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You have been involved in Glover Hall, which is back to life. Would you want to talk about how you found enough time for all these things. And I understand you are even running the place without a salary. What is the driving force? Apart from being on the Board of Trustees, how did all of these responsibilities now fall on your shoulders?
Many years ago, I used the Glover Hall for productions. I did the Festival of Jazz and Pops at the Glover Hall. That programme had people like Fela, Segun Bucknor, and the Nelson Coles. I also had a novel idea which was to have stage performances preceding the film shown that same stage until some clown went and dropped the bomb at the Casino. The audiences dropped so, that idea died.
So, I have an association with Glover Hall which goes back over many years and I have a sentimental soft spot for the place. I drove down that area very recently and saw the Glover Hall becoming a dump. It was very very distressing. So when the Lagos government decided to reconstitute the Board of Trustees of Glover Hall, and I received an invitation to serve on that board; I felt strongly that this is something that should be done and something that I could contribute to.
The work that was done in Glover Hall to date, to what it is now, was achieved by just sheer doggedness because there was very little money available. The Chairman and members of the board put their minds to the task. So a lot of things were done on goodwill and using contacts that were known to members of the board to achieving results.
Now, having got the things back to the stage where the structure itself had been renovated, and it could be used even, if not in the final elaborate form that we foresee, the board then felt that before it could move forward for things to begin to happen there, it was desirable to have somebody with the previous experience of running something like that. So, I was asked to take on the responsibility of midwifing the place back to what it was before.
Return of Glover Memorial Hall |
A series of activities have been lined up to mark 100 years of Glover Memorial Hall next week, Lagos once most prominent performance venue. But can the hall get back to reckoning given the paucity of funds and disadvantaged location? queries Mike Jimoh
Let's go back in time to what is central Lagos today. The year is 1929. It's a Monday, and in and around a building in all otherwise quiet street, native servants are up and doing. Shoeless and wearing khakis, they easily I evoke Cary 's protagonist in Mister Johnson. Vending instructions from a whiskered, red-coated lip is a white colonial officer. With just a few more days to go before Prince Edward of Wales 's scheduled visit to Lagos , Glover Memorial Hall, where the officer and his hated subordinates are hard at work, has to be spruced up. Why? Easily the oldest all-purpose hall as at that time, it is one of the places the dauphin to the British throne would be received.
Fast-forward to Monday next week when the same hall would begin activities marking its 100 years of existence. With an ample share of pedestrians in central Lagos on week days, Customs Street is teeming with quite some more this morning and most of them are gathered in dense clutches in front of Glover Hall.
Wearing a coat of fresh paint, the threestorey building now presents a shinning exterior to prospective visitors rather like an aging dowager would rouge up for "a potential suitor. in a way, the new coat looks flattering given that no one remembers precisely the last time it had such a charming brush up.
Nevertheless, it is a somewhat colorful evidence of the organizer's determination to give the almost forgotten hall an unforgettable re-christening. From now on, Mr. Steve Rhodes, a member of the Board of Trustees, told journalists weeks ago, the hall "will strive for a return to excellence in artistic programming".
Its programme of activities for the centenary celebration will last for a week: a dinner and an awards night will round off other events that include drama presentations and art competitions, theatre and film workshops, debates among top schools in Lagos, etc. There will also be a Glover Memorial Hall Advocacy Night - whatever that means - for those of the "diplomatic, business and corporate communities in Lagos ". Top artistes in the country are also expected to perform in one of the events and then there will be stage productions of Madam Tinubu, a play in honour of the legendary trader and activist without whom the hall would never have come to be.
For the organizers, therefore, there is every reason to splurge on this centenary considering the hall's equally long and remarkable history: named after Sir John Harvey Glover, Governor of the Colony of Lagos from 1864 to 1872, the patch M land on which the hall now stands was donated by Madam Tinubu in appreciation of the governor's works: in his eight years as governor, Sir John famously built a settlement at Ebute-Meta for refugees from the Egba-Dahomey war; he was instrumental to the construction of Broad Street and also helped in extending the Marina.
Essentially, the ordinance that established Glover Hall in 1889 charged it with "the responsibility of promoting the social, educational and cultural values of the people of Lagos by promoting and maintaining the hall for public meetings and any such purpose as may be deemed necessary".
In the past, it has met those objectives successfully: .as well as being the venue of big-ticket events such as the meeting of the National Congress of British West Africa attended by William E.B Dubois in 1924 and the maiden meeting of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce 25 years before, Glover Hall has also been used as a reception centre for notable Nigerians like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Besides, those who are old enough can still boast that Glover was about the only place you could watch classics like Ten Commandments or Gone with the Wind. But the question now is, is the country's oldest hall adequately equipped to compete with other similar cultural institutions like MUSON Centre or the National Theatre?
Certainly not on the N2 million grants it received from the Lagos state government in 1990 as custodians of Glover since independence. For funding, it now relies on rents and contributions from the private sector. Evidently, the hall needs cash because, as Rhodes explained, this event is "geared towards creating a new awareness about the hall and its place in Lagos ... to build a regular theatre-going audience of young and old persons in a new secured and congenial environment".
Its location in a busy business district in Lagos may also have denied Glover badly needed money: unlike MUSON that stands in proud detachment on a tongue of land a shouting distance away, Glover is wedged between massive office blocks thus robbing it of potential clients who, in any case, would have had to contend with parking space.
On a recent event, the car pool at MUS ON conveniently contained no less than a convoy of cars of five state governors and hundreds more. The National Theatre similarly enjoys- such a spatial advantage. This is not so for Glover.
Again, the daunting spectre of falling victim to area boys in central Lagos is another disadvantage for the hall. Potential clients have been turned off because of such minatory attitude. Even as it is almost impossible to relocate the hall to a quieter area - certainly not on its current cash reserve - this centenary promises to re-launch Glover to its halcyon days: "This event", notes Mr. Rhodes, "is to restate our commitment to the support and encouragement of the arts and culture in Lagos ".
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