Hertitude, a play written and directed by Kesiena Obue, has been selected as a star feature at the 2019 Lagos Theatre Festival (LTF) running from March 4 to 10.
A fresh comer into the LTF family, Hertitude will be staged daily from March 8 to 10 in the Kongi’s Harvest Art Gallery of Freedom Park on Broad Street, Lagos.
It is the story of three sisters, Kesiena, Rume and Ogor, who reunite one more time when their single mother suffers a debilitating heart attack.
They meet at a club run by Rume (Maryann Ivy), a pimp who bemoans the emotional deprivation and mental abuse she suffered in the hands of her mother.
The two other sisters are Kesiena (Uche Elumelu), an intelligent woman with a first-class science degree who lives as a kept woman for her high society billionaire husband and Ogor (Martha Ehinome Orhiere), a Nollywood actress with seemingly perfect work and marital life.
Past resentments bubble to the surface as the sisters are forced to deal with their individual demons, the pressures of society’s arbitrary formulations of womanhood, social media fakery, their mother’s ill health and eventual demise.
A series of betrayals eventually disrupts their already dysfunctional lives in a play that also takes the stage with dance, music and sass.
With Hertitude, Obue challenges the permutations of feminine realities in contemporary Nigerian metropolitans like Lagos.
Set in a private night club, it is a metaphor for society’s hypocritical hub of immorality, with each sister struggling to deal with despair, betrayal, loneliness and failure.
With a bachelor’s degree in microbiology, a diploma in film and postgraduate degree in theatre art from the University of Ibadan, Obue is a young Nigerian playwright, director and filmmaker.
