NOTIONAL THEATRE
.tv
episode 1
Credits National Pop-Up Theatre, Lagos, curated by Constanze Fischbeck and Daniel Kotter. Executive producer- Marc-Andre Schmachtel Naijroid is a creation of Design And Dream Arts (DADA) Studios for the Goethe Institut’s National Pop-Up Theatre, Lagos project. Story, character / environment design by Ayodele Arigbabu using Daz 3d assets. Additional architectural visualizations sourced from the Festival City design by B+TIC courtesy of the Jadeas Trust Consortium. Photography by Constanze Fischbeck also featured in the comic. Notional Theatre Pop Quiz created by Adenike Arigbabu. National Pop-up Theatre ads courtesy Tolulope Bamgbose/ Noah’s Ark. © 2013. All rights reserved.
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Ladies and gentlemen, the information you are about to receive is classified. You are not to share this with anyone, not even on the pain of death. You have been chosen amongst a select few to be told about the origins of the nation's greatest hero...
Forged in a secret laboratory, hidden away from prying eyes, The N1 suit was created in 1976 as part of a project code named Naijroid by Professor Tanko Waziri, who had retired from teaching at the Federal University of Technology Minna to pursue his private project; - an android exo-suit designed to combat the growing menace of urban crime and for the defence of Nigeria's national interests....
Early tests proved successful, the exo-suit offered unparalleled advantage to the wearer's combat abilities and forensics / intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities.
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Unknown to the world, the N1 suit was built within the bowels of the National Theatre complex in Iganmu, Lagos...
...in preparation for its first public unveiling during the FESTAC 77 expo.
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All seemed set for a successful demonstration at the expo. Professor Waziri concentrated his efforts on surpassing even his own expectations, he wanted to stun the world.
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Three months to the launch of FESTAC, however, Prof. Waziri was found dead lab in his lab under mysterious circumstances. He had died before completing the final programming required for his creation to become fully operational. His blue prints and designs for the suit were also missing.
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Unable to present the suit anymore as the pride and joy and showcase of an African Renaissance in science and technology at FESTAC '77, the Naijroid project was effectively shut down, especially when several attempts to reverse engineer Waziri's work failed.
Waziri's prototype remained entombed indefinitely in the subterranean bowels of the National Theatre where no one knew of its existence...
...apart from some rumours that persisted within security and intelligence circles which of course, could never be substantiated and therefore died away slowly.
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Then in the year 2023...
...all of that was set to change.
Chibuzor Anichebe
Tolani Adeeko
Tolani Adeeko, a young applied computing expert given to adventure and her mechanical engineer- wiz-kid boyfriend- Chibuzor Anichebe had hidden away after watching a stage play at the National Theatre...
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...to have a private moment.
you are the best thing to happen since the invention of sliced bread
you are the sugar in my bread, the butter in my tea
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Stop it!
what are you doing there?
that one na small kiss??! boyfriend ko, boyfriend ni!
oga, na only this small kiss I say make I kiss am o!
but na my boy friend nah!
no worry, you go explain yourself for station. you are under arrest! arrest ke?
rubbish! 11
let's get out of here!
i’m way ahead of you!
’ol it!
stop for what?
una no wan stop abi?
this man is still after us, he should leave us alone nah!
una no get respect for elders abi? 12
I tire for am o!
I think he‘s getting tired
*gasp*stop! you can’t go that way! *gasp*
stop! this is a restricted area!
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phew! it seems he’s finally given up
wow! what is this place?
never knew the building had such a huge basement holy sh*t! looks kinda creepy let’s go see what’s in there
you too dey fear
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feeling brave today abi?
brave? not really curious, maybe
let’s go in er.... tolani...
...do we have to do this?
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holy sh*t!
I hate it when you say that. how can shit be holy? 16
it’s just a figure of speech
now this is interesting
are we actually staring at a robot?
it’s not a robot... it’s more of an exo-suit
now I understand why the old fart didn't want us hanging around 17
Their curiosity piqued, they cleaned up the suit and studied it. Soon enough after days of eluding the building's security staff and stealing into the basement, they had set up a makeshift lab of sorts...
I want to start the reprogramming of the circuitry tomorrow
the auxiliary thrust mechanism still needs to be cleaned out
maybe two days...
how long will that take you?
fine, I will work on something else while you do that 18
I think I now understand the thinking behind prof. waziri’s programming
funny how a machine so old is so advanced even for this age?
I have been thinking about that too.
I wonder why his lab was built into the basement of the national theater
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They soon discovered that the smart professor had built in a wiki into the machine's programming which had a virtual reality version of himself answering technical queries.
This was of great help to them as they soldiered on with the reprogramming ...
...updating most of Prof. Waziri’s codes to a more robust programming language that made the suit even more powerful.
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Prof, are you there? we were wondering how to compensate for the drag in the ai cognition systems
you need to bypass the tertiary nodal structure to achieve that
oops! I should have known that!
yes you should
!
na wah for this dead professor o, see as e dey abuse person 21
Soon, the duo was able to achieve full reprogramming and to get the suit back up to operational status.
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I just picked this up on the police scanners....
...there’s a huge fire at oyingbo market...
for real?
This is serious chibuzor.... the whole place is up in smoke
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we have to do something
the cops have radioed the fire service... hope they get there in time
! we can do better than that, I'm wearing the suit, I'm going out there
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you are doing no such thing!
people may die out there tolani, I need to do something
there is no need to play hero....the fire service can handle it
I’m not playing hero...
...I’m just being human
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besides, this is the best way to test the work we have done so far on the suit you don’t have to do this
don’t worry babe... I’ve got this one
I hope he’ll be fine
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Chibuzor went to the rescue...
...saving lives and property...
...and proving the superior capabilities of Waziri’s Naijroid N1 Suit.
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Excited with the outcome of their first major test run, Chibuzor flew back to their National Theatre base...
...to share the moment with Tolani...
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That went well! you’ve become quite a hero chibuzor
I told you we could do it....er.... tolani....
yes? what’s the matter? Is something wrong?
Have you changed something in the programming? the suit is not letting me out!
I have not changed anything. let me check the console to see what’s going
ask the crazy professor. ask him why his machine is holding me hostage.
the suit has initiated a boot sequence that’s drawing on all the power available to the building. from the readings I can see here, if it continues, it could lead to an explosion. strange! 29
first of all, I resent being called a crazy professor. secondly, your current predicament is caused by a virus called black mamba
ah.... the dead professor speaks
keep quiet chibuzor
I discovered it in my code for the n1 suit and I don't know where it came from. I found a work-around just before my unfortunate if black mamba termination is not stopped, the power overload will cause an explosion that will take down the whole building black mamba creates and locks electronic switches at vital data processing nodes in the suit's internal operating system. If each of the switches could be opened in time, the disaster would be averted and the National Theatre complex would be saved.
oh sh*t!
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this is serious, but I think I know what to do.....I can programme a crowd sourcing protocol that can fool black mamba into opening the switches
can you please hurry up with it? easy for you to say. I'm the one trapped in a tin suit here! is it me or is the crazy professor trying to flirt with my girlfriend?
quiet chibuzor, I need to concentrate on this hmm...you’re one smart woman it does seem t0 be working!
yes, but now, we must get the crowd to help deactivate the switches! we need help!
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IS THIS THE END???
Visit www.notionaltheatre.tv to help Tolani, Chibuzor and Prof. Waziri defeat Black Mamba and save the National Theatre from impending destruction!
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The Notional Theatre contribution to the National Pop-Up Theatre exhibition draws precedence from previous preoccupations with the space and situation of the National Theatre in Iganmu; perhaps starting with a 2-part piece written for The Guardian Life sometime in June 2006:
Rhetoric and polemics on the National Theatre. -Ayodele Arigbabu No one should mess with the National Theatre. That big baddie of a national monument just won't be trifled with. Even ExPresident Aremu who birthed the monster some three decades ago in the orgasmic excitement of post colonial, pan-africanist affectations of that era under the aegis of FESTAC '77 could not reign in the brute during his recent eight years of reincarnation as Nigeria's head of state. Now, President Umaru can't be finding it funny- the sort of static the ongoing concession-ing of this weird building is raising from the most innocuous quarters. Artists are staging protest walks, and the newspapers are filled with rhetoric from different quarters. Handled by Bulgarian firm Technoexpotstroy and designed allegedly in the image of a general's cap or as a replica of some other building of theirs in Bulgaria, depending on which version of the rumour you subscribe to, the National Theatre is a hulk of a building, done in concrete with wide lobbies and corridors made all the more cavernous by the empty state of the building in the past couple of decades. If you take a pee in any of the banks of toilets, you will get an eerie feeling, not just because of the row of empty urinals beside you, but because of that feeling that the last person to use the urinal before you might have been an Ugandan or Cameroonian visitor to FESTAC '77, the lingering smell of urine in the place smells at least thirty years old anyway… somewhat like matured cognac. You'll hurry up with your business and leave the toilet before it transmutes into a time machine and flings you back into the seventies. As you leave, jogging slowly down the huge ramps that lead to the main entrance into the theatre, you look over your shoulder, just in case….but the farther you go from it, the more it looks like an alien space ship that somehow crash landed at the very tip of mainland Lagos. So when later you stop at a news stand to catch your breathe and you see a newspaper headline that heralds an escalating struggle between the Bureau of Public Enterprises (as representatives of the Federal Government) and the community of artists for the soul of the theatre, you wonder what gives.
1. Will it cost an arm under the new National Theatre management to wander through the National Gallery of Art or will school children still be able afford to come in bus loads with their art teachers to gawk at Abayomi Barber busts and Kayode Osinowo paintings at the theatre? 2. Will live theatre performances be rejuvenated by the new 'owners' of the theatre….exclusively for those who can afford bank breaking ticket rates? Will the theatre start to host vibrant Nigerian theatre companies alongside international touring companies? Will tickets to these shows cost as much as the This Day Music Festival tickets…i.e. will one have to be a billionaire to watch a Soyinka play or a rerun of Sikulu at the National Theatre just because some one desperately wants to make some money back? 3. Why are Nigerian movie makers not using the national theatre as background or location for their movies? Imagine a gunfight sequence that begins in a packed cinema hall 2 and spills out onto the open lawns as the combating factions pump several rounds of ammunition at themselves while the innocent erstwhile cinema goers scream and run for safety behind the hedges! Okay, perhaps that's going a bit too far but starring the National Theatre in movies would go a long way in enshrining the edifice as a national monument in our collective psyche and in engendering a heightened sense of ownership in the minds of more Nigerians than a hundred protest marches. Now lets hope whoever 'buys' the theatre won't charge film makers half a million naira to use 'their' edifice as a location, touting the perceived high revenue profile of Nollywood as an excuse to boot. 4. Why haven't the artists – the biggest stake holders in the matter coalesced, formed one or two consortiums with all the necessary technical and financial mechanisms and gone ahead to bid for the theatre? Like the saying goes, put your money (or your bank's money for that matter) where your mouths are mates…buy the darned theatre, and have the biggest party this county has ever seen to celebrate! 5. What alternatives do the artists have to offer to the largely unpopular sale…or concession if you please? Surely all that creativity can be channeled into devising a workable system for effectively administering the edifice, especially since the theatre has been running under the administration of some of the most respected members of the arts community in the past few years…surely all that experience should count for something? 6. And why isn't anybody talking about the Theatre's prominent role in the urban conurbation called Lagos? (Let's save this one for next week shall we, there are like a million things that could be said under this question alone, some have written books on the topic, unfortunately we seem not to be a reading nation…or is that what the aliens would have us believe?) You keep scrawling…the questions are many…you await the answers, you await the turn of events…..hoping the aliens (whoever they may be) will not triumph over mankind…. or the Nigerian cultural space at least.
Visualization by Ayodele Arigbabu
l a n o i t o N s g n i Mus
Photography by Constanze Fischbeck
no one begged you for but which you feel most inclined to put on paper before dark, since you can't guarantee that the aliens are not the same ones that are in control of NEPA…PHCN (or whatever that darned electricity regulating body chooses to be called) and have ensured that Nigeria's development has remained stunted for aeons. Your badly scrawled rhetorical questions go somewhat thus:
So, long after you've managed to make it to the safety of your residence, after double checking to ensure that no alien life forms have followed you home with plans of abducting you and taking you back to the National Theatre – that their space shipin - disguise from which they have been monitoring human existence, especially of the Lagos variant for the past three decades, - you regurgitate all you read about the current conflicts over the theatre at the news stand and find a badly chewed pencil with which to pencil down a few rhetorical questions which
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s l g a n i n s o i u t M o N
Rhethorics and polemics on the National Theatre 2. -Ayodele Arigbabu Apart from a few Lagosians who still reminisce about those days when they watched cowboy films at the National Theatre and a younger generation of a different class who still throng the cinema halls there on Sundays to watch Yoruba films, who else in the country knows this monster building and who cares whether it's pulled down to its foundations to make way for an office tower? Why have the Bureau for Public Enterprises and the community of artists been squabbling over this decrepit, abandoned building that looks like an alien space ship for so long?
Well for one, the Pritzker award winning architect and author Rem Koolhas who did extensive research on emerging mega cities with his team of graduate students from Harvard university at the turn of the millennium (and was perhaps the first to take a concentrated look at the possibilities in the chaos called Lagos) anchored a lot of his research on the National Theatre- quite literally, scouring through the mass of archival material in the belly of the beast and analyzing its role in the development of the city, in tandem with FESTAC town which was built at about the same time. Essentially, the National Theatre was not devised by the Federal Government as just a one-off event venue and cultural center, but was designed to be a bulwark against which a whole urban planning initiative for Lagos could ride. In fact it will not be wrong to state that the National Theatre, in combination with FESTAC Town and other developments that came up at the same time served a major role in opening up and connecting mainland Lagos. Unfortunately, the initiative has not been sustained, hence the current imbroglio which warrants us asking certain questions:
7. Here is an attempt at lateral thinking…how about selling it to a mega church? Churches make money, churches appreciate the value of big buildings that can sit lots of people, churches are fantastic crowd pullers and some churches have blamed all the nation's woes on all the 'juju' that was invoked during the FESTAC '77 at the National Theatre in the name of cultural rejuvenation so they should be interested in forming a consortium to bid for the theatre so that they can embark on some spiritual fumigation which will sort out all our problems by chasing the aliens away once and for all. Imagine a mega church with the National Theatre as its headquarters building! And let nobody scream that it would be a subversion of the nation's diverse cultural heritage; after all church going is now a valid national culture. It's a fantastic thought…why aren't churches falling over themselves trying to buy this building…? Quite frankly, if a church will buy into this idea and put us all out of our miseries by turning the National Theatre into a Mecca of sorts (forgive the pun), it will be a relief. If it's so difficult working out a cultural precinct, then let's make Iganmu a religious precinct…as a nation we seem to have fared better in that regard, what with the number of religious camp sites on the Lagos Ibadan expressway and the number of churches that have developed whole towns around their mega auditoria- case in pointOyedepo's Canaan Land in Ota and Adeboye's Redeemed Camp off the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway. You see, long after FESTAC, some people have successfully tapped into the idea of how large event venues with mass appeal can thrive with effective urban planning and development that incorporates all necessary ancillary services including housing and transportation, albeit at a macro scale. The BPE and the artists should go to the churches for tutorials and spare us all from this macabre dance. That is the design sleuth's final submission on the matter.
1. Has the Lagos State Government capitulated in its claim that the theatre is on land that is vested in the State Government and therefore can not be 'sold' by the Federal Government? 2. Is the Bureau for Public Enterprises taking into consideration the tangible and intangible assets that make up the national theatre which include the expansive land on which it is built, the history behind the edifice, the value of the material it houses, its value as a national monument, and more importantly, its prominent role in the urban design matrix of a mega city like Lagos? 3. Surely the theatre can not be expected to function effectively without the cooperation and integration of the Lagos State Government's urban planning initiatives as regards transportation and other social infrastructure? 4. Are the parcels of land adjoining the National Theatre not meant to be developed into a proper cultural precinct that will include a five star hotel, impressive landscaping, an expansive shopping mall, more cinema halls, and other ancillary services that will support the National Theatre in drawing a constant crowd to Iganmu and will appropriate the adjoining Surulere community the same way the combination of Muson Center, City Mall and (to a lesser extent) National Museum in Onikan have appropriated the neighbouring Ikoyi community into a cultural precinct? 5. Do people really expect the National Theatre to fare any better for as long as it is located in a largely decrepit and desolate part of town that is hardly seen unless while being conveyed across any of the network of bridges that abut it? 6. Can't the Lagos State Government see a brilliant opportunity for a massive urban renewal effort with equal and perhaps better prospects than their efforts in the Lekki zone …albeit an effort driven on a cultural platform, but one which for once can attempt to connect the mainland and the Islands in one big developmental effort with all the accruable revenue? Speculative fliers created in collaboration with Manuel Shvartzberg and Fabian Faltin (Hunter & Gatherer) in 2010 as part of the State Theatre project by Daniel Kotter and Constanze Fischbeck.
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