Olorunmola’s deepens exploration of unconventional performance spaces with Fattah’s ‘Before I Let You Go’

By Anote Ajeluorou

IN an environment where creativity is a struggle for survival, what with the dearth of performance facilities and funding support. Dodged creatives, however, are compelled to dig deep to find out what works for them and harness it to their advantage. With the newly revamped Wole Soyinka Centre for the Creative Arts, Iganmu, Lagos (formerly National Theatre), still under lock and key since October 5, 2025 after President Bola Tinubu reopened it, producers wishing to practice have to be extra innovative to keep working. Prohibitive costs of event spaces and dwindling audiences due to economic crunch are other challenges theatre producers continue to contend with, as they rethink their art.

So, while other producers and directors are looking for the perfect moment to work, the duo of Abimbola Olorunmola as director and Tosin Adeyemi as producer has found ways to navigate Lagos’ live theatre performance circuit in spite of the obvious challenges. The two are unfazed and have dug deep to their creative recesses, as they continue to produce and draw audiences to their theatre shows. January 1, 2026 was another moment with a packed audience where they took their show, Before I Let You Go, to an unconventional space at J Randle Centre, Onikan, after their October 24/25, 2025 outing on Kofo Abayomi Street, IKoyi with A Husband’s Wife at an exclusive bar and restaurant setting with the audience sitting in irregular formation around the actors, as they ate and drank their usual fare.

Also at J Randle Centre on January 1, 2026 at the exhibition hall displaying ‘100 Years of Pop Music in Nigeria’, with all the ancient record players like Gramaphones and turntables dating back to the 1950s on display and photos of old and young musicians, B-Rated Productions put on stage Before I Let You Go. And at the performance of A Husband’s Wife last October, Adeyemi performed as Tomi, but in Before I Let You Go, she produced while the duo of Asa’ah Samuel (Gbenga) and Kanyinsola Eros (Irene) were the two-man act that took the audience through the gamut of strangers meeting for the first time and gradually building up to an incipient relationship that hits a brick wall just as things begin to get really steamy.

Gbenga is a photographer covering an art show in a gallery while Irene newly lost her job, but thought to pass her time at the gallery before heading home. When they meet, the vibe isn’t friendly at first, because she thinks he’s photographing her and asks him to stop. But he’s stunned at her quaint request and wonders why she thinks she’s an interesting subject to pay any attention. Stung by his repost, Irene fires back her own retort; they go back and forth until a semblance of familiarity creeps into their conversation that’s a banter of the Lagos they both live in, its intimate contours, their families, education and what else between. As the conversation careens into their personal lives, relationships, it begins to feel like two soulmates discovering themselves on an irregular first date.

Asa’ah Samuel (Gbenga- left) and Kanyinsola Eros (Irene) in Before I Let You Go at J Randle Centre, Onikan, Lagos

With the audience sitting around the hall and providing a backdrop for the performers, both actors go back and forth like teenagers on a first trip to an exciting location. What is more, the audience is drawn into the lives of these two perfect strangers who are telling the story the audience is not only familiar with but also reliving and relating with in their different ways. Perhaps, that’s the magic of Moshood Fattah’s Before I Let You Go, his Ola Rotimi’s Holding Talks-type performance aesthetics that sucks the audience into its dialogic dynamics.

Of course, Before I Let You Go feeds into the ‘japa’ complex where departures are just as fluid as are arrivals. Gbenga and Irene might have met in the most unscripted circumstances, but that chance meeting seems so magical, as if ordained by the heavens. But just when things become heated, when it seems a golden relationship is in the offing, Gbenga pulls the rugs by breaking news of his imminent departure that would separate a budding relationship built in just about an hour’s chance meeting. It’s as cruel as it can be, but that’s how the ‘japa’ syndrome sometimes works. You see a friend or relation a day or two ago; next day you hear he or she has travelled abroad. Irene is even fortunate Gbenga isn’t the secretive type for telling her. With her telephone number that he managed to ferret out of her, he would just have called her from abroad, and that would perhaps be another beginning to a chance encounter aborted even before it starts.

Fattah’s Before I Let You Go is a socially-conscious theatre that deploys modern, every day idioms for its realistic performance ethos. It’s appeal and success lie largely in how affective the play is, as the audience acts as a sort of ‘chorus’ and echo to the performers’ gestures and mood swings while the duo finds firm footing in the conversation game they’re animatedly engaged. Sadly, it’s a one-off performance the producer put up to usher in the New Year. But Before I Let You Go deserves multiple shows and wider audience to see it, but limited funding is a hindrance. This is where corporate sponsorship should step in to take this heart-felt, family-friendly play farther afield. Never too late. Easter is next holiday and a great time for Before I Let You Go to hit the stage again, whether in a proscenium stage or irregular one, for the enjoyment of theatre lovers.