Dead Wood

The narrating thread in this contemporary African drama connects the past to the present. It shows how memory can yield something about life in ways that touch us all, either as oppressors or the oppressed.

Dead Wood, the consciousness of a wounded generation, is a sober portrait of the abiding problems of our time, a reminder of what to follow and what to avoid, especially mistreating others as dead wood. It is our leaders' responsibility to enhance human dignity and not take it away.

The play is a cumulative response to the failed Nigerian state, which is riddled with endless malfeasance and stealing, and by extension, to the unjust world as a whole. The text renews a sense of contemporary African drama in a deeply moving way.

Joshua Agbo teaches at Benue State University in Nigeria. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in African exile literature at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.