I Dream of Lagos at West Africa’s largest theatre festival
Invisible Flock, Brian Lobel, HATCH Africa, and Season Butler take part in LTF 2016
The third Lagos Theatre Festival took place on 23 – 28 February 2016 with 35 companies producing over 100 performances in 19 venues, which makes it possibly the largest festival in West Africa.
A curated programme ran alongside the first Fringe strand allowing a more varied and greater number of artists and audiences to be involved. The LTF Fringe was developed with support from Brighton Fringe Festival and Brighton Festival in 2015 facilitated by the British Council.
Invisible Flock’s I Dream of Lagos was commissioned as part of LTF and British Council’s UK/Nigeria 2015-16 programme. I Dream of is a digital artwork about dreaming of a city and is a touring version of If You Go Away. Performed as a duet for two audiences members linked through a pair of mobile phones participants take a walk together through a local park, imagining past, present and future dreamscapes, walking in the real and virtual world.
Alongside UK presentations such as Season Butler’s Happiness Forgets, the festival also included professional exchanges and collaborations between Nigerian and British Artists. These include HATCH Africa’s Oliva Tweest: Flash Mob at the University of Lagos; and Brian Lobel, not only adapting his piece Purge to include performers Marcy Dolapo Oni and Gideon Okeke, but also delivering a number of workshops exploring the relationship with our bodies and how this is informed by politics, culture and history drawing on examples from his own arts practice.
A team of technical professionals which include Auriel Martin, Martin Hunt, David Evans and Angela Davies provided training on Front of House, Stage Management, Production Management and Design.
The British Council has, for four years, been working on theatre projects in Nigeria with the ultimate goal for LFTl to become an independent, self-reliant organisation supporting the creative economy of Nigeria.
UK/Nigeria 2015–16 is a major season of arts work in Nigeria aimed at building new audiences, creating new collaborations and strengthening relationships between both countries. Programmed in association with a host of partners it features more than thirty projects and more than eighty events throughout Nigeria in art, fashion, design, theatre, dance, music, literature and film and showcases of Nigerian creative industries in the UK.
