Biyi Bandele net worth, age, death, wife, career biography.
Nigerian novelist, playwright, and director Biyi Bandele is also a filmmaker. Nigerian author Bandele writes for radio, television, theatre, newspapers, and other media in the UK. In 1990, he relocated to London.
Biyi Bandele: Profile summary
| First Name | Biyi |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Biyi Bandele |
| Date of Birth | 13 October 1967 |
| Birth Day | 13 October |
| Birth Years | 1967 |
| Birth Place | Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Nigeria |
| Birth City | Kaduna State |
| Birth Country | Nigeria |
| Nationality | French |
| Death | 8th August 2022 |
| Sun sign, Horoscope, Zodiac Sign | Scorpio |
| Famous As | Writer |
| Also Known for | Writer |
| Occupation | Writer |
Biyi Bandele: Early life & Biography
Biyi Bandele (born Biyi Bandele-Thomas; 13 October 1967) is a Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Bandele is regarded as one of the most versatile and prolific of the UK-based Nigerian writers, having turned his hand to theatre, journalism, television, film and radio, as well as the fiction with which he made his name. He lives in London, where he moved in 1990.
Biyi Bandele: His Move from Nigeria to London
Bandele was born to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Nigeria in 1967. His father, Solomon Bamidele Thomas, was a veteran of the Burma Campaign in World War II, while Nigeria was still part of the British Empire. Bandele spent the first 18 years of his life in the northern part of the country, most at home in the Hausa cultural tradition. Described as a precocious child, Bandele had early ambitions to be a writer and won a short-story competition when he was 14 years old. Later, he moved to Lagos, then in 1987, studied drama at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He won the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 with an unpublished play, Rain, before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Award for an unpublished collection of poems. When he went to London that year, aged 22, invited to a theatre festival, he had with him the manuscripts of two novels he had written. Soon after he arrived in the UK he found a publisher and was given a commission by the Royal Court Theatre.
Biyi Bandele: His Death
The Prolific Nigerian novelist and filmmaker Biyi Bandele died at age 54 on the 8th of August 2022.
His death was announced in a statement released by his family on Monday, noting that he died on Sunday in Lagos.
Biyi Bandele: As a Playwright
As a playwright, Bandele has worked on the stage with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and elsewhere, as well as writing radio drama and screenplays for television. His plays include; Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn’s 17th-century novel of the same name. In 1997 he dramatised Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart successfully. Brixton Stories, Bandele’s stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001 and was published in one volume with his play Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999. He also adapted Lorca’s Yerma in 2001.
He was a writer-in-residence with Talawa Theatre Company from 1994 to 1995, resident dramatist with the Royal National Theatre Studio (1996), and the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, from 2000–01. He also acted as Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at the Bush Theatre from 2002 to 2003.
Biyi Bandele: As a Film Diretor
His directorial debut film Half of a Yellow Sun was selected to be screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and received a “rapturous reception”. The film received a wide range of critical attention. His new film, Fifty, is included in the 2015 London Film Festival. He also directed the third season of the popular MTV drama series, Shuga.
Biyi Bandele: Awards
- 1989 – International Student Playscript Competition – Rain
- 1994 – London New Play Festival – Two Horsemen
- 1995 – Wingate Scholarship Award
- 1998 – Peggy Ramsay Award
- 2000 – EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Play – Oroonoko
Biyi Bandele: Net worth
Biyi had a whopping net worth of about $5 to $10 million.
