11 Facts About Ola Rotimi

Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi, best known as Ola Rotimi, was one of Nigeria's leading playwrights and theatre directors.

Ola Rotimi was born in Sapele, Nigeria; cultural diversity was a recurring theme in his work.

Ola Rotimi attended St Cyprian's School in Port Harcourt from 1945 to 1949, St Jude's School, Lagos, from 1951 to 1952 and the Methodist Boys' High School, Lagos, before travelling to the United States in 1959 to study at Boston University, where he obtained a BA in fine arts.

Ola Rotimi often examined Nigeria's history and local traditions in his works.

Ola Rotimi's first plays, To Stir the God of Iron and Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, were staged at the drama schools of Boston University and Yale, respectively.

Owing, in part, to political conditions in Nigeria, Ola Rotimi spent much of the 1990s living in the Caribbean and the United States, where he taught at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota.

Ola Rotimi, a patriot who shunned the attraction of the West and Europe and returned home to contribute his own quota to nation building, was a rare breed.

Ola Rotimi is sure to be remembered as a model in the literary genre whose views have shaped the conduct of the theatre and whose plays have demonstrated the power of drama to shape the thinking of the society and attempted to solve some of the problems encountered in everyday living.

Ola Rotimi makes use of wry humour to seek a level playing ground for resolution of the biases men and women nurse about one another and which affect mutual co-existence of the two.

Ola Rotimi's last production was a staging of Man Talk, Woman Talk at the French Institute in Lagos, Nigeria.

Ola Rotimi produced Tororo Tororo roro, a play of the Absurd, as a convocation play.