Education
He attended St. Cyprian’s School in Port Harcourt from 1945 to 1949, St Jude’s School, Lagos, from 1951 to 1952 and the Methodist Boys High School in Lagos. In 1959, he travelled to the US to study at Boston University, where he acquired a BA in fine arts.
Career
Returning to Nigeria in the 1960s, Rotimi established the Ori Olokun Acting Company and lectured at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University). Rotimi spent a large portion of the 1990s living in the Caribbean and the United States, where he worked as a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He went back to Ile-Ife in 2000, where he continued to teach till his death at Obafemi Awolowo University. His wife, Hazel, passed away in May 2000, just a few months before Rotimi did.
His later plays include The Gods Are Not to Blame (produced 1968; published 1971), an imaginative verse retelling of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex; Kurunmi and the Prodigal (produced 1969; published as Kurunmi, 1971), written for the second Ife Festival of Arts; Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (produced 1971; published 1974), about the last ruler of the Benin empire; and Holding Talks (1979).
Later pieces, such as If: A Tragedy of the Ruled (1983) and Hopes of the Living Dead (1988), had their world premieres at the University of Port Harcourt and were frequently performed by the drama students at Obafemi Awolowo University. In 1987, the radio play Everyone His/Her Own Problem was aired. In 1991, he released African Dramatic Literature: To Be or to Become?
Rotimi was a rare breed of a patriot who turned down the allure of the West and Europe and stayed at home to make his own contribution to the development of his country. He was one of the best things that could have happened to the literary world—small in stature but a titan in African drama.
As he was being laid to rest in the Amphi Africa Theatre, the audience was pulled to a manuscript of the day’s schedule, and his goal of directing a play with 5000 cast members came true. As the man turned his casket, people entered and left the stage in spectacular fashion.
The two plays, Man Talk, Woman Talk and Tororo, Tororo, Roro, were revised in the second half of his final creative decade; the results, which had not yet been published at the time of his death in 2000, have now been released under the title The Epilogue. were most likely intended to serve as a conclusion to Rotimi’s entire career in both comedy and theatre.
It is humorous and uses what is known as “Nigerian English” (for instance, “Se you get?” and “I invoked God on him“).
The publication will rekindle interest in his satires, which also contain social commentary. With opinions that have influenced theatre behaviour and plays that have shown how drama may influence society’s thinking and strive to alleviate some of the difficulties experienced in daily life, Rotimi will undoubtedly go down in literary history as a role model.
Father Of Nollywood
Throughout his career, he wrote and directed dozens of plays and short stories that poignantly examined Nigeria’s ethnic traditions and history, he was referred to as the father of Nollywood. In the 1960s, he started teaching at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in Nigeria where he founded the Ori Olokun Acting Company and Port Harcourt. Owing, in part, to political conditions in Nigeria, Rotimi spent much of the 1990s living in the Caribbean and the United States, where he taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Personal Life
The marriage of Ola Rotimi and Hazel Mae Gaudreauazel took place in 1965. He lost his wife in May 2000, a few months before Ola Rotimi also died.
Age
Ola Rotimi was born on April 13, 1938 in Sapele, Nigeria in a family of artists.
Net Worth
His net worth is unavailable.
