Lagos Theatre Festival 2020 Opens February 27

With the theme ‘Going Out of Bounds’, organisers of the annual Lagos Theatre Festival promises a bigger and better fiesta. Ferdinand Ekechukwu reports  

The 7th edition of the Lagos Theatre Festival is set to hold in multiple locations within the Lagos metropolis including National Museum Lagos, African Artists Foundation, British Council, Alliance Française, with Freedom Park, Broad Street, Lagos Island, as the main Festival Hub. This year’s festival will explore the theme, ‘Going Out of Bounds’ and will feature over 120 events – drama, opera, dance, comedy, and spoken word and evening events of karaoke, comedy, music performances and disco.

There will be side attractions to include the famous LTF Leisure Market bringing together vendors providing food, art and crafts, and services for the pleasure of attendants (families included) of the Festival. There will also be learning opportunities with workshops and panel discussions included in festival activities for talent development. The event will bring together shows and events by production companies from home and abroad selected specifically to suit this year’s theme and the selection was made from over three hundred entries for LTF 2020.

This official announcement was made during a recent press conference for the LTF 2020 held at Freedom Park, Lagos. The Chairman of LTF Foundation, Olasupo Shasore, revealed that the festival aims at portraying Lagos as the home of artistic expressions. This year’s edition, in partnership with the British Council, is aimed at exceeding bounds. Sasore noted that the LTF “is committed to ensuring and opening up the art form in the industry” while making it accessible to people to express themselves within the theatre out form.

The Festival Executive Director, Bikiya Graham-Douglas stated that LTF remains focused on creating opportunities for upcoming performing artists through its site-specific scope of presentations outside the traditional theatre. “So, this year, our theme for the Lagos Theatre Festival is ‘Going Out of Bounds’. What we are saying is we are not going to be boxed by anybody, we are not going to be boxed by tradition, and we are going to allow our imaginations run wild. We are going to take our role as people who influence society; we are going to take that role very seriously. We are going to impact positively on society. And that’s what we were thinking of when we came up with the theme.”

She further stated that there are already over 42 production companies that will be showcasing their works for LTF 2020 in two streams.

According to Graham-Douglas “We have the fringe and we have the curated streams. So the difference is that the curated productions have been given grants by the LTF. So you can see we are also committed to growing the industry by putting our money where our mouth is. This festival will create platforms for many. So expect a bigger and better LTF this year. We want local and international production companies to see the Lagos Theatre Festival as a hub that fosters exchange and collaborations while telling our stories and promoting our culture.”

The Artistic Director, Lydia Idakula-Sobogun, noted that the Festival since inception creates opportunities for artists to perform outside the regular theatre tradition and that the event has been able to create opportunities for 260 production companies, had over 42,000 audience members and has had an online reach of about 770 million.

“So you can see that LTF has indeed had a journey that has created platforms for many young performing artists to showcase their talents,” she added.

The Festival was founded by British Council in 2013 as part of its ambitions of fostering exchange, collaboration and strengthening relationships between Nigerian and British artists through the presentation of high quality Nigerian and British theatre. Lagos Theatre Festival (LTF) is the largest performing arts festival in Nigeria and indeed West Africa. It was created to promote theatre in unconventional spaces.

Through the festival, theatre-makers and producers are supported to expand their practice beyond traditional theatre spaces by creating work that responds to any given space. The Festival is now managed by the Lagos Theatre Festival Foundation, a not-for-profit organization.