Evwierhoma’s ‘The Cut Across’ premieres at Kwara State University, Malete

Ag. Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Sheikh Luqman Jimoh, others to attend

By Editor

STUDENTS and senior staff of Kwara State University, Malete, Kwara State, will have the opportunity to watch the stage performance of The Cut Across, a play written by University of Abuja drama teacher and scholar, Prof. Mabel Evwierhoma. The performance will also be a cross-cultural showcase with the Urhobo culture being exposed to people in that part of the country.

Emu, a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM), having been exposed to western culture, sees the need to fight against the harmful traditional practice of female circumcision in her community. With the aid of some of her childhood friends, she embarks on a social transformative journey that sets her against a culture that has subsisted for generations. Does she succeed in her campaign or is the practice too strong to upturn for the health of girls and women? The Cut Across reflects Urhobo women of Delta State and other parts of the country, as victims of a harmful traditional practice that must give way for a better one that allows girls and women to be who they want to be without the inhibition of a tradition that causes arm rather than good.

The Cut Across will be staged at the Convocation Arena (CVA) of Kwara State University, Malete on February 7, 2024 at 2pm, according to Dr. Mike Agboola, “because since the play was published late last year, Kwara State University, Malete, happens to be the school that has taken the lead in terms of its performance.”

Author of The Cut Across, Prof. Mabele Evwierhoma

Those expected at the performance are the university’s Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Sheikh Luqman Jimoh, principal officers of the university, alongside the Dean, Faculty of Arts, as well as the University community.

The Cut Across will be directed by Oluwatofunmi Olusola, with Ganiyat Shijuola Oladipupo as stage manager. Lecturers in charge the performance are Mrs. Temitope Adedokun-Richards and Mr. Basiru Adebisi. The play’s cast members are fresh students of the Department of Performing Arts and Film Studies (100 and 200 levels), Kwara State University, Malete.

The Cut Across represents Prof. Evwierhoma’s gender sensibility, as a scholar and writer, who specialises in dramatic theory, criticism, gender and cultural studies. In June 2020 Evwierhoma delivered a lecture titled ‘Rape as Anti-culture in Contemporary Nigeria’, and called for cultural resistance and constitutional provisions against rape. On January 21, 2016, she delivered her inaugural lecture at the University of Abuja titled ‘Mother is Gold’ to further underscore her cultural and scholarly inclination towards righting the inbalance in gender configuration.