Graham-Douglas supports girl-child with the wait

Although this year’s Lagos Theatre festival has come and gone, it’s echo will linger for a long, as it left indelible prints on Nigeria’s theatre turf. One of the productions was The Wait, which talented Bikiya Graham-Douglas performed excellently to a grateful audience.

Wait tells the story of a young, village girl whose parents decide to stop her education because her head teacher reports her to her father for behaving rudely. This riles her father who decides to marry her, as they had married off her elder sister. But the idea mortifies her because she believes in education as the vehicle that will make her dreams soar. Her desire to further her education is unstoppable.

To achieve her aim, she escapes from her father’s house to meet her elder sister in the city. She explains her plight and begs her sister for accommodation. She promises to take care of her nieces as house help, but enjoins her sister and her husband to send her to school. Through this is singular privilege, the young girl rises to the peak of her abilities; she becomes the great woman playing key roles in politics, business, academia, government and many more.

The Wait is the story of today’s woman and her tortuous steps to the future.
Graham-Douglas’ interpretation is sublime as she gives it her all to bring out that peculiar story of the African girl-child at the receiving end of society’s sexiest, negative stereotypes against women.