A Love Story Worthy Of A Place In The Theatres

It is sad that we only have to refer to the past when we have to talk about our arts .

We would recollect our fond memories of Osofo Dadzi, Obra and the popular Thursday Tv Theatre. It was the times that actors were larger than life and the stories as told by these dramas would send us out to realms beyond our imaginations; even when the stories were about us. They were about our every day life that we can relate to, presented to us in a manner we haven't seen before.

Unfortunately, today, we cannot afford such literary art pieces that we can call our own in our theatres and on TV . Our Tvs are inundated with foreign dramas mostly from the Americas with their attendant consequences on our cultural purity.

Even as we mourn the sad reality of our art industry today, I must however doff my heart to Shirley Frimpong Manso for her singular efforts to keep alive what is left of our glorious past in the arts. Kumawood is also doing its best to tell our stories. Earlier, some of us were worried about its fixation on witchcraft in the most negative ways. We were also worried about the plane insults that characterized comedies produced from that industry .

Today, we have no story tellers; and that is primarily why our arts are not drawing any interest to the theatres. Story tellers haven't been creative and imaginative.

Our ideals about love is largely from the western perspective as sold to us through Romeo and Juliet and Titanic.

It makes us feel such beautiful experiences are alien to us. But we have stories about love that is unique to us.

Just recently, I heard a story that epitomizes our own sense of love involving the ordinary Ghanaian couple .

The wife had enrolled in a distance education Diploma program. The woman who is now in Level 300 ;apparently had been referred in almost twelve (12) courses.

Somehow, the husband had not been in the known of the wife's unenviable performances in the semesters.

On knowing, the man went to the learning centre to make enquiries on his wife's performance in the program and to ask if there was anything he could do to help the wife to overcome her learning difficulties.

The man did not hesitate to pay for a resit of all the twelve (12) courses for the wife. He was also ready to hire the services of all the lecturers involved to teach his wife to pass these courses.

The man's act of love for the learning deficient wife was unbelievable. Many who gathered at the institution were marvelled by the man's unique expression of love to the wife.

And this is love. Love brewed in our own traditions. It does not need to involve flowers. It does not need to involve candle light dinners or a bar of chocolate. And it does not need to involve a man opening the car door for the lady to sit in the car before he takes his turn to sit. These are the ways others beyond the seas express love.

A tortoise expresses love quite differently from the crab.

And right here we have our own unique romantic stories . And these simple but beautiful stories of our everyday life could find presentation in our theatres. It only takes a little imagination to bring this story alive in a manner that would excite our imagination.

We need good story tellers about our own ways to bring our theatres back to life. We must tell our stories.

We must tell our simple stories in our theatres ; even if it is about a wife's who have an humongous challenge to resit and pass twelve(12) courses and a husband who would lay all his cards down to see his wife get a diploma certificate.

It is love. Our own way of loving .
PAUL ZOWONU
TUTOR-ACCRA
#talkingblues
Catch other writings @ www.moderghana.com/author/PaulZowonu .

17/12/17:19:43