OUR SCRIPTS, REHEARSALS AND OUTPUT

OUR SCRIPTS, REHEARSALS AND OUTPUT

By  CHIBU NDUBUISI 13/02/2017

Peace be to you.

We have different types of movie genres.  Action, Comedy, Crime, Thriller,  Adventure, Drama,  Horror, Fantasy,  Historical,  Magical, Mystery,  Political, Philosophical,  Science Fiction,  Romance,  Biopic etc. Before any of the aforementioned genres of movies comes to be, series of rehearsals are practiced regarding assigned roles and then final output. 

Characters are very important in any script but for any character an assigned role awaits. The roles help flesh up written or spoken ideas in the scripts.  We all play one role or the other in our day to day living, and these roles are motivated by the forces of socialisation that we have been exposed to at one point or the other in the process of navigating this terrain.

David Brooks writes in the New York Times Newspaper (April 5th  2016) that their are "Four Big Forces of Mordern Societies 1.Global Migration leading to demographic diversity challenges cultural cohesion. 2. Economic Globalisation creating wider opportunities and also inequality 3. The Internet giving people more choice over what to buy and pay attention to.  4. A Culture of Autonomy valourises individual choice and self determination. "

In Nigeria for example many of our past and present leaders played and are still playing the character of vampires and buccaneers of our collective patrimony. The impact or  roles they have enacted, tend to perpetually consign her citizens to the 'Bottom Billion' as Paul Coiler puts it. Some people have posited that the Nigerian nation is not yet a nation that until terms and conditions for living are discussed, we are  just an amalgam of strange actors in a  theatre of absurdities called a nation,  tragic characters keep unleashing pain and suffering on the collective psyche of the people.

The story of Moses in the bible as the central character that brought the the jews out of Eygpt is a case of a character and  definitive role playing of leading the jews  out from bondage to a promised land. A journey to the promised land that was supposed to be for 40 days lasted 40 years.  The essence was that the process itself was auditioning to help bring out the best characters suited to enter the promised land flowing with milk and honey. No matter how skeptical we might be about the story, in our modern age the Jewish people have impacted the world positively in every human endevour  and they have been the most hated( anti semitism). They have not let their negative history lead them to despair, they have progressed among hostile neighbours.

Parents sometimes pass on the script of prejudices to their children for them to act  out ad infinitum.  Religious leaders pass on the script of extremist ideologies to their faithfuls and in the process creates wounded souls. Economist, are scripting policies that creates economic inequality and  endemic poverty. Political leaders are scripting policies that keep dividing people rather than uniting them.

 Those set of leaders who created the Structural Adjustment Policy(SAP) in Nigeria  might have had noblest of intentions as some of their apologists will make us believe. The question is, has a fractured Nigeria been healed by such policies?  Jonathan Sacks advises that the market economy is good at wealth creation but not perfect at all about wealth distribution.

Until what is scripted have the noblest of intentions and gives rays of hope, a fractured family, fractured nation or fractured world cannot be healed.
In our various families and work places, what are we scripting and urging people to rehearse and give as output? Are they geared towards building or destroying? 

Peace be with you