ABSTRACT
Johnson Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, known more commonly as J. P. Clark, was born in Kiagbodo, a bilingual town of Ijo and Urhobo speakers in the Delta State of Nigeria, on April 6, 1935, to Chief Clark Fuludu Bekederemo and his wife Poro. His great-grandfather, Ambakederemo, seems to have played an important role in his literary consciousness. One of the wealthiest men of his time, Chief Ambakederemo had no less than sixty-one wives. This polygamous setting of sibling tensions and rivalries was a real cultural school for Clark, almost all of whose plays involve some form of kinship antagonism. Equally important is his proficiency in the two languages of his native place, giving him access to two separate, if contiguous and related, cultures.
