One book we read as part of Literature in school was ‘The God’s Are Not To Blame’ by Ola Rotimi. In Google’s usual way of celebrating famous men and women, Emmanuel Gladstone Olawale Rotimi, better known as Ola Rotimi, is celebrated on his posthumous 84th birthday today.
Ola Rotimi took the spotlight as a Nigerian playwright, director, actor, choreographer and designer. Rotimi used his forms of art to mirror the richness of Nigeria’s culture, diversity, and local traditions. Ola Rotimi was born in 1938 to a family of artists that acted as his guide on his path in life. His mother who was Ijaw managed a traditional dance group while his father, a Yoruba man ran a community theatre plus directing and producing a play that first debuted with four-year-old Rotimi at the time.
He would later attend Boston University to study theatre and earned an M.F.A. degree at Yale University in playwriting and dramatic literature. During Rotimi’s career, he wrote and directed numerous plays and short stories that looked into Nigeria’s ethnic traditions and history.
Some of his most celebrated and award-winning works include ‘The Gods Are Not to Blame’, which is a 1968 play adapted from the Greek classic Oedipus Rex, ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again’, and ‘Kurunmi’.