ASSITEJ NIGERIA RECONVENES 2020 ANT FESTIVAL
By Chinyere Lilian Okam
ASSITEJ Nigeria planned to host her ASSITEJ Nigeria Theatre Festival (ANT 2020) from 28th-30th October 2020. The festival was organized to have different exciting packages like Workshops, Conferences and Productions. Unfortunately, the peaceful protest in country that turned ugly at that same time, motivated the organizers to postpone to a later date. The new date for the conference will be 16th-18th December 2020. The festival promises to be an intellectual harvest of ideas. It is going to be virtual so that participants can join from anywhere in the world.
On the 5th of December 2020, Arojah Theatre – a corporate member of ASSISTEJ-Nigeria hosted a virtual play reading Seran Demiral’s play titled LIKYA. The high point of the play is its theme on social inclusion of children (Likya) to handle the affairs of their communities. The play reading was just less than thirty minutes. However, the electrifying post-reading conversations lasted for one hour. Conversations cut across various segment of the reading to make an exciting evening. Seran did well to handle the very many questions from its thematic to staging, to childhood, the context of transposition, to everything. Yamila Rodriguez (Argentina) who played Likya was great. Equally Dr Ola, Ifatimehin, Becca Padonu, Oluwaseun Odukoya gets the credit for an animated theatrical rendition of the play.
