Nigerian Wole Soyinka is an award winning writer, poet, playwright and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature. After graduating from the Government College in Ibadan, Nigeria, Soyinka studied drama at the University of Leeds during the 1950s. Following his graduation he worked as a script-reader, actor, and director at the Royal Court Theatre before returning to Nigeria to study African drama. In 1960 he founded "The 1960 Masks", followed by the "Orisun Theatre Company" in 1964. Soyinka's career as a political activist in exile is inseparable from his writing which has earned him worldwide acclaim.