OGA ILE IWE (MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF BOOKS): Full-Length Play (15 scenes)


SYNOPSIS:

The play opens in western Nigeria, where most of the subsequent action also occurs. Two candidates, a bright young adolescent, Shegun, and the play’s first protagonist, Ajayi, compete for a single village-sponsored scholarship to study in the U.S. When Ajayi is chosen, the boy’s father menaces him. After a party scene in New York, Ajayi returns to what should have been the good fortune of a better paid, more respected teaching job than he had had before. As Ajayi arrives, the Peace Corps volunteer he is replacing, Tom Thompson, completes his tour and goes home. With the Nigerian civil war/Biafran secession (1967-70) as background, instead of good fortune Ajayi encounters a series of disasters, culminating in his death. With the connivance of the police, themselves preoccupied by the rampant disorder incident to the war, Ajayi’s friend and co-teacher, Balogun, the second protagonist, determines that juju was involved and tracks down the culprit, the boy’s father, who is punished by the village authorities. As the play ends, Thompson returns to bestow the first grants from a family foundation. Offered a scholarship to study in the U.S., Balogun, first prophesying forty years of Nigerian history, politely declines.


SAMPLES:

Scene 1

Music, "Ilu Oyinbo Dara" (“the white man’s land is beautiful”). Inside the village council hall, Ibah-Ekiti. Enter chief, two advocates. As the chief starts to talk, music fades, stops. Ajayi, in his mid-to-late thirties, wearing Yoruba dress, and Shegun Olumofin, an alert and personable seventeen year-old boy in school uniform, stand to either side, silent, each next to and behind his advocate.

CHIEF: Gentlemen. Many tedious hours have already been spent on this matter. Today, you advocates will make your final arguments. As succinctly as possible, please. And then we hesitant old men, the chiefs and elders of this our Ibah-Ekiti, must take courage and decide, before impatient elements of the populace push us from our stools. Advocate for Master Shegun Olalele Olumofin to begin, please.

OLUMOFIN ADVOCATE: Greetings to you, our fathers. And greetings for these times. And for this day. Now Shegun Olumofin is a boy known to be blessed with shining intelligence.

THE BOY BOWS.

AJAYI ADVOCATE (INTERRUPTING): That again? Unproven! Stated repeatedly, but always unproven. Whereas Ajayi is acknowledged to be a man of demonstrated wisdom and learning.

AJAYI GESTURES SELF-DEPRECATINGLY.

OLUMOFIN ADVOCATE: "Unproven " how? When the boy is about to sit for his Advanced Level examinations for the West African School Certificate. AND FURTHERMORE ... (HE WHIPS OUT A PAPER, AN OBVIOUS SURPRISE TO THE REST, AND A COUP, IN HIS OWN EYES) I have just received this letter of testimonial from Father Seamus O'Ryan, Headmaster, St. Mary's School, Lagos, informing us that this boy is expected (quote) "to achieve results unparalleled in the recent history of our distinguished institution of learn..."

AJAYI ADVOCATE: "Expected." Note that "expected," please.

OLUMOFIN ADVOCATE: "... of learning." Father O'Ryan exhorts us to do our part in providing for the boy's further education at the higher, university level. He...

AJAYI ADVOCATE: Now nice of Father Seamus to "exhort us." Since he loves Shegun so much, let HIM pay for the boy at University! WE can write a letter "exhorting" HIM!

AJAYI CATCHES THE BOY'S EYE AND, EMBARRASSED, HE GESTURES APOLOGETICALLY TOWARD HIS OVERZEALOUS ADVOCATE. AJAYI AND THE BOY SMILE AND NOD AGREEMENT.

CHIEF (TO AJAYI ADVOCATE): Well, Advocate, I can see that you are determined always to interrupt. So why not take this your turn now to present your own case, and let your opposite number have his chance to mock at your assertions, to see how you yourself will like it! Proceed, please. No delay , Mister Man!

AJAYI ADVOCATE: All right, gladly, gladly! Honored fathers, wise elders of this our golden village, beloved Ibah, and you two formidably qualified and learned supplicants ...

AGAIN, AJAYI AND THE BOY LOOK AT EACH OTHER, THIS TIME QUIZZICALLY.

...

Scene 3

High life music of the 60's: "Mammy Water," to start. Then, throughout the scene, various high life bands alternate with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead. Lights up on cocktail party for departing Peace Corps volunteers, in a largish room at Teachers College, Columbia University. Ajayi dances in left holding a glass of orange soda, wearing a pink robe, sweat socks and black shoes. He stops and surveys the scene, then is sidled up to by Bob.

BOB (EXTENDS LIMP HAND, SPEAKS "CONFIDENTIALLY" OUT OF THE SIDE OF HIS MOUTH): Hi. Where you from?

AJAYI: Nigeria, my friend. And you?

BOB: You're a Yoruba, right? I'm Bob. Kind of the office manager for this program. Don't worry, not a spook --know what that is ? A spy-- anyway, I'm not one. Repeat: not CIA. Wish I was, sometimes. Don't believe I caught your name.

SAA: I haven't told it to you yet. (ASIDE) And I'm sure that you ARE a "spook." Posted here to check for ideological impurities on the shoes of these poor would-be Peace-Corpse volunteers,. (TO BOB) I'm Stephen Ajayi.

BOB: Hiya, Ajaya. Howdy do? (LIMPLY SHAKES HANDS AGAIN.) What're you doing in New York, Steve? Silly question, you're at a party talking to a drunk --me.

AJAYI: True, true. But I'm also a student here at Columbia, A&S, English Liter...

BOB: "English Litter"? Yes! (CHICO MARX IMITATION.) English-a Litter. Well, as-a fo' me, I push-a da paper. I'm-a de office boy, CAPICHE? Princeton, '62, should-a been. I got-ta da D.O. degree. "D.O." --dats-a "Drop Out." G.S.-a Fourteen, dat's-a my rank.

AJAYI (HOPING TO ESCAPE): Ha ha. Well. Very good, then. I must ...

BOB (TOUCHING AJAYI'S WRIST): Say, know where these folks are going next week?

AJAYI: Well, yes, of ...

BOB: Somalia, Asshole of the World. Never heard of Somalia? It's in the Brittanica: "Rubens to Sybil."

AJAYI: Oh, come now! Of course, I have ...

BOB: Hey, don't believe me! Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is the bear Catholic?

AJAYI: "Asshole of the World." What a clever phrase! Did you invent it? A sort of fetid and inhospitable wasteland --that's the idea, is it? (ASIDE): And if I were a Somalian, he would no doubt apply that same rude phrase to Nigeria.

BOB: You bet. A great big piece of fucking desert. Their "capital," Mogadishu, is about the size of Schenectady Fucking New York --smaller. A gas station, sixteen fucking mosques, two whorehouses, and you're back in the big sandbox. Capiche? Mike? George?

AJAYI: "Steve," it was, last time I checked my driver's license.

BOB: Hey, that's pretty g...

AJAYI: Yes, well, you must excuse me, my second cousin beckons. See? That young woman? Bye.

HE LEAVES BOB OPEN-MOUTHED. THEN BOB SHRUGS, DANCES OFF STAGE LEFT. AJAYI WANDERS MOMENTARILY, THEN GLANCES BACK TO MAKE SURE BOB IS NOT BEHIND HIM

AJAYI (ASIDE, TAKING A DOG-EARED LITTLE YELLOW BOOK OUT AND THUMBING THROUGH IT): Hmm. "Ass-backward, assho..." No, not here. (THEN HE SEES FRAN APPROACHING FROM STAGE RIGHT, PUTS BOOK AWAY.) ...