BEFORE fame and fortune, KP Kayode Adewumi-peters was laser focused on who he wanted to be. I can see that now with the benefit of hindsight.
This fellow pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made his life what he wanted it to be.
I first met KP on a registration queue on what was likely our first day at the University of Lagos. Reserved but a bit more worldly than I, he had earlier concluded a diploma programme at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) before his admission to Unilag came through. We quickly found out that we were not just of the same Faculty of Arts, but also of the Department of English.
When he found out that I was unable to secure a hostel bedspace, KP arranged to have his landlord at Elkanemi Hall squat me, essentially burdening the fellow with two squatters. When I eventually secured hostel accommodation at the better located and quartered Fagunwa Hall, I returned the favour by squatting him.
Both of us were interested in acting. Me, mainly because of my experience in my secondary school drama club. Him, for reasons I cannot recall now, but suffice it to say that it was an obsession. We had barely concluded our school registration before we started hunting for an acting platform. At the time, Unilag did not have a Theatre Arts nor a Creative Arts department, but we saw the audition poster of a certain theatre club, “Theatre 15 Unilag” (T15). That is how KP, Dozie Atueyi (another Jambite enthusiast who was part of my drama club experience at FGC Enugu) and I headed for the club’s audition and scaled through.
The prolific director, writer and actor KP that the industry experienced till his demise was the finished product. Our first acting experience with Theatre 15 was as acolytes in Moji Bamtefa’s dance drama, “The Abomination”. Sister Moji taunted both of us that we were stiff and had “two left legs” but we kept working at it and soldiered through that production.
It was with this little experience that when the opportunity came during my department’s Theatre Workshop class in our first year, it was natural that KP and I took the lead in what was a structurally deficient play that was written by one of our classmates. Thus, KP’s Directorial debut was in a play that he co-Directed with me. Working with the rest of the cast and crew, we delivered a beautiful dance drama, the euphoria of which propelled us to launch the short-lived DEPAA (Department of English Performing Arts Association).
I however believe that the real turning point in his acting career was when we encountered the steeled discipline and rigour of working with the maverick actor and director, Tunde Euba.
Working with Tunde Euba for the first time as Director in 1992, Theatre15 Unilag staged Dr. Malcolm Fabiyi’s “Dawn of Decisions” and anti-confra (Jahlord’s versus Sundiata) play in which KP played the character Shakis and I was his less preferred double-cast.
Tunde Euba was the best stage director I had ever worked with. He was crazy (for Creatives, crazy is probably the highest compliment), and the encounter with him possibly changed the trajectory or positively impacted the subsequent careers of a number of us; Kayode Peters, Jerry Isichei, Bunmi Davies, Okechukwu Chima, Dayo Davies, TeeA, Teju Babyface, Abiola Aloba, Bolaji Alonge and a host of other #T15 members.
Here is the thing.
After countless hours and days (and quite a number of ‘all night’) rehearsals, production day arrives with cast and crew worn out but all pumped up. The first performance is like magic, even for the cast and crew, the exclamations and cheers coming from the audience is of awe and appreciation, so naturally there is a lot of back-patting, hugging and ululations from all of us, even as our audience empty from the Theatre… till Oga Tunde summons us all back on stage and barks, “What was that? Aruku-shanka! Total rubbish!”
So, he took us through the entire production, the cast, the lines, the blockings, lights, special effects, sound and in the most minute of details, pointing out errors, or even rights that could have been done better… then took us right back into another rehearsal for the next day’s show. Tunde’s Production Postmortem’s were meticulous like that and taught us how to fail in success, to learn the elements that led to success and ensure that it can be replicated, learn from failures to ensure that they were not repeated, or retained some failures that were fortuitously so good that they deserved space amongst the success.
I suspect that this was where KP truly understood his craft and sought to be better.
KP went on to act in several Theatre 15 productions, Jambitoast as Smart, Folasayo Dele-Ogunrinde’s “The Woman With a Past” etc.
Somewhere in-between, he dropped the Adewumni from his name and became Kayode Peters… then KP, KP Cypress and other iterations.
When I wrote my first and only play as an undergraduate, “Nightmare”, KP was the natural choice as Director. Someone who could go into my mind and see what I saw in the characters I created, for we both shared and constantly discussed this dream of creating a long running sitcom with a light cast (to manage cost) and in which every line was a punchline.
My first experiment with this concept was post graduation, in 1997 when I wrote my second play, “Hell’s Invitation” catalysed by a mandatory pre-employment HIV test that I undertook. Again, naturally, KP was the inaugural Director of the play.
HIV was a resounding success. This was a play (a version directed by Bunmi Davies) that the late Amaka Igwe saw at the MUSON Centre Lagos and came barrelling down on me screaming “you have no business being a banker!”. The main characters were “Housemates”: Emeka, Stella, Aliyu, Lateef, Bimbo and of course their landlord. I believe that the concept influenced the work that KP subsequently did with his award-winning TV series, “Flatmates.”
The theatre was our all-consuming passion to the point that because rehearsals took up a chunk of the time meant for our studies, some fellow students referred to us as “layabouts”. In response and jest, we set up the National Association of Layabout Students (NULAS) and will often be seen hanging out in the foyer of the Faculty of Arts building when our peers were attending lectures in the room GO1 Lecture hall directly opposite.
Even after we graduated, KP stayed back on campus working with Theatre enthusiasts, honing his craft. I didn’t understand it at the time. I thought he had taken it too far and should step out of the university campus to “find a life” like some of us despite the fact that I still found time to write most of my body of stage plays; “Hell’s Invitation”, “This Time Tomorrow”, and “The Anger of Unfulfillment” after I had left Unilag, “turned my back on the stage” and was working full time.
At this time, our career trajectories took a tangent to the normal, however we kept in touch and of course social media helped us keep track of our respective growths.
KP was to direct “Hell’s Invitation” one more time in 2006.
Anytime we met, KP will hail me with “Jex O Lala” then add “my rich friend” as if to say, “you abandoned the cause in search of lucre”.
The rest as the say is history.
I remember my birthday in 2011. Unplanned, I was in Lagos and ran into Bolaji Alonge. That is how we reached out to KP and the three of us spent the entire evening/morning at the now defunct Auto-Lounge on Adeola Odeku Street, VI, Lagos, shooting the breeze and drinking premium privileged beverages.
Similarly, when KP got married to his beautiful wife Alexandra in June 2011 (I believe it was Saturday June 25th, 2011), he had assumed that I would be out of the country, but I turned up as a surprise. Bunmi Davies, Bolaji Alonge, Teju Babyface, Abiola Aloba, I and some other T15 members “moved a toe” for the new couple and chanted our way off the stage with ‘Iyomi tondo!’ a “Jahlord’s” chorus from the play “Dawn of Decisions”.
Even of recent, with the passing of his dad. He kept sending me reminders to attend the burial and reception as well as pick up my aso-ebi. As usual we turned up just last month, Friday May 2nd, 2025, to honour his late dad.
It was a befitting send-forth and upon sighting me, he hailed me with the usual “Jex o Lala!” to which he added as usual, “my rich friend”.