Dramaturg, WETIN DEY

Wetin Dey went live on Nigerian television on Easter Sunday 2007. As dramaturg for this 53 part drama series aimed at addressing an emerging crisis of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, I devised the scenario and worked with a team of 20 writers and producers to set up a framework of stories and characters, establishing the dramaturgical principles for the drama’s continuing development.

Embedded in each of the half-hour episodes, separation and sacrifice were the key principles I derived from primary research conducted by the BBC World Service Trust into Nigerian responses to the epidemic and from the context of a multi-faith and profoundly religious society. Separation was used to identify and contrast characters in a range of crisis situations – including but not limited to HIV/AIDS – while sacrifice was used to focus potential responses and carry through a principle of change, or ‘courage’, in the development of character.

Eleja, marketplace scene from Wetin Dey BBC World Service Trust 2007

The aim was to stimulate critical awareness of the choices available to Nigerians in creating television drama and in responding to the health crisis. Knowledge of and sensitivity to a range of Nigerian conceptions of moral character and psychological development allowed me to negotiate existing preoccupations with judgment among both writers and audiences. Judgment was juxtaposed with alternative responses to sickness and disability – such as the healing and compassion encoded in the traditional Yoruba narrative of Obatala’s children: the outcast is the child of God.

Contrasting stories, each with a different ethos brought by individual writers, were combined to increasingly contest the space for possible viewer responses to the evolving characters, situations and dilemmas in a diverse community confronting a still silent HIV/AIDS crisis.

Wetin Dey, unique in Nigeria for its high quality production values,emerged as a long-running, multi-layered drama that both fractured and challenged audience expectations on a formal, narrative level and delivered in its play of competing moral and emotional responses.

Contributing to the development of new Nigerian writing for performance, Wetin Dey provided a rich platform for practice-led research into the process of critical dialogue, skills exchange and capacity building between its African-British and Nigerian participants. It allowed me to cross-reference skills and knowledge as both a British and Nigerian practitioner across both industries and cultural contexts, and to disseminate that learning, together with the possibilities for innovation, clearly and effectively.

See the BBC World Service Trust.

Gabriel Gbadamosi
June 2007