By Henry Akubuiro
Cheta Igbokwe’s Homecoming is set for release by Noirledge Publishing on Friday, December, 20, 2022, informed the publisher in a statement.
Igbokwe’s Homecoming chronicles the life of Nwakibe, a retired head teacher and catechist, who embarks on a mission to find his missing son. It also follows Johnson, a writer, in search of a story for his new book. It is a story of quest, love, discovery, and how what one finds in life is capable of slipping through one’s hands.
The play was first performed at The Arts Theatre of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka on May 6, 7 and 8, 2021, at 7 pm daily. It was directed by Ugochukwu Ugwu, produced by Leo Ugwuanyi and set-designed by Richard Umezinwa. Another performance took place on August 7, 2021, at the Enugu Sport Club, Enugu, in collaboration with the Enugu State Council for Arts and Culture. The play performance was an object of study by the African Drama students of the Department of English, University of Nigeria, in the 2020/2021 academic year and received critical acceptance by the audience and enjoyed great reviews from online and print magazines.
Homecoming was awarded the winner of the 2021 ANA Prize for Drama, on November 6, 2021, at the 40th ANA Convention which was held at Mamman Vatsa Writers’ Village, Abuja, Nigeria.
The play has been described by the Nuresdef Laureate and Theatre Fellow, Asso. Prof Greg Mbajiorgu, as “a play written with a deep sense of the stage.” For Leo Anele Ejesu, a lecturer of the Department of English, UNN, Homecoming “plunges you afresh into a meditation on tragedy.” The curator of the Selfies and Signature, Darlington Chibueze Anuonye, describes the play as “a humane diagnosis of the devastating trauma of loss.” For the writer and critic, Nneoma Onwuegbuchi, Homecoming “casts a clinical gaze on the narrow margins of freedom afforded to humanity by powers that are more than man. Comical, yet incisive, the play weaves a fantastic tapestry that resonates with the Euripidean tradition.”
Also, writer and editor, Chimezie Chika, describes Igbokwe as “a dramatist that combines the allegory and trenchant politics of Soyinka’s satires and the social awareness of Shaw.” For Ngiga Review, “Cheta Igbokwe writes from a director’s chair—a place of expertise and precision.”
Igbokwe is currently an MFA playwriting candidate at the University of Iowa, United States. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Literary Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he also edited the University of Nigeria’s students’ journal, The Muse, Number 48 – a journal founded by Chinua Achebe in 1963. He is a 2019 alumnus of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop. He wrote the screenplay of Island of Happiness —a film which has been described by the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, as “a magnificent work of art.”