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Olabisi ADIGUN

Assistant Professor
college of Liberal Studies (COLBS)
Theatre Arts Programme

A documentarist, percussionist, performing artist, dramatist, and theatre producer/director. Before joining Bowen University (of the Baptist Convention), Iwo, Osun State, Nigeria as a senior lecturer in October 2019, Adigun was an adjunct lecturer of African Theatre and Performance Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, where he earned his PhD in Drama in 2013. From 2013 to 2015, Adigun was lecturer 1 at the School of Performing Arts at Kwara State University, Malete-Ilorin. Between 2000 and 2003, Adigun was a co-presenter of MONO, RTE’s flagship intercultural television magazine programme. Then, in 2003, he founded Arambe Productions, Ireland’s first and only African theatre company, for which, as its Artistic Director for over 16 years, he produced and directed over 25 productions in Ireland, Nigeria and America. Adigun’s first volume of plays, An Other Playboy, The Butcher Babes and Home, Sweet Home (Three Plays), was published by Universal Books UK in 2018. He is also the co-editor, with Duro Oni, of The Soyinka Impulse: Essays on Wole Soyinka (BookCraft, 2019). Adigun edited the book of essays and tributes on Ola Rotimi, the renowned Nigerian playwright/director (author of The Gods Are Not to Blame), who died suddenly at the age of 62 in 2000. Adigun is currently co-editing, Nigerian Directors: Philosophies Styles, Aesthetics.

Education
  • Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (1987-1990)
  • University College, Dublin, Ireland (1997-1999)
  • Dublin City University, Ireland (2000-2003)
  • Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (2005-2013)
Research

I am currently co-editing with Professor Duro Oni, a retired Professor of Theatre at the University of Lagos, a book, Nigerian Directors: Philosophies, Aesthetics and Ideologies. The book, which has received a substantial research grant from Bowen University, Iwo, will feature 30 living Nigerian stage directors, including myself, and will be released by Cambridge Scholars in early 2024.

Inspired by two abstracts which I submitted and were respectively accepted for the AfTA(African Theatre Association) conference in London and the IFTR (International Federation of Theatre Research) conference in the summer of 2023 – neither of which I was able to attend due to lack of funds – I am conducting a comparative research on the tragic death of Nigerian immigrant David Oluwole in Leeds in the 1950s as depicted by Dipo Agboluaje in his 2009 play, The Hounding of David Oluwale and that of Kenyan immigrant Farah Swaleh Noor in Ireland in the noughties as I have depicted it in my play, The Butcher Babes.

Institutional Service
  • Currently the Head of Theatre Arts Programme
Professional Service
  • Artistic Director of Arambe Productions, Ireland’s first African theatre company. (2003 to 2019)
  • Co-Presenter of MONO (A television magazine programme) RTE’s flagship intercultural programme on RTE in Dublin, Ireland. (2000 to 2003)
  • Freelance performing artist and workshop facilitator with various organizations in the UK and Ireland. (1993 to 2003)
  • Production Executive with Swift Studios, Oba Akran Avenue, Ikeja Lagos, Nigeria. (1991 to 1993)
  • Producer/Presenter of Corpers’ Diary (A radio magazine programme), at the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation, Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos. (1990 to 1991)
Selected Publications
  1. Adigun Bisi (2023). ‘From the Yoruba Travelling Theatre to the Nobel Prize in Literature: Nigerian Theatre in Motion’ in The Palgrave Handbook on Theatre and Migration, edited by Yana Meerzon and S.E Wilmer. Palgrave McMillan; 415-426.
  2. Adigun Bisi (2022). ‘Wait Today: A Light to the Path of An Orphan’s Tomorrow’ in Duro Oni: Art, Design and Life – 70th Birthday Commemorative Studies and Tributes, edited by Sunday Enesi Ododo and Osita C. Ezenwanebe. National Theatre and Alpha Crownes Publishing Ltd.; 718-733. 
  3. Adigun, Bisi (2022). Editor and Introduction. Remembering Ola Rotimi: A Complete Man of the Theatre. Bowen University Press; xiii – xx
  4. Adigun, Bisi (2022).‘On Soyinka’s Relationship with Ola Rotimi: An Interview’ in Remembering Ola Rotimi: A Complete Man of The Theatre, edited by Bisi Adigun. Bowen University Press; 93-96.
  5. Adigun, Bisi (2022). ‘An Other Interview with Dee’ in ‘I Love Craft, I Love the Word’: The Theatre of Deidre Kinahan, edited by Fitzpatrick and Maria Kurdi. Peter Lang Group AG; 251-272.
  6. Adigun, Bisi (2020). ‘“Where are You From?: The Questions of Home, Identity, and Race in Arambe’s Intercultural Theatre’ in Migration: Identity Construction, edited by Olusanjo Daramaola et al. Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University; 30-40.
  7. Adigun, Bisi and Duro Oni (2019). Co-editors and Introduction. The Soyinka Impulse: A Collection of Essays of Wole Soyinka. BookCraft Publications Ltd.; xi-xx.
  8. Adigun, Bisi (2019). ‘A Dance of the Forests: The Progenitor of Soyinka’s Yoruba Tragedy’, in The Soyinka Impulse: A Collection of Essays on Wole Soyinka, edited by Duro Oni and Bisi Adigun. BookCraft Publications Ltd.; 218-238.
  9. Adigun, Bisi (2018). ‘Once Upon A Time in the Life of Arambe: A Personal Reflection’ in Contemporary Irish Theatre Handbook edited by Eric Weitz & Eamon Jordan. Palgrave Macmillan; 547-554.
  10. Adigun, Bisi (2014). ‘To Adapt or Not To Adapt: The Question of Originality in a Nigerian Rewrite of two Irish Classics’ in Essay of Collection of Transnational Irish Literatures, edited by Moira Casey & Amanda Tucker. Cork University Press; 27- 42.
  11. Adigun, Bisi (2011) ‘Re-Writing Synge’s Playboy – Christy’s Metamorphosis, A Hundred Years On’ in Synge and His Influences: Centenary Essays from the Synge Summer School, edited by Patrick Lonergan. Carysfort Press Ireland; 259-268.
  12. Adigun, Bisi (2007). ‘Arambe Productions: An African response to the recent portrayal of the fear gorm in Irish Drama’ in Performing Global Networks, edited by Karen Fricker and Ronit Lentin. Cambridge Scholars Publishing; 52-66.
  13. Adigun, Olabisi (2004). ‘An Irish Joke, a Nigerian Laughter’ in Power of Laughter, edited by Eric Weitz. Carysfort Press Ireland; 76-86.
  14. Adigun Bisi (2022). ‘The Return of the Repressed: Olunde the Dramaturgic Reincarnation of Oluwole Akinwande’ in KIABARA: University of Port Harcourt Journal of the Humanities, Vol.28, No.1, Rainfall, 2022; 5-16.
  15. Adigun, Bisi (2020). ‘Rethinking Interculturalism: Towards an Africanist Intercultural Theory’ in Akete: Journal of Performing Arts and Cultural Studies; Department of Theatre Arts and Music, Lagos State University. Vol. 1 No 1 October 2020; 73-86.
  16. Adigun, Bisi (2014). ‘Pentecostalising Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero in African Theatre, edited by Martin Banham, Femi Osofisan and James Gibbs. James Currey. 2014; 29-31.
  17. Adigun, Bisi (2014). ‘Once Upon A Time and Not So Long’ in Staging New Ireland: New Plays and Practitioner Perspectives, edited by Charlotte McIvor and Matthew Sprangler. Cork University Press. 2014; 201-244.
  18. Adigun, Bisi (2018). An Other Playboy, Home, Sweet Home! & The Butcher Babes (Plays) Universal Books UK. 2018.
  19. Adigun, Bisi (2024). ‘The New Playboy at the Abbey: A Catalyst for Change or A Change of Catalyst?’ In The Playboy of the Western World: A New Version by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle: A Critical Edition by Jason King and Matthew Sprangler. Syracuse University Press.
  20. Adigun, Bisi (2024). ‘On Adaptation: Inter-transnationalism in Arambe Productions’ The Paddies of Parnell Street’ in Voyages in Postcolonial African Theatre Practice to be published by Cambridge Scholars.

Miscellaneous Publications:

  • ‘Could Emir of Sanusi: A Truth in Time have been staged better’. A review online published 14 August 2022. (See https://bookartville.com/could-emir-sanusi-have-been-staged-any-better/)
  • ‘Alhaji: A cracking comedy about serious issues’. A review online on BookArtVille published on 27 March, 2020. (See https://bookartville.com/alhaji-a-cracking-comedy-about-serious-issues/)
  • ‘Has Pamela used lies to convince us of the truth?’ The Irish Times, 2 April 2009. 
  • ‘Why +How = Wow’ Irish Times Weekend Magazine Nov 1, 2008. 
  • ‘Is Ireland a multicultural society?’ Village Magazine. Wednesday, 02 November 2005. 
  • ‘Showing the Light and Dark’, a book review of Geldof in Africa by Bob Geldof in Sunday Tribune; 3, July 2005. 
  • ‘In Living Colours’ Irish Theatre Magazine. Vol. 4, Number 19: Summer 2004.