nd Master of all. Many words have been used to describe this multi-faceted man, but the Muson Festival 1998 Brochure seems to have best tried (merely tried) to capture him in a sentence: "The quintessence of the performing artist, Segun Sofowote has been privileged to ventilate his extensive skills on Radio, Television, Stage, Film and in Publications." Suffice it to say that even this falls short of an adequate description of the near-ineffable man!

As far back as the sixties he had gravitated into the art scene as a member of Wole Soyinka’s drama company called “The 1960’s Masks”, along with other veterans such as Yemi Lijadu, Segun Olusola, Ralph Oparah, Olga Adeniyi-Jones, Elsie Thomas-Nkune, Taiye Ayorinde, Femi Euba, Vidal Tamakloe, and Francesca Pereira.

His first professional outing was in Wole Soyinka’s epic for Nigeria’s Independence, ‘A Dance of the Forests’ in which he played Murete.
The success of The Nineteen-Sixty Masks’ production for Nigerian Independence was followed the next year with the production of Sierra Leone’s Independence play, Sarif Easmon’s ‘Dear Parent and Ogre’ for which, together with others, he again got a really enhancing media review for his part.

Among his most unique experiences in the theatre years later was the exciting period of intrepid living in the mid-sixties to achieve the unknown, as indeed ‘THEATRE EXPRESS’ was – a trail-blazing three-man travelling group made up of himself and two theatre mates that did see a bit of the world, relying for a considerable portion of the time on his ever-obliging Volkswagen beetle for the necessary transportation lock, stock and barrel. Read more…

Over the years, outside of his regular theatre group at any particular time he has in his personal capacity played many roles in several radio and television plays, a couple of times as a guest actor in the stage productions of the University of Lagos including J. P. Clark’s The Boat, and once in the Dyonisian Festival of Drama in Italy in the cast of Wole Soyinka’s production of his own From Zia With Love.

His foray into publishing also saw him establishing outfits for publishing and printing of which, for example, two books – including notably The Village Headmaster – by Segun Olusola are beneficiaries.

His practice of communication has covered a kaleidoscopic career as:

• Scriptwriter, producer/director and presenter on WNTV-WNBS, Ibadan [Africa’s first television and Nigeria’s first commercial radio station]
  
• One-time freelance broadcaster on Radio Nigeria, Voice of Nigeria and Nigerian Television Authority, all in Lagos
• One-time freelance feature writer and art critic in newspapers including The Sunday Times, Daily Express and Lagos Horizon
• Pioneer Editor-in-Chief of the West African Book Publishers Ltd (WABP) and pioneer Editor of The Magnet, The Yoruba Photoplay Series and Lagos Life, all magazines
• Proprietor/Executive Producer/Editor of Ariya Productions, a recording and book publishing company which has published two of Segun Olusola’s works: The Village Headmaster, and Telescope – Twenty Years of Television in Africa
• One-time managing Director of Groovy Graphics Ltd, a printing company
• Publisher and Pioneer Editor of Honeydrops magazine (now defunct)
• Editor of several occasional books such as Outline History of Iperu by Prince J Awopeju, Orlando Martins: A Lifetime of Many Lives for the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture and A Letter to My Son by Segun Olusola
• Principal Consultant of Higherskills Consult, Lagos
• One-time lecturer of Elocution at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos
• Honorary Adviser (Publications) to AREF and Editor of AREF Newsletter

He has also lectured on the conceptualization and creative aspects of Radio and Television Production at the NBC Training School in Lagos and the TV College in Jos.