Presented by Folake Onayemi (University of Ibadan)

Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan known as Femi Osofisan or F. O. is a foremost Nigerian playwright, poet and critic of Yoruba descent, who has adopted and re-presented three ancient Greek plays against the backdrop of Yoruba cultural setting. His Tegonni (An African Antigone) (1994) is an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone (441BC) while his Women of Owu (2003) is an adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women or Women of Troy (415BC). Osofisan’s third adaptation of ancient Greek play is Medaye a re-reading for the African stage of Euripides’ Medea. The play is yet out of print but it has undergone four public dramatized readings; the last on the 16th of June 2021.
This paper is a thematic evaluation of Osofisan’s adaptative art and an inter-textual analysis against the original plays. In the case of the Antigone and Tegonni, the paper explores the theme of women and courage from both ancient Greece and African/ Yoruba viewpoints. In the Women of Troy and Women of Owu the focus is on the employment of the chorus and songs by both playwrights in executing a particularly difficult drama of intense horror and communal grief. The comments on Medaye are snippets as the work is not yet out of print.
The paper concludes that Yoruba playwrights have identified and utilized different entry points in the adaptations of Greek plays and that the congruent cultural nuances of ancient Greece and traditional African/Yoruba societies have enhanced the successes of these adaptations.