Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Troupe of Nigeria (NTN), Martin Adaji, has called on corporate Nigeria to partner in this year’s edition of Children Creative Station Workshop (CCSW).
Last year’s participants rehearsing atilogwu dance
The fourth edition of the annual project will begin on August 1 and end with a command performance on August 31, according to the coordinator of the project and director in charge of drama at the NTN, Ms Josephine Igberaese.
Adaji, who said the project has been expanded to include voice training and training for instrumentalist, also disclosed plans to partner with a number of organisations, especially those in the private sector, for the success of the project.
“Government has been heavily subsidising the cost of running the workshop, but it is becoming difficult for us to run that workshop and also take on other projects of the troupe.
“We feel that the private sector should come in, as in the last two editions, to support us meaningfully. So our marketing team is out to solicit support in the area of sponsoring children to be part of the workshop and for logistics support. So much is involved in training them. We need materials, we need to pay facilitators and take care of their welfare,” the artistic director said, even as he expressed satisfaction with the response from the private sector.
“We are excited at the development and the partnerships. This is what we expect in the collaboration with corporate Nigeria. I have no doubt that these partnerships will really go a long way in ensuring that we sustain the initiative and other programmes of the National Troupe,” he said.
The NTN hosts the CCSW during the long vacation for school children between the ages of five and 17, primarily to expose participants to general theatre practice and appreciation of creative arts.
She further said that at the end of the creative workshop exercise, the participants would be expected to put up a performance that will detail all they have learnt during the one-month training period.
“What we are doing is in line with one of our objectives, which is to encourage the development of children’s theatre. But beyond that, we have used the project successfully over the last three years to groom future theatre practitioners who may want to take up a career in the theatre and allied genre like Nigeria’s Nollywood,” she said.
Igberaese explained that one of the other objectives behind the exercise is to engage the children creatively during the long holidays.
She also said the command performance, which comes at the end of the exercise, is usually staged before parents of the participants, their teachers and invited guests, so that they can appreciate the amount of work that has gone into developing the creative talents of the children.
“We have earned commendation in the previous special command performances we have held and, like I said, it is usually a product of the one-month intensive training. It is usually an opportunity for the children to display their skills in the area of acting, dancing, singing, drumming and even acrobatic displays, depending on the talent they manifest. These performances draw applause from the audience,” she stated.