Two Jewels & A Lion

Terra Kulture
(Theatre)
Tiamiyu Savage, Victoria Island

I bought 'The Lion and the Jewel' a year ago, during one of my many "let's get down with Soyinka" phases.

I never made it past the first act.

At the time I attributed my impatience with the play to Soyinka's writing, judging the plot to be too creepy crawly and the language too long-winded, for a quick brained chica mohita like myself. Last night however, I saw it come to life at Terra Kulture, and I loved every second of it. It was snappy, downright hilarious at points, and brilliantly acted. I found myself wondering halfway through, if the actors, who were so clearly at home on their little wooden stage, would come off as well on screen. Based on my few and gladly forgotten experiences of Nollywood, I have always walked into plays in Lagos expecting a shambolic show. I suppose judging Lagos' theatre scene by the quality (or lack of) of the country's movie industry, is a silly thing to do. But I wonder if those few theatre actors, you know, the ones that can really act, ever get pissed off at the fact that their productions are poorly attended, as last night's was, whilst the likes of Aki and Paw Paw bill millions of naira a month!

The second pleasant surprise of the night, also at Terra, was 'Kaleidoscopes', an exhibition by Moyo Ogundipe, who I had never heard of until yesterday (shows how cool I am). I loved her work simply because it was so different from anything I had ever seen before by any artist anywhere, not just in Nigeria, which is a huge feat for a contemporary African artist.
Her use of colour was inspired, and in every nook and cranny of her paintings (some of them enormous) was a geometric pattern or sequence, each one different from the next. Her paintings must take hours to create! I plan to bid for one of them at the second Art House auction, which comes up on the 19th of this month. Somehow I don't see myself getting very far on my measly corper budget :(