Book Title: Oya: The Trials of the Gods
Author: Lekan Balogun
Publisher: Lantern Books
Year of Pub.: 2008
Pages: 84
ISBN: 978-978-142-917-0
Reviewer: Ari-Ajia Olanrewaju
Lekan Balogun’s play, Oya, is again a reaffirmation of the mastery of one of his usual theatrical terrain – the epic genre. Since his first outing with Onikoyi, he has written Moremi Ajaasoro that won him National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts’ Practitioners (NANTAP) Festival of Nigerian Plays (FESTINA Award in 2003). He has followed with other plays like Alaafin Kanran, The Rejected Stone: an adaptation of the popular Cinderella; Olofin Ajaye and Shaka Zulu among others.
A lot of dramatis of Yoruba descent and non-Yoruba alike have always found the story of Yoruba pantheons fascinating and a worthy exploration. Some of the dramatis who have done these are Wale Ogunyemi in Be Mighty Be Mine and Kiriji War, Duro Ladipo’s Obakoso, with his own version of Moremi; Ahmed Yerima’s Yemaja, Femi Osofisan’s Many Colours Make the Thunder King and Femi Lasode’s screen play, Sango, are a few examples. Each of these dramatis have focused more on the strength and powers of the different Yoruba deities. Perhaps it is only Lekan Balogun’s Oya that has tried to shift the paradigm that these deities are not all about supernatural will-power alone, but has creations that can fall in and fall out of love as well.
Oya is an eponymous play around the Yoruba pantheon of the same name. In the play, Oya is originally married to Ogun, the Yoruba god of war and thunder, who more for his war expenditures would not husband his childless wife. Of course, this is to Oya’s greatest displeasure. And like any woman, she runs amok seeking answers and solutions to her procreational inability. In a way one may find her hysteria out of order, after all, her husband is not always at home. And has another god, Orunmila, puts it succinctly in the play, during one of his several counseling to her, “a woman who desires a child does not close her thighs”; with the exception of course, of the Biblical account of the Immaculate Conception. It may interest critics to ask if Orunmila is not subtly advising Oya to give Sango’s proposal a rethink. Or who is Orunmila to think that he is saying a fact that Oya does not already know? If it is about overt knowledge, like the interpretation of dreams, then, Orunmila has no equal among the Yoruba deities. But as far as the foregoing, Oya has proven in many ways than one, in her dialectic engagement in this play, to know far more than this pedestrian advice from Orunmila. Nevertheless, Oya meets another Sango, who promises to be all that Ogun is not. Despite her initial reluctance, she gives in to Sango’s relentlessness.
The play is a story of love, rivalry, destiny and betrayal that is well told; well suffused with proverbs, as well as suspense full. The conflict in this play is one that continues to make one think that Oya is a betrayal despite all her ‘pretentious’ show of true love to Ogun. One cannot imaging it a tenable reason why a woman would clamour for love making and baby making in the face of intermittent wars; not even the fact that Oya had been married for three years is an excuse. Despite Oya’s alibi that she prefers Sango to spite Ogun for the latter’s proclaimed preference for wars and expenditures to Oya’s cry for love and procreation, it is clear that destiny which is often the Deus ex machina in most tragic play is again pitched against love and trust. Before the love of Ogun and Oya is the intertwining of Sango and Oya’s destiny. As Oya later informed at the climax of the play, after one of her recurring dreams: “…cast your gaze in the sky. When the cloud becomes dark and misty, conjure your spirit of whirlwind and on the midst of lighting, you will find happiness.”
And Sango too corroborates this much; he has been having similar dreams as well: “… Then this strange whirlwind began to move in my direction…”Anyone that do not know that both the whirlwind and lighting in these dreams are metaphors for Sango and Oya will do with a cursory study in the panegyrics of both deities. Without mincing words, the playwright is unfair to Ogun in many instances than one. As far as the theme of love is concerned, Ogun, who has no time for frivolity, is treated as an unequal rival to Sango, who carries the aura of a lover boy about him. Asides, Ogun does not enjoy the same balance appearance in the play; unlike Sango and his aid, Omiran and Oya that are everywhere in the play. For a play that is centred on rivalry it is important to see enough of the rivals and rivalries about the same issues, to be able to make an unbiased judgment. Perhaps, the reason for this ‘imbalance’ is because of what the playwright set out to do is to preference the love side of these pantheons and not their warring propensity and popularity, which is to be honest has become ad nauseum, as many other writers have over-flogged this theme. It could as well be the very reason why despite Ogun’s exploits at the warfronts, there is never much show of this either.
Another major issue that raises eyebrows in the play is the use of flower as a symbol of love in the play. Since when did flower become the universal metaphor for love? Maybe, this is a writer’s poetic licence? Nonetheless, for a play that is set in a traditional milieu, the place of a flower as a representation of love is questionable.
Whatever shortcomings there may be in the play, if ever they are worth any consequence, the undisputable fact is that Lekan Balogun’s Oya meet all the yardsticks for a tragic play; not forgetting to mention the accompanying standing ovations during the staging of the same play at the auditorium of University of Lagos, when the play was preferred as the convocation play of the university in 2006. That was the first time the university will concede that exotic height to one of her students.
Short Bio
Ari-Ajia Olanrewaju writes the three major genres of literature, aside from writing essays, cartoons and doing occasional pencil works. Besides, he also doubled as the secretary of his faculty’s press crew where he was involved in the monthly publication of the faculty magazine, named- ABSSMagnet. He was also a member of the highest professional body for thespians in Nigeria- National Association of Nigerians Theatre Art Practitioners (NANTAP) and was the state chapter secretary and edited the chapter’s monthly newsletter called, Artmeet. He has published three books. His first book, Women at Crossroads, was long-listed in the maiden edition of Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2006. He was also a bilingual writer with bias for the sustainability and survival of the mother tongue. It is no wonder that his collection of poems was written in his mother tongue – Yoruba Language. In the same breath, he was once the publication secretary of the now rested Yoruba Children Magazine named, Akarerin-in.