The show we're bringing to the
British Council Showcase this year
is called 'The Fishermen'.
It's an adaptation of Chigozie Obioma's novel
done by Gbolahan Obisesan.
It's the story of two brothers in Nigeria
who meet to relive and reenact a huge family tragedy
that's happened to them, at the site of the tragedy.
So, they effectively go through this enormous
family story, just the two of them,
in order to come to terms with it and to process
what they've been through.
I was going to become a professor.
That's not what you wanted to do.
You were supposed to be the family doctor
but you're a lawyer and you cannot be a pilot.
We all wanted to be the family pilot.
Yes.
Well, the original story is a kind of wide family saga
and what we've done with our adaptation
is we've funnelled that down to an encounter
between two people, between two brothers.
So, the two brothers in the story embody
the wider family, relatives and neighbours
that there are in the book.
So, we've done a really radical, kind of,
paring down of the story so that everything is
communicated through these two people.
Why did you become a fisherman?
That's easy.
So, what's the answer?
Because we stopped playing football.
But why did we stop playing football?
We weren't very good.
You played regularly?
Only when father wasn't around.
But why?
Because academics are not very good as sportsmen!
I think one of the big themes that is in the play
that motivated me to want to put it on stage
was really the complexity of sibling relationships.
Sibling relationships are also quite performative.
When you meet your sibling,
you're also meeting your parents,
so you find yourself impersonating a parent or a friend
or somebody from your past.
So, that gave us a really clear, kind of, way of
of theatricalising this story.
These two brothers meet and
they have so much shared history that
they find themselves falling into
impersonations and reenactments.
Our fishing line must be handled with
pride and protection.
Ikenna was always so serious.
Boja!
Oh! Oh!
And these are your hooks.
We will set the baits for our fishes.
Fish.
Fishes.
Fish.
So, it's a really, kind of, sparse production
and it's something where the
elements are really concise and really specific.
[Shouting]
Our brother was facing the radiation.
Eyes wide-open. Fixed into one place.
The wooden end of Mummy's kitchen knife
was sticking out of his neck,
the floor was drenched in his blood,
river of red.
It came true.
Stop it!
I don't want to do this anymore.
The reaction from audiences to the play
has been really overwhelming.
Since we opened it in Manchester, last Summer,
it's been something that's really affected people
and I think one of the key things that affects people
is the power of the two performances at the centre.
The two guys who tell this story
are kind of mesmerising to watch
and that's also why they won an award.
They won a stage award when they were in Edinburgh.
We trail behind our lines.
Hook, lines and sinkers.
We are fishermen!
Ben, we are about to avenge our brothers!
Creating 'The Fishermen' with the two actors
was an amazing process because they were
a lot more than just performers reading a script.
They were theatre makers,
they were co-creators.
You know, the amount of invention they brought in,
the amount of physicality and imagination
that they brought to it was, was amazing.
Because of my age,
the judge deemed me worthy of life imprisonment
or capital punishment
and not worthy of juvenile prison
because I had committed a murder.
"I hereby sentence you, Benjamin Azikiwe Agwu
to eight years confinement, without family or contact,
until you shall reach the societal maturity age of 18.”
As a company who program touring work,
the big thought in my head is always;
"what are the stories and the cultures
that I want to share around the country?"
You know, "who are the artists?"
and "what is not being seen or being heard effectively?"
So, a lot of my, kind of, cultural diet is
from all over the world.