REPORT OF THE PANEL OF JUDGES FOR THE NIGERIA PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, 2006 EDITION (DRAMA)

                         
  REPORT OF THE PANEL OF JUDGES FOR THE NIGERIA PRIZE LITERATURE, 2006 EDITION [DRAMA]

The competition for the Nigeria Prize for Literature is now in its third year, and we are about to welcome another star in the literary firmament. We will celebrate his achievement when I announce the winning entry at the end of this report. But I should point out that the value of the prize extends beyond the single individual whom we celebrate.  The sponsors of the prize, the Nigeria LNG, the Literature Committee and the Panel of Judges have remained faithful to the original vision of a prize. This prize is not only a recognition of artistic excellence; it is the high point of a process for stimulating creativity and the development of a vibrant literary culture in Nigeria. It was hoped at the time that the prize would help to “improve the literature value chain” for lovers of the arts - that is, not just the creative writer, who is always the star of a literary event, but also editors, proof-readers, book designers, printers, teachers, critics, students and the general reading public; in other words, all who have a stake in the development of our literary culture. What is evident at this point is the need to nurture a tradition that places high value on excellence in creativity. Taking into account, the judges’ comments on the problem of technical production at earlier competitions, there has been a progressive improvement in the production standard of this year’s entries. Writers now seem more willing to accept the need for professionalism, especially in the design and printing of the texts.
At this third year of the literature awards, it is time to take stock of the progress that we have made so far. The response to the competition has been nothing but enthusiastic, and the authors and executors of the prize have been gratified by the large number of entries for fiction and poetry in the first two years of the competition. This year’s 77 entries for drama is a little more than half of the 130 entries for poetry last year, but that is still a very large number, given the character of drama. It is a pleasant surprise to have such a large entry for drama, especially because, unlike the more lonely arts of fiction and poetry, with their almost total dependence on language, drama is the supreme art of collaboration and participation. It has its own material infrastructure and thrives on a wide range of its culture’s artistic resources.
This audience hardly needs to be reminded that a play script is only a blueprint for performance, for it is only in performance that drama is fully realized, when it harnesses the contribution of other professionals like producers and directors, designers and costumers, composers and musicians, choreographers and dancers, actors and stage hands. These contributions are not available for this competition. The judges are limited only to the literary aspects of the plays, and have to envision the performance potential of each text. It is hoped that this competition will help to put these texts on stage, for it is through performance that drama fulfils its role as a cultural activity with deep roots in our myths, rituals and beliefs. I should remind my audience at this point that although this event is a celebration of excellence, the judges’ mandate is to report on the entries’ artistic weaknesses as well as their strengths. Their report is based on a total response to the entries received.
Drama in our tradition involves communal participation in various forms of activities involving the incorporation of contributions from a wide range of performance, like singing, dancing, acting and costuming. Although these aspects of drama as theatre are not available to the judges, there are enough indications in the plays’ themes and stage directions, that the writers are conscious of their debt to our national traditions of drama as theatre and as ritual and belief. A general trend in these plays is the tendency to go back to African traditional cultures in search of solutions to modern social problems. Some writers seem to assume that patronizing African traditional cultures inevitably means digging up forms of traditional worship with all its rituals and paraphernalia. Some of the authors who take this path failed to keep their artistic distance from the material, resulting in uncritical patronage and a disturbing descent into superstition. The judges expect creative writers to give leadership in cultural matters, especially when it comes to the appropriation of our traditions.

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