These days I frequent the cinema and I am mostly disappointed by the performances I watch, so I am writing this to theatre arts students. Here is the uncomfortable truth: a disturbing number of Nollywood actors today are walking, talking, emoting arguments for theatre school. They need it. Desperately. Like a fish needs water. Watch RMD hold a scene together without even raising his voice. Watch Eucharia Anunobi command a frame like she personally owns it and the director is just renting. Then go and watch Wale Ojo in Breathe Of Life, and 3 Cold Dishes. Watch how a man can carry an entire emotional universe in a single glance. That is the craft and we are slowly losing it because what happens when these actors leave?
Speaking of Eucharia, do you remember when she went to judge the theatre week on Big Brother Naija at the last edition? She was harsh. Brutally, unapologetically, correctly harsh. And Nigerians were furious. But here is the thing nobody wanted to say out loud: she was right. These people waltz out of the Big Brother Naija house and the next day, the very next day, they are actors. Just like that. No training, no rehearsal room humiliation, no director screaming at them to find the emotion and stop indicating it. What most of them have is just a ring light, a management deal, and a callback.
That is why we keep producing the likes of Bambam. God bless her, truly. But out of every hundred Bambams, you might, if the stars align and the ancestors are in a generous mood, get one Tobi Bakre. One. Now ask yourself, what happens to Nollywood if it becomes a Bambam majority? I will tell you what happens. We will have beautifully shot films with lighting that deserves an Oscar and performances that deserve an apology.
That is precisely why theatre arts students need to sit up. Practice your monologues until they stop feeling like monologues and start feeling like confessions. Learn diction, not to sound foreign, but to sound intentional. Learn how to say everything with your eyes before your mouth even opens. Learn silence, because silence on stage and screen is not emptiness, it is pressure. And pressure, when handled correctly, is riveting.
Now let me give you something specific. Something that is missing from so many Nollywood performances today, and it is this: stop playing feelings. Start playing actions.
Read that again.
The language everyone uses around acting is feeling based. Be sad. Be angry. Be in love. And as an actor, you will never completely escape that language. But what you must learn to do is translate it. Feeling is internal weather. Action is what you do because of that weather.
When a director tells you your character is angry, do not go hunting inside yourself for anger like it is a lost remote control. Instead, ask yourself, if I were truly angry right now, what would that make me want to do? Maybe it makes you want to speak very, very quietly, because real anger is often cold, not hot. Maybe it makes you want to tidy the room obsessively because you are trying to control something when everything feels out of control. Maybe it makes you want to look away from the person you are furious at, because looking at them might break you.
Acting is doing. It is always doing. And it is the actor's job, your job, to translate emotion into action, because that is what the camera sees. That is what the audience feels. This used to be second nature to the best of Nollywood's golden generation. Somewhere along the way, it got lost, drowned out by overacting, melodrama, and the peculiar Nollywood tradition of actors staring directly into the camera during emotional scenes as if appealing to the audience as a witness.
If I ever become a director, and I am manifesting this, this principle is what I will demand from every actor on my set, every single day.
Now go and watch Manchester by the Sea. I am not suggesting it. I am prescribing it. It is a masterclass in dramatic restraint, in playing actions over feelings, in what it looks like when an actor trusts the writing and the audience enough to do less and mean more. Watch it, then watch it again, then go and practice your monologue, and watch it a third time.
Theatre arts students, the future of this industry is sitting in your hands right now, a little like a fragile, underfunded, incredibly talented egg. Do not drop it. And more importantly, do not let people who skipped the process scramble it.
This is from someone who loves Nollywood too much to stay quiet. 😊❤️
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