Let’s have a theatre festival in Ghana – Chief Moomen

Ghanaian playwright Chief Moomen has suggested ways of making theatre in Ghana more vibrant.

The curator of the Mansa World Theatrical project in an interview said that one of the ways of elevating the art form is by doing a lot of collaborations.

Chief mooted the idea of a theatre festival, intimating its likelihood to put theatre in Ghana on a higher pedestal.

“Maybe one of the things we can do as we develop our capital is to pull those resources together. One of the things I would even propose is at some point, in a year or two for us to do a major theatre festival. That is one of the strategies I was discussing with one of the professors of arts.

So imagine myself, George Quaye, Latif Abubakar, Uncle Ebo Whyte, we all come together and say are doing a major theatre festival. So we are not only pulling resources together, we also pulling audiences together,” he said.

He also added that lobbying policymakers through activism was another way of advancing the cause.

Apart from that the poet and playwright highlighted the importance of building the right infrastructure, employing effective marketing strategies and providing compelling content for theatre audiences.

Ghanaian poet and playwright, Chief Moomen, is in the United States of America with 24 others for the 2024 Global Programme of the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowships.

Chief Moomen is one of Ghana’s enterprising playwrights breaking boundaries with his craft.

On February 17, 2024, Chief Moomen attended the World Conference on Culture and Arts Education in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

This comes after the launch of ‘The Mansa World’, an initiative by Chief that is curating African history and heritage in a variety of exciting content across theatre, film and other derivatives for global audiences.

It was launched at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris on October 18, 2023.