Femi Euba


Femi Euba is a Nigerian actor, writer and dramatist, who has published numerous works of drama, theory and fiction. As a theatre practitioner his work encompasses acting, playwriting and directing. Among the topics of his plays is Yoruba culture.

Education and career

Born in Lagos, the son Alphaeus Sobiyi Euba and Winifred Remilekun Euba, Femi Euba studied acting in England at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, earning a diploma in 1965, after which he appeared in many shows on the London stage, including the 1966 Royal Court Theatre productions of Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel, and Shakespeare's Macbeth, with the late Sir Alec Guinness as Macbeth and the late Simone Signoret as Lady Macbeth, directed by William Gaskill.
Euba left London in 1970 to study Playwriting and Dramatic Literature at the Yale School of Drama, where his received an MFA in 1973. In 1980–82 he went back to Yale to study, receiving an MA in Afro-American Studies. He then returned to Nigeria, where he worked for some years, and earned a PhD in Literature-in-English at the University of Ife, Nigeria, in 1986.
Over the years, Euba has taught at different colleges and universities, in Nigeria and the US, including the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Currently the Louise and Kenneth Kinney Professor at Louisiana State University, he has continued to teach playwriting, and dramatic literature, mostly concentrating on the drama and theatre of Africa and of the African diaspora. He is also a consultant in Black Theatre. Among his many credits as a director are Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and ; Edouard Glissant's Monsieur Toussaint ; August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone ; Shakespeare's The Tempest ; Molière's The Learned Ladies ; Euripides' Alcestis ; Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead, Sheridan's The Rivals, The African Company Presents Richard III, Hedda Gabler, Maryse Condé's Tropical Breeze Hotel, Machados Broken Eggs, Stephen Adly Guirgis's Our Lady of 121st Street, Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size, and Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park.

Works