By Abdul Mohammed
This post is a whatsapp response to a chat message by Edgar titled “Madam Hannatu Musawa – its beyond the lipstick“
Sorry but it won’t happen without a buoyant economy. It’s the growth of the economy that will drive the growth of theatre and not the other way round.
Not long ago NBS ﹰtold us we had about 133 million multidimensionally poor ﹰNigerians. Those people do not have the discretionary income to spend on theatre productions and they are not going to get it by gaining employment in the theatre industry. They are going to get it by gaining formal employment that been created by increased productivity and sensible public policy…look at it this way…you raise money from your partners in the formal economy to run theatre productions…why isn’t it the other way round? Why isn’t it that the revenues from theatre productions is creating jobs in the banks, insurance firms, IT firms, Telecoms companies etc.?
You may point to Nollywood as example but even them would have first been sustained by money coming from outside and it has become self-sustaining because the economics of Nollywood is such that even with so many poor people there is still enuf effective demand which is largely due to the very cheap means of distribution which theatre does not share..dvds a lot of them pirated lowering costs even more, gotv/dstv subscriptions. Dstv extends the market beyond Nigeria thereby spreading costs extensively. The lowest priced ticket for a play could buy you gotv subscription for a month. The economics of the two are not comparable at all. No matter how popular a play, it has to spread its costs over a much smaller group of people, jacking up unit costs considerably.
Even in the US when stage actors want to make big money, they move to movies. Marlon Brando arguably the greatest Hollywood actor, first made his name on stage. He didnt leave stage for the greater challenge of Hollywood. Stage is where the greatest challenge is as far acting is concerned. He left because of money.