Nigerian comedian and actor, Adebowale Adedayo, known as Mr Macaroni, has opened up about the sacrifices he made to balance his acting career with his education. He recently graduated with a Master of Arts in Performance (Acting) with distinction from the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London.
Mr Macaroni has always wanted to continue his education. But he could not start a master’s degree right after finishing his undergraduate studies due to work commitments.
In an interview with Saturday Beats, he shared, “I’ve always considered doing an advanced actor’s training, a master’s in performance, specifically, because I do already have a BA in theatre arts. But after my studies at the university in Nigeria, I got into work immediately, so I did not really have the time.”
He added, “After having done a lot of work and thinking that I needed to refresh, I thought it was the best time to go ahead and further find what’s new, what’s different from what we’ve been doing before.”
Mr Macaroni expressed how much this achievement means to him. He said, “The achievement means a lot to me. I’m very happy that I have been able to finally do it. Of course, knowing that I finished with a distinction made me really excited, really grateful, especially because I had a lot of responsibilities to marry with the course. Of course, I’d always come to Nigeria to film, to create content, and come back to London to carry on with the training.”
He mentioned that going back to school came with sacrifices. He missed out on profitable acting gigs in Nigeria while trying to manage his studies between Lagos and London.
Mr Macaroni said his dissertation looked into using Theatre of the Oppressed with Afrocentric performance techniques to help audiences resist sociopolitical oppression.
He explained that his interest in this topic comes from his wish to use entertainment for social change. He has always aimed to educate and enlighten his audience through his work.
The actor also mentioned that the program taught him new acting techniques and performance skills. He hopes to use these skills in his content creation, film, theatre, and public engagements.
He explained, “I am just learning new things, adding new skills to my toolkit so that when occasion demands, I can make good use of it.”
He added, “But, of course, I’ve been able to gather amazing techniques that I believe will also be instrumental to the work that I do in Nigeria, be it from content creation to acting, stage and theatre performances, entertainment, and public engagement, generally, as it were.”
Mr Macaroni believes the new skills will help him grow his creative abilities while staying true to himself and the techniques that built his career.
Looking back on the difficulties of juggling work and studies, he said, “But yes, of course, there were personal sacrifices, such as jobs, gigs, that if I was to be in Nigeria, I would have jumped on, made good money. So I wasn’t making as much as I was, but I was spending even more. And because, of course, I was in London and doing the course, so it’s just that balance, balancing between that Lagos and London life while doing the work. This is the journey called life; sometimes it gets overwhelming, and this is what I say: you just have to continue to find ways to navigate this journey.”
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