a live show of the widely successful experimental play Esther’s Revenge, featuring Biola Atitebi, exhibitions, and the psychedelic Bridezella show starring Bunmi Sogade. Guests will also have access to artistic and cultural workshops, film and media events, exhibitions and opportunities to forge global connections that will build emerging creatives and improve professional ones.

Founded by PawStudios Africa in 2020, Abuja Fringe is committed to improving the livelihoods of artistes as well as finding new voices in the Abuja creative space. Earlier in the year, the festival held free training workshops on social media, marketing and communication and funding for 250 creatives in the city. It is supported the US Embassy in collaboration with Brighton Fringe, UK, National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP), Women-In-The-Arts Festival, British Council, A Taste of Theatre, USA, GIZ, The Nigerian German Resource Center, Doyenne Circle, Krump Studios and Mambaah Café.