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This essay highlights the factors responsible for Duro Ladipo's exploration of the subject of Oba Kô So (1963), the implications of his role as Sango in the play, and the way the performance developed. In addition, it contextualizes the production history of the play both nationally and internationally, the importance of staging the play, and the philosophies associated with its dramaturgy.
Duro Ladipo was one of the practitioners of the Yoruba Professional Travelling Theatre of Nigeria, founded by Hubert Ogunde, the doyen of modern Yorúbá theatre.1 Born into a Yorúbá family in Osogbo, southwestern Nigeria, on 18 December 1926,2 he was interested in theatre from childhood. Joseph Oni Ladipo, Ladipo's father, was an Anglican reverend (Catechist) who had been converted to Christianity, refusing to follow in his family's ancestral religious worship of Sango and Oya, the Yorúbá demiurge of thunder and lightning and the goddess of departed souls, respectively. Ladipo's grandfather was a devoted Sango worshipper and a popular drummer and drum-maker who loved his grandson, Ladipo, and spent a great deal of time with him. Therefore, living in his father's household with all the Christian rituals and spending time with his grandfather, who taught him the art of drumming and singing, Ladipo had a fascinating childhood. ' He was very interested in the Yorúbá traditions and was a regular spectator at the performances of egungun3 4 festivals and other ceremonies surrounding the worship of traditional deities. Ladipo researched the egungun festival and Ifá rituals (Aworo Ose) at Ila-Orángún, near Osogbo, as well as the Olua, Obátálá, Sango, and Otin festivals at Otan Aiyegbaju, in the company of his grandfather, who was either a drummer at or consultant to these festivals.5 This was in contradiction to the wishes of Oni Ladipo, Ladipo's father, who wanted the young Duro to follow in his footsteps and become a preacher and a teacher, and who had inducted Ladipo as a lay preacher in his church, All Saints Anglican Church, Osogbo, in the early 1940s.6 Ladipo's first opportunity to display his dramatic and musical abilities to an audience came when he was teaching at St. Philips Primary School, Otan-Aiyegbaju, between 1943 and 1947. His headmaster, Mr A.O. Odunsi, had written the play "Suuru Baba Iwa in which Duro Ladipo...
