The Lagos Theatre Festival
For the past three years, the British Council has been working on theatre projects in Nigeria looking at the challenges of presenting contemporary work to new audiences.
Alongside the presentation of UK work in Lagos, which included Edinburgh Showcase companies 1927 and Inua Ellams, we have sought to offer opportunities for professional exchange and development between Nigerian and British artists. The culmination of this work led to the British Council putting together a festival of site specific theatre, Lagos Theatre Festival, which took place in February 2013.
Watch a short film about the Lagos Theatre Festival and see interviews with performers below.
To follow on from the success of the festival rather than replicate it, we have asked local Nigerian theatremakers to propose how they see the festival developing. Following an open call for proposals, a collaborative team of artists and producers including Ifeanyi Dibia, Kenneth Uphopho, Bukola Sanu and Daniel Effiong won the bid with their exciting vision of a site-specific festival inspired by people’s stories, set in the city of Lagos.
The Nigerian artistic team will be attending the Edinburgh Festival this year to meet and see work by UK theatre practitioners specialising in site-specific work, with an aim of inviting a UK director back to Lagos to work with local performers and create a new piece of work to be shown within the Lagos Theatre Festival alongside local companies in March 2014.
The British Council will work closely with the Festival team to provide expertise in audience development as well as to help with certain aspects of the delivery of the festival, such as technical support and project management.
