Finally the first semester of my second year in the University of Ghana has come to an end. Examination on campus brought its own headache of siting behind your books trying to revise everything that had been taught earlier from the beginning of the semester till the end of the semester. I had many challenges but in all was a good and fruitful semester for me. For the purpose of this article, I would narrow my essay to my theatre arts course to be precise, theatre workshop. We learnt many lessons. This was more of a practical class. So everything we did in the course of our study had to do with the mannerism of how we handle and cooperate on the theatre stage. Later in about two forth nights to the end of the semester, the class was divided into four groups to research on various personalities of our choice. That is, three personalities per group. Each group presented the biography of all three personalities. Also, at the end of the semester, we were also to present a piece of any kind (poem or drama) to depict the characterization of our selected personalities. My group, which was the first group (group 1) chose, Jackie-Chan, Madea and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as our personalities. The date for the final project was 1^st December, 2015.

At last, the day of the performance came. The venue for the performance was scheduled to take place at the Efua T. Sutherland drama studio. Unfortunately for us, the drama studio was being used for a performance by the African Ensemble of the Music department for their end of semester performance of which each student of the ensemble will be graded on. Ours was also our exams anyways. We had to move ours to the Mawere Opoku Dance Studio. At 19:00GMT, the class was set for a good performance from each of the groups. The performance was opened by the performance of group 4. Group 1 was the third to perform that night.

To begin with, in the first scene of our performance is a UN General Assembly held in New York having Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana being introduced by the UN president to deliver a speech for the purpose of the gathering. In his speech, he talked about how blacks had been prejudiced and dealt with unjustly. He therefore urged and sought for pardon for the blacks who had been a victim of unfair trail. In the next scene, a man in boxers and a singlet who happens to be a movie director is seen in his house watching news. In the content of the news was the release of several blacks from prison which included Madea. This action of the release of the convicts was ordered by the President of the United States of America, H.E Dwight D. Eisenhower. This move was believed to have been influenced by the speech Dr. Nkrumah gave during the Assembly. The Director who heard of the release of Madea thought of how wonderful it would be to have her feature in his upcoming movie with Jackie-Chan since she Madea was known a notorious woman. He therefore picks up his phone and calls Jackie-Chan’s agent to work her way out to get Madea to agree and sign a contract for the shooting of the movie. The next day, Jackie-Chan’s agent together with the producer of the said movie through the help of Madea’s daughter was able to meet her Madea in her residence to convince her to see how wonderful on the side of Madea it would be to be a movie star. She rejects the offer. The producer then leaves his complimentary card with Cora, Madea’s daughter to call in case there was a change of mind. Finally in the last scene of our skit is the movie scene. Cora was able to convince Madea to shooting the movie. In the scene was a statue of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as a landmark of the location of where the shooting of the movie was taken place. Jackie-Chan and Madea is seen in action fighting some bad guys. The director then shouts cut to mark the end of the shooting of the scene. The make-up artists, camera man, light and the rest of the crew begin to pack their stuffs to exit then the clapperboard man comes in with the clapperboard and claps. Everyone on the stage then freezes depicting an image theatre of all the three personalities. That’s how the performance of my group was.

In all, we had a good story line which linked all three personalities. There was a flow and a link from one personality to the other all the way to the last. There were several critics from the judges in the persons of a lecturer and two other teaching assistants all from the school of performing arts. Each member had a significant role to play in the contribution of the success of the skit. Per what the lecturer of the Workshop class was looking for, I can confidently say, group 1 did a great job. Thank you.