Wale Ogunyemi’s biography, fact, career, awards, net worth and life story

Intro Nigerian writer
Was Actor
Stage actor
From Nigeria
Type Film, TV, Stage & Radio
Gender male
Birth

12 August 1939, Osun State

Death

18 December 2001
(aged 62 years)

Star sign Leo

Wale Ogunyemi, OFR (12 August 1939–December 2001) was a Nigerian veteran seasoned dramatist, film actor, prolific playwright and Yoruba language scholar

Early life

He was born in August 1939 at Igbajo, a city in Osun State, southwestern Nigeria.

He attended the University of Ibadan in 1967 for a year course in drama, the same year he was appointed as a research assistant at Ibadan Institute of African Studies where he later retired.

Career

He began his acting career as a seasonal actor with the new western Nigerian television service in the early 1960s. He later worked with professor Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate and became a foundation member of Soyinka Orisun Theatre. His credible performance made him a choice for the role he played as “The bale” in The Lion and the Jewel and Dende in Kongi’s Harvest by Nigerian writer, professor Wole Soyinka, a Nobel laureate. He also featured in The Beatification Of Area Boy, a play by Wole Soyinka premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1995.

He had written and co-scripted several drama before his death in December 2001.

Filmography

  • The Lion and the Jewel
  • Kongi’s Harvest
  • Sango (1997)
  • The Beatification Of Area Boy
  • The Ijaye War (1970)
  • Kiriji (1976)
  • The Divorce (1975)
  • Aare Akogun (1968) and Everyman *Eniyan, published in 1987)
  • Langbodo (1979)
  • “Wole Soyinka”. google.com.ng. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 
  • “Menacing Shadows Greet Dawn In Nigeria”. nytimes.com. 11 October 1996. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 
  • Yoruba Creativity. google.com.ng. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 
  • Kiriji. google.com.ng. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 
  • The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Theatre. google.co.za. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 
  • Pre-colonial and Post-colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa. google.nl. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 

Awards

  • Member of the Order of the Niger awarded in 1982 by the president of the Federal Republic of Niger
  • Majeobaje of Okuku, achieftaincy title conferred on him by his royal highness, the Olokuku of Okukuland
  • “Wale Ogunyemi, eminent playwright dies”. World News. Retrieved 18 January 2015. 
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