19th-century playwright Oscar Wilde once said: “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms; the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it means to be a human being”. Though we are not here to talk about Wilde, his words carry an important perspective on theatre, raising an important question: If theatre is as great as Wilde says it is, why do actors transition from theatre acting to screen acting? Transitions are not new in the acting field, After all, widely renowned actors like Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch and Emily Blunt began their careers as stage actors. This essay however focuses specifically on the stage-to-screen acting bridge in Nigeria, with comments from Goodness Emmanuel, Moshood Fattah, Ijeoma Grace Agu, Abiola Segun Williams, Anthonieta Kalunta, Austine Onuoha, and Tosin Adeyemi.
Long before stories could be viewed on screens in Nigeria, stage performances and travelling troupes were the go-to means of entertainment. Contemporary forerunners like the Alarinjo theatre (which inspired Hubert Ogunde’s African Music Research Party) and Moses Olaiya’s Alawada theatre dramatised the Nigerian realities to a thrilled audience. All-round storytellers such as Ogunde and Olaiya, who later transitioned to screen acting, played roles in the foundation for what we know today as the Nigerian film industry.
Several other Nigerian film industry actors have, like Ogunde and Olaiya, tasted both worlds: theatre and film. These actors, through their performances, either on stage or behind the lens of a camera, embody the lives and experiences of the characters they portray. This essay also delves into this stage-to-screen transition, exploring the challenges faced and the skills honed by our actors today while searching for answers to the questions posed earlier.
Though Nigerian theatre has slowly declined and viewers now enjoy film/television as storytelling forms, some of these actors still believe in the stage. However, few of these actors have seen the need to make the stage-to-screen transition to progress in their careers. Anthonieta Kalunta, the star of The Milkmaid, reiterates this claim in a statement, “In the industry I found myself, screen acting was an important transition if I wanted to stay an actor”. Aside from being driven by the need to stay relevant, she adds, “the accessibility and reach of screen projects played a significant role in my decision. Screen acting allows you to connect with a global audience and share stories that resonate with people from all walks of life,” a sentiment shared by Austine Onuoha (known as Odejimi in Africa Magic’s Itura), who transitioned to expand his craft.
In this transition journey, certain routes require patience to tread. A good example is the road taken by Moshood Fattah, popular for his role as Michael in the Netflix original Far From Home. In an interview with WKMUp earlier this year, he revealed that during his undergraduate Performing Arts program at the University of Ilorin, he was on a long ride of also taking filmmaking courses. Here is one who built his screen acting career alongside his theatre career. “Even as I built my career in professional theatre, I took film acting courses in Del-York, which allowed me to understand my instrument as a film actor”. During his time there, he also went on to collaborate on short film projects, which helped him train his screen acting muscles.
Fattah is not the only actor in the boat of juggling both worlds of stage and screen. Abiola Segun Williams, known for her role as Titi in the long-running soap opera Tinsel, says, “I am still a stage actor. There was no typical kind of transition process, or a motivation to move to the other side. It [stage acting] is still part of my professional life.” Ijeoma Grace Agu, Taxi Driver and Swallow star, states that she still acts for both worlds and makes herself available wherever work calls. On the extreme end of the spectrum though, are actors like Tosin Adeyemi (Teni on Africa Magic’s Refuge) who always knew they wanted to make the full transition.
Unlike these actors, others shuffle between stage and screen acting because an opportunity presented itself—and so did they. One of such is Goodness Emmanuel, who played Tiwa, the love interest of the rivalling friends in The Griot. She was in the University of Ibadan when she saw an audition notice for a TV series, and was selected after travelling from Ibadan to Lagos for the audition. “I loved acting and this was another opportunity to do that; the only difference was that it was via another medium”, the actress reveals.
An actor’s performance can surely captivate its audience, but we rarely speak about how the performance casts a spell on the actors themselves. Perhaps it is for this reason—this beguilement— that actors find it difficult to bid farewell to stage acting completely. If you are still in doubt, Fattah’s experience might convince you. The thespian revealed that during the principal photography for Far From Home, he had to out to Dubai for a stage performance, adding that he was also on stage performing a musical on the same weekend Far From Home and Battle on Buka Street were released. Evidently, Fattah, like others entranced by the allure of the stage, has been compelled to balance his commitments in both worlds. As a result, he says it would be inappropriate to refer to it as a “transition”.
“Transition” or not, one thing holds: both worlds have their differences. The most apparent distinction is the medium used for the performances: Stage versus the camera (or screen). The medium is furthermore characterised by its audience: the stage does not allow the audience to see the smallest details, while the camera does. With a camera (thanks to close-ups), the audience can see the standing hair of a frightened character or the tiny teardrops of a grieving person. In Emmanuel’s words, “The camera sees everything”. The audience in a play theatre does not get to experience this. As a result, the actor on a stage has to send down a heavy downpour where a screen actor simply needs to drizzle, so to speak. Needless to say, a stage actor always has to exaggerate their actions to make up for the gap between them and their audience. Emmanuel succinctly puts it: “I need to do more on stage so that the last person in the auditorium can see and feel me.”
Kalunta further shares that when she started acting for the camera, she had to learn to convey emotions and subtle details without relying on the obvious grand gestures and vocal projection she learned from the stage. Segun-Williams’ experience also attests to this: “When I looked back at my performance for the screen the first time, it was like my eyes were popping out because my expressions were quite [exaggerated].”
Grace Agu sheds light on other characteristics that differentiate stage from screen acting aside from audience and performance. “ Luckily, in film, you can cut and redo the scene, but with stage, the show must go on—so prep is heavy. You just can’t circumvent it,” she admits. The stage is not kind to its actors: once a mistake is made during a performance, the audience cannot unsee it. This irrevocable nature of stage performances plays a huge role in the resources and time that go into the rehearsals. This is usually not the case in acting for the camera.
As a matter of fact, Goodness Emmanuel voices that her first “culture shock” in her “transition” was the lack of rehearsals for screen performances. The actress states, “I came from a place where we rehearsed so much, and I [suddenly] came into this space where even voice actors sometimes don’t have their lines memorized before getting on set. It was quite strange.”
Irrefutably, the lack of proper rehearsals, that the economy of the industry permits, is evident in the final products in Nollywood today. This dearth is largely due to, according to Grace Agu, the nearly non-existent funds required to provide the much-needed time and due process that is enjoyed in stage acting. This has clearly taught stage actors the importance of discipline and process— two attributes that form the foundation for a successful rehearsal. As Tosin Adeyemi puts it, “Imagine coming into the film industry and not having the discipline to navigate through. That would be a disaster”. Segun-Williams sheds more light on this: “For a play, it takes quite a while for rehearsals to metamorphose into production. In that time, while you are working with other actors, you will develop a bond.” She adds, “When you spend time with a fellow actor to rehearse, you figure out each other. Acting is reacting. For stage plays, we do a lot of exercises that will help with line retention. It helps you mentally and emotionally to create a bond, so there is a chemistry it adds to the actors on stage.”
Thus, the rehearsals which heavily characterise stage acting not only benefit the audience by giving realistic performances; but also benefit the actors by improving their memory muscles. Segun-Williams strongly attests to the advantage of the latter” when she says some lines stay with a stage actor till they die. Sadly, both benefits are rare in Nollywood’s screen acting world.
Though rehearsals are very tasking, they seem not to be as challenging as other difficulties faced in the transition journey of these actors. As expected, change comes with its challenges. So, it is no surprise that an experienced stage actor like Emmanuel says she was intimidated by the camera. “It felt like something was intruding my space, and it took some getting used to”. She adds that she struggled with the distractions on set. People (sound, costume, and makeup crew) were constantly talking or touching her while she was trying to stay in character and get ready for her scene.
As expected, other actors have faced unique challenges in this new world. Grace Agu, however, faced a slightly different kind of challenge: “With film, I had to learn to sit through makeup. I generally don’t like makeup. However, the work requires it because of the specific character requirements and lights used during filming. So, even for auditions, you have to have makeup on. This was a struggle for me initially, but I had to suck it up and get with the program”. Kalunta, on the other hand, struggled with maintaining the appropriate eye level when her scene partner exited the set.
Despite these transitioning challenges, an actor must adapt to stay relevant. In Kalunta’s case, she had to learn discipline in a new way. “ It took a lot of discipline not to let my eyes roam. I just had to learn that”, she explains. The actress, who names Kehinde Bankole’s titular Sista performance as memorable, also says she had to do lots of self-taping and learnt to hit her marks, adjust to multiple takes and understand the camera’s presence. Her counterparts such as Grace Agu, also did the self-tapes, in addition to studying many scenes and texts.
The maxim “Old habits die hard” is evident even in the stage-to-screen transition stories of these actors. Though the influence of their stage acting background has made adapting to the new world a tad challenging, we must not overlook the virtues it has instilled into these thespians. These qualities have given them strength even in their screen acting careers. For Kalunta, the virtues learnt from stage acting take the form of character development and emotional authenticity in performance. Emmanuel agrees with this, adding that the background helps with a more intentional study and layered assimilation for film scripts. Onuoha’s has helped by improving his line delivery, as well as his script and character analysis.
The virtues transferred from the old world to the new have also helped these actors in auditioning for and securing screen roles. “The thing about the stage is that it gives you confidence”, Segun-Williams tells us, and this confidence makes stage actors stand out even during auditions for screen roles. This confidence is what makes Grace Agu see auditions as “acting exercises”. Some actors, however, believe a role can be secured irrespective of one’s acting background. One of them is Adeyemi, who says, “Audition processes are mostly similar. If you can become a character-–suspend the disbelief of your audience, that they feel as though it is real—then, you are an actor”.
As Adeyemi has rightly said, acting cannot be separated from how the audience feels about the performance. After all, acting is done essentially for an audience. What use, then, are these advantages of the stage’s influence—better auditioning, line retention, character and script analysis—if the performance does not impact the audience? Needless to say, an audience’s response speaks volumes about a performance.
The reaction of the audience of theatre is, however, different from that of a film’s audience. When I sit as a member of the audience in a theater, I can praise or boo a performance right there and then to the hearing of the actors. However, the actor in a film can’t hear me express my displeasure in a performance from my living room (barring social media, of course). Simply put, stage actors receive reactions in real time while screen actors do not. Emmanuel says there’s an “instant reaction to the [stage] art, and there’s nothing you can do about it. They [the audience] either like it or they don’t”.
If you’re wondering which audience response these actors prefer, take your cue from Segun-Williams, who posits that a live audience by far activates a play more than a screen audience. The actress, who got her Theatre arts degree from Obafemi Awolowo University, further explains: “A stage play grows with each day because the more you get audience participation, the more you realise some of the hidden things in those lines”.
Every stage performance, therefore, has something hidden in them. This veiled potency, as mentioned earlier, inspires and influences the Nollywood actors themselves. With this in mind, Wilde’s quote in the opening paragraph is thus better understood. In sharing humanness with others through the stage, Nollywood stage-to-screen actors have themselves become well-rounded humans. So, to answer the question, why are these actors transitioning? I would say it is to communicate this humanness on a larger scale. After all, it is already established that these “transitions” are mostly combinations of the art of both worlds.
It is this very humanness on screen that Kalunta has come to appreciate, which is why she prefers screen performances. “The one thing that strikes me about [a screen performance] is how I get to enjoy the film like an audience the very first time I see it. On stage, you kind of know everything that’s going to happen, but on screen, you get to see how everything is pieced together.”
As Nollywood continues to flourish, the stories of this crop of actors serve as a reminder that the journey from stage to screen is not just a shift in performance space, but a testament to the resilience of their artistic expression.
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