Eko Theatre Carnival 2023: Art and community interface in 7-day cultural showpiece
By Editor
FROM July 31 through August 6, 2023 artists of diverse backgrounds will converge for the annual Segun Adefila-led Eko Theatre Carnival to make a communal offering of committed arts. The 8th edition, Eko Theatre Carnival took off in 2016, and remained an exciting showpiece of theatre and performance arts generally. Organisers promise that this year will be more exciting than the past editions, as it will deploy three venues for its shows that include Art Factory at Awolodu Street, Off Pedro Road, Bariga, Beeriga, Boat Jetty, Ilaje Road, Bariga, and Glover Memorial Hall, Custom Street, Lagos Island, Lagos
According to Adefila, founder of Crown Troupe of Africa and Festival Curator, “To borrow a well worn but contextually appropriate cliche, Eko Theatre Carnival is by all means an art festival of the people, by the people FOR the people. It is a festival of life that parades a fine array of soul-stirring works of arts in their simplest but honest and down-to-earth form by artists in different stages of their career.
Eko Theatre Carnival Curator, Segun Adefila
“Apart from a rich line up of spectacular performances, ETC 2023, in line with its tradition, will also feature enriching seminars headlined by prominent theatre scholars from the academia, thereby creating the much needed interface between scholarship and practice. Though mutually exclusive, we believe strongly that a symbiotic relationship needs to exist between scholarship and the practice of arts in order to foster sustainability. We urge you to brace yourself to savour a cultural event that would hit you in pleasant places.”
The first seminar on Day 1 of the festival is titled ‘The Eloquence of the Unspoken: Communitas and Children’s Voice in Eko Theatre Carnival,’ and shall be led by an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Performing Arts, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Dr. Rasheedah Aliyu Liman. The second seminar on Day 2 of ETC is titled ‘Contemporary Nigerian Theatre as Public-Facing Praxis, and will be delivered by another Associate Professor of African Theatre and Performance at the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan, Dr. Chucks Okoye. Other features include fashion show, music concert, traditional masquerade performance, film screening, poetry party, and lots of fun.