For those who have lived in and know Warri, the town is equivalent to bedrock of humour, liveliness and communality.

Not so today. “Something has died in Warri. I am from Warri. It is not the Warri we used to know. This is partly a result of the increasingly harsh economy which have led to mass migration of young people from Warri to urban cities in search of greener pastures,” Founder, Rivers of Waters (ROW) Production, Patrick Otoro.

“This play aims to recapture that Warri spirit to remind Nigerians that whatever culture, values we have wherever we come from, must be preserved. It is also to remind us of the reason of the Christmas which goes beyond the season – of the need be there for one another, lend each other a helping hand, in essence regain that sense of communal living we have,” said Otoro.

As is the custom of the production house to host annual and seasonal plays – whose themes either incorporate the season or the plots set around them, ‘Warri Spirit of Christmas’, will revoke what Christmas spent in those good old days in Warri felt like.

“Our choice of Warri is a matter of novelty for our audience. If we had said Christmas in Abuja, most people won’t be interested. But with Warri Spirit of Christmas, people are curious to know if Christmas in different to Christmas in other parts of the country,” said Otoro.

Headlining Francis Duru among others, the stage play set to hold December 23, 2024 at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, will explores themes of love, culture, community ties, consequences for action taken or not taken, loyalty, honesty, responsibility etc. but the overriding theme is Christmas.

For the past several years, Otoro has been among the few theatremakers in Abuja creating and adapting original seasonal plays onstage that speak to Nigeria’s present culture and realities. Nollywood caught on five years ago with films as ‘Naija Christmas’ – starring the now deceased Rachael Oniga, to Akindele’s Christmas season box office film success ‘A Tribe Called Judas’, and her recently released film ‘Everybody Loves Jenifa’, alongside several local Christmas movies on YouTube.

This welcome development comes with some fear, as the tone of a good number of the movies are a caricature of the western flicks they draw from, which is often to the detriment of Nigerian culture and stories.

In adapting western film culture to Nigerian storytelling, Otoro recommends telling the story through the Nigerian cultural perspective.

“Tell them the stories through the stories through the eyes of our culture. tell it from a cultural point of view, relating it to whatever culture of your culture to drive. Stories are global, but they can be told in a manner that the people’s culture and cultural values are promoted – clothing, speech, ideologies etc.

“When we do so, it attracts global curiosity to witness firsthand the culture they saw onscreen.”

While putting up stage plays in Nigeria, and Abuja in particular, has never been easy, Otoro and his team remain determined to preserve Nigerian cultures via the theatre culture, with the aid of a handful of organizations, as the Lona group, Human Rights Radio, Flame TV and LEADERSHIP Newspaper, Brunei and Transcorp Hilton.

“They all play an important part in helping us tell our own stories our own way, as opposed to letting others tell our stories for us.”