Costumer’s Notes
For
Ahmed Yerima’s
‘Little Drops...’
Script Background
You are looking at a painting, the subjects of which are three elderly men with their backs turned away from you the viewer. It is dark and obscure. The painting is un-named, but our author having purchased it in Yenegoa, credits it as his inspiration for writing ‘Little Drops...’
It is a play about people and especially the women of the Niger Delta. The unsung ‘S-Heroes’. Our mothers, sisters and daughters. It is they that are the stitches holding together the fragmented fabric of what is left of us.
I find this story, very ‘familiar’ as is the ‘cleared space by the river bank’. It too is my home. In these troubled parts especially, the first signs of decay and the first homes to crumble, were the ones without a ‘good’ woman to hold it together, because lets face it, the men had other issues on their minds and the children? Became casualties, in a senseless war that has come to see many, living far from the only home they know.
We chose to fight this war – the men and we did not consult with our women folk. Yerima’s ‘Little Drops...’ seeks to readdress this. He is authentic in his characters, their names and further still, their plight. That his characters may convince you when they speak, I shall dress them as I have known them...
