Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admits impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove – William Shakespeare –
By Nehru Odeh
Some actors are born with the craft, inhabiting it with effortless grace, as though acting were a language whispered into their ears at birth. And there are those upon whom the craft is thrust, who spend a lifetime wrestling with it—learning its rhythms, mastering its silences, and unlocking its secrets. Olu Jacobs and his wife, Joke Silva, belong to the former—a rare pantheon of stars whose artistic footprints stretch far beyond Africa’s shores. They did not merely act; they inhabited their characters. They did not simply perform;
they breathed life into stories.
They did not become legends merely because they could act. They became legends because they understood the soul of acting. They carried it from the stage to the screen, from the theatre to the cinema, from Nigeria to the world. And somewhere along that journey, they found each other—not simply as husband and wife, but as fellow travelers in the mysterious country called art.
Yet, beyond the brilliance of their acting, there was something about them that fascinated me even more. They were two legends who had somehow found each other. Not merely as husband and wife, but as artistic companions. They were not just two celebrated actors who happened to be married. They were two people bound not only by love and marriage but by a shared devotion to the theatre and the performing arts.
Their marriage was therefore more than a union of two hearts. It was, in many ways, a meeting of two artistic spirits, and as William Shakespeare puts it in Sonnet 116, a marriage of true minds which admitted no impediments, which alters when it alteration finds or bend with the remover to remove. They shared a love for theatre, storytelling and the transformative power of performance. They shared a profound respect for the craft. And, despite their towering reputations, they seemed to have retained something increasingly rare
in the world of celebrity: humility.
That was the feeling I carried with me when I had the rare privilege of sitting with them at their then Ajah, Lagos residence. It was August 2012 and the downpour had taken a break. But the streets of Lagos still sparkled with some drops of rain. Jacobs had just turned 70. The London Olympics had just ended, and he and Joke had returned from Britain, where they had been part of an ambitious cultural project that sought to place Nigeria—not through statistics, headlines or the familiar narratives of crisis—but through its theatre, poetry,
films and stories.
I remember walking into that encounter with the consciousness that I was about to meet two giants. But what I encountered were two artists. Two storytellers. Two people still deeply in love with their craft. And, perhaps more importantly, two people who seemed to understand that greatness in the arts is not measured merely by applause, awards
or fame, but by what one gives back to the art.
I had gone to interview them. But I came away feeling that I had encountered something much larger than an interview. I had encountered two lives intertwined by art. Two people who had spent decades under the lights, yet whose conversation revealed that the real illumination was not fame. It was the work. That afternoon, I sat with the couples and listened to two extraordinary artists talk about the theatre, about Nigeria, about love and about the long road they had travelled together. And at the end of the day, the conversation turned out to be a discourse on what it means to be an actor with a background in theatre.
Both of them veterans in that field fitted the bill.
Still, something about them struck me throughout the conversation: the ease between them. A rhythm, the way they complemented each other. One spoke, the other listened. One made a point, the other extended it. And that complementarity later showed up in the amazing way Joke showed up for her husband, came through for him and stood behind him
during the most difficult period of his life, his winter years.
The London Olympics provided the backdrop to our conversation. Through Lufodo Productions, the theatre company they founded, Jacobs and Joke had been involved in New World Nigeria, a Bank of Industry initiative designed to showcase another side of the country to an international audience. They wanted people to see Nigeria “as we are”. That phrase
has stayed with me.
Joke explained that the Olympics offered something Nigeria rarely had: the attention of the entire world at once. And they wanted to use that attention to tell Nigeria’s story in its own voice. They took three plays to London: Sefi Atta’s The Naming Ceremony, Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel and Fred Agbeyegbe’s The King Must Dance Naked. Nigerian poetry was also represented, while a mini film festival celebrated Nollywood.
“We were a part of New World Nigeria in the Olympics. We were asked to curate theatre, film and poetry for the Olympics because it was an opportunity to showcase Nigeria through theatre, film, poetry and documentary to the world; that is where the world’s attention would be at the Olympics,” Joke said.
It was, in essence, Nigeria carrying a suitcase of stories into the heart of the world. Joke spoke about the pride of Nigerians in the diaspora who came to watch the performances. For many of them, the theatre offered a glimpse of home—not the Nigeria of television stereotypes or foreign news reports, but a Nigeria capable of creating, performing and telling its own stories with confidence.
Jacobs’s philosophy was even more direct. Nigeria, he believed, should show itself as it was. Not as others imagined it. Not as others painted it. “We wanted people to see us not as we are being painted but as we are,” he noted. Listening to him, I sensed that this was not merely a theatrical exercise for him. It was almost a cultural act of reclamation. Asked if they achieved the objective of selling Nigeria to the world, Jacobs responded thus: “Yes, I believe we achieved it. And people, both white and black, came. And they said so. They really enjoyed it. They didn’t know that we have such a variety of materials, and we have many here. But if we don’t come and tell you our stories, then it is our fault, whichever way people see us. But we have decided to show ourselves as we are and for people to know one-on-one. That is the most important thing, and it was very successful.”
Then Joke added: “We have a lot of Diaspora Nigerians in London, and those that came to watch the plays were so proud. To them, here was something positive happening about their country, from their mother country. And also for them it was a standard. Though it was a standard we often see anyway, for them it wasn’t often that they see live
theatre from Nigeria done to that standard.”
Asked again why they chose to pick the Olympics to perform the plays, Joke said it was timely because it won’t be difficult to get the attention of the entire world. “You had people from all over the world. Also, it was a very good opening to showcase Nigeria during the opening of the Nigerian House, the hospitality house, which was strategically located. And this was something Britain was selling to all countries; that all countries should have a hospitality house for their athletes and for people who wanted to know about their country.
And Nigeria took advantage of that,” she maintained.
Then as the conversation wore on, the couple spoke about which between Nollywood and the stage was their first love. Jacobs spoke about theatre with the reverence of someone speaking about an old teacher.
“All of us in this field are all children of theatre because that is the base anywhere across the globe,” he said. “Theatre is the backbone. It is where you learn your craft, where you perfect it. Movies are where you display it. A lot of people can’t separate them. They are inseparable. The only thing you have to adjust is how you modulate your voice and your actions so that they don’t look the same. Once you can handle that and you have a very good background in theatre, then the sky is your limit; if you are talented.”
Joke could not agree more with her husband. As is her wont, she supported him wholeheartedly. “Just to buttress what Olu was saying is the fact that when you train in the theatre, you even work in the theatre because there is such a meeting point putting up theatre plays and all that. But your acceptability, fame, usually comes from movies, from television. Yes, because it has a wider reach.
“And so usually what I tend to advise people who are still coming to the industry: know your craft, start from film if possible but try and get into television or film because what that does then is to let a wider audience know you. And so when you then come back into the theatre, you now become a draw, you are one of those who will sit down in the theatre and it affects how you get paid.
Then Jacobs spiced up the conversation by telling a delightful story about how he became an actor while responding to the question I asked about when they first realised that acting was what they wanted to do. He had been fascinated by music and dancing from childhood, he said.At school, he was always involved in drama. He was an altar boy. He was a Boy Scout. Entertainment seemed to find him wherever he went. But one day, while he was sent on an errand, he saw an open vehicle filled with music and excitement. Leaflets were being thrown from it. He picked one up and took it home. The leaflet announced that Hubert Ogunde was coming to perform. Young Jacobs wanted to go. His parents agreed, but there was a condition: he had to complete his house chores first. He did.
And at seven years old, he entered a theatre and encountered magic. The place was packed. Then the lights went out. A spotlight appeared. Ogunde began with dance and song before the drama unfolded. And something happened inside the little boy. He stopped being merely part of the audience. He began to watch. He described the rare ability to step outside the circle of excitement, detach himself from the moment, and watch the performance almost as though he were a spectator rather than the actor at its centre. “It was magical. And I was able to remove myself from the circle to look at the performance. Everybody was special; it was total. And I said to myself, this is what I would like to do to make people feel happy; and I was seven.”
That was indeed how the magic started for Jacobs at seven. Decades later, it is difficult not to see the poetry in that childhood revelation. The little boy who watched Hubert Ogunde create magic would grow up to become one of the men who created magic for generations of Nigerians.
