About 200 delegates are expected to participate in the second Playwrights’ Confab holding at the Kwara State University from March 6 to 8. The plan follows the success of the maiden edition hosted by the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.

In a statement issued by the convener, Femi Osofisan, an emeritus professor of the University of Ibadan, said 200 delegates from different parts of the country would converge in Kwara for the meeting.

Holding at the Kwara State Council for Arts and Culture, Ilorin, the confab, Osofisan said, would be preceded by a five-day workshop on playwriting.

Though the attendance would attract a fee, the convener said waivers would be granted to those who could not meet the financial requirement.

“The Confab is a follow-up to the first one held at the Obafemi Awolowo University in 2012 which brought together a staggering number of 136 participants. So successful was the meeting that the decision was taken to make the Confab a biennial affair,” he noted.

The renowned playwright said the organisers were doing everything possible to reach as many playwrights as possible to make the meeting a huge success. Withpout giving a definite agenda, he said suggestions would be welcome from those in the arts on the meeting format and direction.

The confab had several issues tabled for a debate at the maiden meeting. These included playwriting in the post-military era, the playwright’s experience in contemporary society, philosophy, ideology and culture in Nigerian/African playwriting, the quality of plays in the dramatic literature in the past decades, and the problems encountered by playwrights in having plays staged and published.

Others were inter-generational and intra-generational relations between Nigerian playwrights and the relationship between playwriting for the stage films, television and publication as literature.

In its communiqué, the confab identified the challenges confronting playwriting and lovers of the genre. It listed the crisis of relevance, visibility, fragmentation of community, exhaustion, funding, language, censorship and tyranny in both the military and post-military eras, survival strategies of writers, mass illiteracy and poor reading culture among the challenges.

At the end of the discussion, it recommended that playwrights should make their plays relevant to the needs of the society and advocate the building of cottage theatres in all local government areas of the country. It also suggested the inauguration of a national organisation of playwrights while special retreats were to be put in place for relevant training.

“There is a need for writers to break away from Greaco-Roman models and create authentic African paradigms.  Drama and theatre should become a staple in school curriculum throughout the country. A vibrant reading culture should be inculcated as an important feature of Nigerian society. Reading clubs and debating societies should also be reintroduced in schools as they once existed in primary and secondary schools in Nigeria,” it recommended.