Jos International Festival of Theatre will open on Wednesday, October 7, 2026 at the premises of Alliance Francaise, in Jos, Plateau State with the premiere performance of Sogie Efe Guobadia’s “Woven Veil”.
This is the 17th edition of the festival and the play is having its world premiere.
The other plays include Denja Abdullahi’s Chants In A Cemetary, Jerry Alagbaoso’s The Widow’s Choice and finally ending with Federico Garcia Lorca’s The Shoemaker’s Wonderful Wife.
Interestingly, all the plays with the exception of Denja Abdullahi’s are all family-based dramas which perhaps signifies that the Jos theatre outfit is passing a subtle message across about the importance of the family in our nation’s fabric.
According to Dr. Patrick-Jude Oteh, who leads the Jos Repertory Theatre, the 2026 festival was coming late as the earlier scheduled date of May 2026 was scuttled by the Palm Sunday killings in Angwan Rukuba with the attendant curfew, reprisal killings and general insecurity in the city. He said the killings occurred in an area that is barely a few minutes’ drive to the premises of the Jos based theatre outfit hence it was difficult assessing the office and rehearsal space and JRT had to re-schedule the festival to October.
He notes that the city is resilient and attempts are on-going to re-build and recreate the spirit of community and cohesion.
“Woven Veil” explores faith in its raw form with the attendant ambitions and personal family battles that go on inside homes and families of men and women of the garb. These are battles that are not shared on the altar or on the pulpit but must be fought with all attendant strength making these men and women to be truly human at the end of the day away from the prying eyes of their congregants.
However, some of them can be accused of being the architects of their own misfortunes as they trade away their family’s peace and quiet to chase the promises of a life beyond and before they realise it, even the children have grown and no longer need their guidance. All said and done and, in the play’s final analysis, all does not bode well for the family and its fragile threads.
In Chants In A Cemetery, it is imperative that we are all destined to go the way of all the earth. In the words of one of the characters in the play – he cannot make a distinction between where a poor man was buried or where a rich man was buried. At the end all they share is their own six feet of equal space. The ANA nominated and award winning play by the former ANA National President is full of wisdom beyond the years of the playwright. The play captures the existentialist portion of each human being irrespective of wealth, status, political leaning and religious affiliation. Two gravediggers, one an old man and the other his young apprentice explore the vicissitudes of life surrounded by mounds of burial plots where it has become difficult to know who is who and where this or that is buried and at the end of the day, even the old man gravedigger also dies while waiting for the younger apprentice to report for work. The surreal play, in the absurdist genre of the theatre, takes us on a ride into the philosophical trends and arguments about life and its vicissitudes.
Jerry Alagbaoso returns to the festival after the spectacular success of his play, Tony Wants To Marry which had made its debut in the festival during the 12th Jos Festival of Theatre 2019. He returns with A Widow’s Choice. A woman with two children loses her husband. The tradition says she must marry her late husband’s brother. But the late husband’s uncle is also interested in her. The challenge now is that the widow is not interested in any of the choices laid before her. She simply wants to be able to take care of her two children and give them a clear path in life. Faced with all these dilemmas, her nagging question is – what does she do with all the distractions set before her? She eventually weathers the storm as her suitors, seeing her determination to be allowed to chart her own course, agree to let her be. Jerry Alagbaoso known to introduce humor and imagery in his plays is set to allow the audience to discuss late into the night after watching the choices set before the hapless widow.
The endline play in the festival is Federico Garcia Lorca’s The Shoemaker’s Wonderful Wife. What happens when a 53 year old man decides to marry a young girl who is 18 years old? First, the village gossips believe that the marriage will not last and they set out to ensure that this happens but deep within the marriage itself, the husband and wife are at each other’s throat until the Shoemaker deciding that he has had enough runs away and leaves his young wife at the mercy of the village including the Mayor who also comes to woo to young wife. With these, the young wife who had opened an inn to support herself, decides that she was better off with her old husband and she wishes he would return. The old man returns but in disguise because he wants to test the wife’s loyalty. She passes all the tests he sets and they reunite as husband and wife but soon after they start their old quarrelling ways and life goes on.
The Jos 2026 festival was supported by the Embassy of Spain, Nigeria, the Spanish International Aid Agency AECID and the Jos theatre outfit which premiered the festival in 2004. Jos Repertory Theatre currently in its 26th year is showcasing its staying power even in the midst of economic and societal difficulties coupled with environmental challenges which according to Oteh, though they are daunting, but we are not exempt from the happenings in our country. He enthuses that hopefully, 2027 will be a better and more accommodating year.
- Featured image: A JRT performance of August Wilson’s Fences