Author: Esiaba Irobi
Genre: Play/Tragedy
Original Publication: 1989
Country: Nigeria
The hanging yard of a prison in Port Harcourt in Izon State ushers in the play. Yekini, the prison hangman, defies all threats and persuasion maintaining his ground not to hang seven young men condemned to death. His refusal to hang them was prompted by the fact that he has been battling with his conscience over his job as a hangman, and most importantly, the feeling
within him that those young men do not deserve to die. His attempt to make the Superintendent give details of the crime and all the circumstances surrounding the crime of those young men, leads to a flash back.
The flash back takes five phases of the play. Within these phases, action shows the condemned youths as graduates with good grades who are forced to take to violence by
unemployment, poverty, injustice and inhumane attitudes of the leaders. They confront one chief Erekosima on his chieftaincy coronation day. Chief Erekosima had stolen and embezzled money paid as compensation to the people of Izon State for the consequences or damages done by the oil spillage. Angered by the fact that no citizen of the State no matter how wretched was given any money from the compensation, they hanged Chief Erekosima. It is as a result of this that they are condemned to death.
In the last phase, the play returns to the prison yard. Yekini maintains his stand not to hang the young men arguing that their fight was just. He (Yekini) instead resigns his job and promises to go back to his fishing profession. The Superintendent who is bent on making sure that the men are hanged, sends for Mr. Ekpenyong (the hangman in the female section of the Prisons) to come and carry out the hanging.
Hangmen also Die is a drama which puts the Niger Delta and the Nigerian nation to very severe evaluation. From politics to economy, from ideology to the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed masses, the play remains clear in its statement of social criticism and social reconstruction.It becomes clear that the dialectical romance between Drama and society establishes the play text as a
crossing bridge of social criticism.
In this exploration of the text as testament of social criticism, the Niger Delta region in particular and the Nigerian nation in general are effectively presented and reflected upon by the playwright as a tragic society. Social Darwinism, the travails and tragedy of a society, the violent political culture of attacking, the negative indoctrination and mobilisation of educated youths to embark on suicide squad as well as the sad tale of the hopeless life of the younger generation of Nigerians are vividly captured and vehemently indicted in the playwright's court of justice.
In Hangmen also Die Esiaba Irobi further graphically portrays the tragedy of the individual, the sad experience of being ruled, controlled and manipulated by the very enemies of the masses, the collective cruel fate of youths frustrated and abandoned by the awesome force of capitalism and the
participation of women in the transformation agenda of a society in need of transition.
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Brief Bio
Esiaba Irobi is a Nigerian of Igbo extraction. He hails from Osisioma in Ngwa Local Government Area of Abia State. The furling of Nigerian independence flag on October 1, 1960 incidentally became a symbol of his birth cry. He had his primary and secondary School Education in his home state. His Bachelor‟s Degree and Masters Degree were obtained from University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he also lectured briefly.
He also studied in Sheffield University and Leeds University. He had his Masters Degree in both comparative literature and film/theatre, and a PhD in Theatre Studies. He has taught at New York University (1997-2000), Towson University (2000-2002) and, presently, Ohio University, Athens,
USA, where he is an Associate Professor of International Theatre/Cinema.
He has directed plays in Nigeria, Europe, America and other parts of the world. He has won a good number of awards which include the BBC Arts and African 1988 Poetry Award, the Cemetery Road Award, 1992 and the World Drama Trust Award. In his quest and drudgery to underscore the feat of deification in African dramaturgy, and the World Theatre at large, Irobi had added to his credit the writing of the following ten plays: Nwokedi, The other side of the Mask, Am I too Loud?, The Fronded Circle, Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, A Tent To Pass The Night, Why The
Vulture’s Head is Naked, What Song Do Mosquitoes Sing?, Hangmen Also Die and Foreplay. As a poet, he wrote the inflorescence and Hand grenades and Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin. His recent books include: African Festival and Ritual Theatre: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1492 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Before They Danced in Chains: Performance Theories of Africa and the African Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2008).
Irobi belongs to the third generation Nigerian writers, and the suffocating impact of high level moral decadence, political instability and the seemingly endless victimization and dehumanization in the society coupled with the need to arrest the situation, perhaps inspires the adoption of revolutionary aesthetics in his works.
Source: http://www.unn.edu.ng
https://www.ajol.info
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