Ileke (Beads): A Play in English

A city boy recently suspended from school arrives his paternal home community to the embrace of young boys and girls. His experience as a city boy endears him to all and he soon becomes the cynosure of all eyes. Encouraged by his male friends, he puts his city wits and rhetoric to use, slipping away from one girl to catch up with another. Buoyed by his early successes at courting the community belles, he loses sight of his purpose for visiting Oloja, his father’s homestead and goes on to commit the absurd!

The nightly gathering of boys and girls at the Dance Arena, a clear spot in the centre of the community, becomes a melting point for all dance styles and steps, gossips, rumours and their harbingers, and amorous relationships.

Arinola, the community’s brightest talent is the first to ’catch’ the city boy’s. In the heat of their passionate amorous displays both lose sight of their ambition.

Ileke is a delicate blend of the absurd and the usual; of the tragic and the comic; of maturity and responsibility; of recklessness and consequences; of the truth and falsehood; of the rural and city lives... all meet in Ileke!