Illuminatetheatre was founded in Lagos by three young people to function as a creative harbor which applies creative competence, human resources, and artistic innovation, as capacities for content development.
We understand the power of togetherness, collaboration, collectivity and recognize that innovation usually occurs when ideas jam.
We are inspired by the coexistence between Art and the community. We operate as an organization creating a platform for young people to infiltrate and transmit vital energies needed to reflect this coexistence.
As a team, we are focused on creating new interests in Nigerian arts. For more than four years of existence, we have created a local and global reputation.
Since inception, we have created community-friendly projects and performed in various public spaces at home and abroad. Doing this, we have contributed and artistically engaged more than 10,000 young Africans. Some of the young people we have worked are now independent art makers. Our mission to positively reconstruct political and cultural ills through artistic intervention has continued to materialize.
Community Development
Artistic creation and Talent Discovery
In the course of five years, we have created more than ten new artistic projects and partnered with a handful of initiatives, organizations, and individuals. During this period, we have worked with more hundred young people.
OUr Co-founders
Enechukwu Emmanuel Uche
Choreographer and Project Manager
He is a prolific actor and performance artist with several years of experience both locally and internationally. He started his professional artistic career in Lagos (Nigeria) where he graduated from the University of Lagos, Department of Business Administration. In his first stage of professional career as an artist, he spent about nine years studying and performing with the Crown Troupe of Africa. To add to his credit, he has worked with the National Troupe of Nigeria, Lagos state council for art and culture and many others. Now, he is one of the prominent founders of Illuminatetheatre Productions.
Olowu Busayo
Assistant Choreographer and Project Coordinator
Busayo is a talented choreographer and dancer, who has co-produced, directed and participated in various dance/theatre productions as a solo artist, as well as a member of different dance/theatre groups, in Nigeria and beyond. During the past ten years, he has developed a unique and distinct modern dance style, which is predominantly based on African Contemporary Dance. In addition, he has gathered experience in production management and direction by working with peers and notable professionals.
Ojudun Taiwo Jacob
Artistic Director
Is a multidisciplinary performance artist from Lagos, Nigeria. He lives and works as a performer, dancer, choreographer, and curator in the Bariga district on the mainland of Lagos. From 2008-2014 he received his choreographic and artistic/conceptual training through his many years of collaboration in the Crown Troupe of Africa. In 2015, he co-founded Illuminatetheatre Productions, whose artistic director he has been since.
Taiwo's works are primarily premiered in open spaces where the public have free access to it. Tapping into his root, he admires the relationship between the blend of the old tradition and the development of the contemporary. The blend of both cultures balances who he is and what he became. Coming from a rich culture where masquerades were the only form of resistance to a ruling monarch (King) policies. He blends his experimental socio-political conscious works into different kinds of public spaces and materials.
His curiosity about how people connect and reflect on the world around them makes him focus his works on the basis of essentialism and existentialism.
