Bolanle Austen-Peters: The queen of kulture

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Bolanle Austen-Peters

A scene from Wakaa! performance in London

A scene from Wakaa! performance in London

On the fifth and final day of Wakaa the Musical – the first Nigerian musical play to showcase in the West End – Shaw Theatre, which has been home to the cast and crew from Lagos for the last week, is abuzz with commotion and chatter. The good kind though; the kind which marks the grand finale when everyone, including the producer Bolanle Austen-Peters, is visibly more relaxed in the knowledge that they have established a milestone for Nigerian theatre, and effortlessly so.

“When we first approached them [Shaw Theatre],” recalls Austen-Peters as we sit down for our chat, “They had airs and graces wondering who would even come to see a Nigerian play. Now that they have seen us sell out for the five days, they are the ones asking us if we can bring it back, for ten days next time!” She mimics a pleading British accent before busting into a laugh with a very much Nigerian “See them!” And that’s the charm of Bolanle Austen-Peters, lovingly referred to by her team as B-A-P – she is proudly and unashamedly Nigerian.

It is this Nigerian pride that was behind the decision to bring Wakaa to London as much as her interest in telling truly Nigerian stories. The follow-up to the first Bolanle Austen-Peters production Saro, Wakaa first debuted in Lagos and was very well-received. “Sponsors approached me to take Wakaa to London as they felt it would do very well in the international market as well as for Nigerians in the diaspora.” Indeed, the sponsors seem a dime a dozen with Bank of Industry, Mixta Africa, MTN, Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Arik Airlines, Nigerian Pension Commission all on board making this production in London possible.

“Yes, we have been very fortunate” acknowledges Austen-Peters, “but you must bear in mind that we have been in this industry for about seven years; we have been at the forefront of theatre renaissance in Nigeria as Terra Kulture.” She is clear that she is not in “the business of sponsor-chasing” which was one of the reason she was not keen to seek sponsorship to showcase her first production Saro outside of Nigeria. “I wanted to focus more on having quality content,” she explains, “If that meant it would stay in Nigeria showing only to Nigerians, I was very comfortable with that.”

Quality content is of course what Terra Kulture has come to be known pushing the arts and culture agenda almost single-handedly, as the cultural hub of Lagos. “We’ve had seven long, lonely, hard years,” Austen-Peters sighs. Looking at Terra Kulture now – a buzzing hub of art enthusiasts and culture vultures alongside the perennial Afropolitan hipsters of Lagos, it is hard to imagine those early beginnings fueled by the former lawyer’s dream of creating an artistic hub in Lagos.

“I came back home to Nigeria, having worked at the UN for many years. I couldn’t practise law as my background was in international law which wasn’t relevant in Nigeria. I had the option of going back to law courts and learning how to be a litigator and I totally wasn’t interested.” Recalling her love of theatre and literature in secondary school (International School Ibadan), and realising cultural spaces were lacking in Nigeria, she put together the concept of Terra Kulture with the vision to create an artistic space to celebrate Nigeria’s music, literary arts, food and clothing. “And that’s actually what Terra is; we’ve got the gallery, the restaurant, the theatre and the bookstore.”

“Maybe I am a late developer, but somehow when we now started, I found out I did enjoy directing and that I had very crazy ideas about things,” jokes the now bona fide theater producer whose crazy ideas have led to Bolanle Austen-Peters Productions.

“I hear there were naysayers?” I prod as reliable sources close to the producer have mentioned that in producing such audience and sponsor baits as Saro and Wakaa, Austen-Peters did raise a few eyebrows from industry veterans who were not keen on the upstart who had arrived on the scene to shakes things up. “It is the same people who are now begging to work with her,” said one of her close associates in our chat the week before.

“Typically art spaces don’t last long in Nigeria – they are here today, gone tomorrow because they are stifled of funding, so people did say, when we first started, we were going to be a flash in the pan but the difference was that we had corporate governance in place, we had a proper board so we set up Terra Kulture as a proper company which helped in the longevity. When Terra had succeeded and I went into production, there were so many doubters, so many naysayers, people trying to pull you down, saying a lot of negative things and you do get to hear about it,” Austen-Peters acknowledges.

“You must be resolute if you are sure about what you are doing,” she is quick to add. “We didn’t have experience on our side but I knew that if I stuck to it long enough with the abilities that I knew I had, I knew that we would get somewhere. I tend to ignore people’s nastiness and just focus on the job. And in three years we’ve been able to change the face of theatre in Nigeria by being dogged and ignoring those comments. They really are not relevant,” Austen-Peters concludes, with a slight smirk at once both endearing and flippant.

Truly, Terra Kulture is one of those rare gems at the forefront of the theatre renaissance of the last few years in Nigeria; Austen-Peters thinks it is the changing economic climate and the courage to back more audacious projects that is behind this revival of arts. “With the present economic climate in Nigeria, people are looking at other sources of revenue and income-generating sources other than oil so the arts is becoming more and more viable as an option for revenue generation and employment,” she explains. “We have also raised the bar in terms of quality; and I think corporate institutions are increasingly getting more and more comfortable with the kind of products that we are churning out.

It is an egg and chicken kind of scenario: we need the funding to do good quality work so if you don’t have the funding, even if you have the ideas, you cannot possibly produce good quality work so we’ve been fortunate that somehow we’ve been able to get a sort of balance in that area.”

Funding being one of the biggest, there are of course a multitude of other challenges still plaguing the Nigerian arts scene. Infrastructure is one of the most crucial, in Austen-Peters’s opinion. “You need theatres to be able to perform; there are very few spaces, again that’s where we are lucky because we have a space at Terra Culture where we can rehearse, so when you don’t have rehearsal space it is almost impossible for you to put together a good show because you need months and weeks of rehearsals,” she explains, “The other challenge is a lack of skilled practitioners. You get better in any trade by practising. When they you don’t have the venues to rehearse, you have very few good quality dancers, even actors, so we are beginning to have an ensemble of our own for Terra Kulture now because we have been working together for 3-4 years as a group so it is easier for us to set the standards amongst our group.”

Terra Kulture is all about setting the bar and raising it, it seems, as there is ongoing work to launch the world-class auditorium – “one of the first private owned theatre spaces in Nigeria” Austen-Peters quickly adds – later this year in the place of the old theatre space. “The intention is to open it up to theatre practitioners and hope that through the venue, we will change the game. This is a positive step in the right direction because honestly the kind of show we can have here at the Shaw Theatre is possible because we have a venue that offers proper acoustics and lighting and a space we could work in. This is what we are aiming to do with our new space at Terra Kulture.”

While Austen-Peters is set to wrap up Wakaa the Musical in London and unveil the new auditorium in Lagos, there is of course the small matter of the international premiere of 93 Days, her first cinematic production – based on the true story of the men and women who risked their lives fighting to eradicate the deadly Ebola virus in Nigeria. With invitations already in place to Toronto Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival, premieres in Toronto and Lagos set for September, 93 Days is already off to a flying start.

“We wanted to tell the story of how Ebola was conquered by the Nigerian government and that was for us the important message,” says Austen-Peters. She acknowledges the role of the sponsoring foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Ty Danjuma Foundation in achieving a particular standard with 93 Days. “We didn’t cut corners. We were able to bring in experts from the USA and South Africa to look after the technical aspect but we also had phenomenal Nigerian actors. My criteria for casting is clear: talent and the ability to deliver.” She also identifies costuming as critical to the success of a production, whether on film or on stage; and for 93 Days, she was the one in charge of the costumes.

This is all well and good, but should theatre fans be worried that this film signals a departure from stage for BAP? “I love theatre,” she responds, “Theatre is so much harder than film but it is also organic and in theatre you get true talent – what you deliver at that moment in time has to be believable. Movies I will do, if it has message. For me, it’s not about churning out; if I don’t do a movie for the next five years, I am okay. The story of Ebola was so compelling that I had to do it. I will continue to do theatre, maybe one production every 18 months; movies, it’s based on the availability of good scripts.”

As for Wakaa which has completed its wakaa down the West End and its predecessor Saro, there are plans to showcase both productions in Lagos later this year, with a view to bringing Saro to London or New York. “London!” I chip in pleading.

“I know!” concurs Austen-Peters, “Everybody says that! Some people prefer Saro to Wakaa because it is fun all the way, a no –brainer, it’s a story of four boys – the typical rag-to-riches story of the average migrant into Lagos. Wakaa is a political story – it is highly satirical. It is very hard to put political commentary into a humorous form and still get the message across, so for me mentally Wakaa was more challenging than Saro, therefore I am more in love with Wakaa. Also because Wakaa delivers such a strong message about the get-rich-quick syndrome, about what our politicians are doing, about creating a greater country. That for me resonates more, especially being packaged so beautifully but they are both my productions. So long as the conversation is going on I am excited.”