About the Playwright
’Biyi Bandele-Thomas is probably best known for his award-winning play Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn’s seventeenth-century novel of the same name, which won an EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Play in 2000. Two Horsemen was selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival.
’Biyi Bandele-Thomas was born in Nigeria in 1967. He resides in London where he has built an impressive career as an award-winning playwright, poet, screenwriter and novelist. After studying drama at Obafemi Awolowo University, he won the international playscript competition in 1989 for Rain, which enabled ’Biyi to complete his one year scholarship in London. ’Biyi never returned to Nigeria and instead embarked on a successful writing career in London, working with reputable theatres, namely the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Other published plays by ’Biyi Bandele-Thomas include: Rain, Marching for Fausa, Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought, Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys, Brixton Stories, a stage adaptation of his own novel The Street, and Happy Birthday Mister Deka.
Summary (Extract)
The following speech has been extracted from the second and final act of the play, entitled ‘Howling’. Set during the night-time the scene opens with a fusion of different distressing sounds; a dog barking and whining, car engine failing to start and someone screaming. The upsetting soundscape triggers a conversation about death, rape and God. BANZA takes this opportunity to talk about his paranoia bought on by the experience of working as a morgue attendant surrounded by dead corpses.
BANZA
Sometimes, you know, sometimes I’m overcome with a paranoia: I’m the last human being left on earth and I’m surrounded by five billion corpses. Phew! Five billion. The thought makes me grin like a fool.
[Pause.]
Do you know that a man’s beard continues to grow even after he’s dead? And the nails as well. Until you begin to rot. I was once a morgue attendant, you know. Before the flood. Superb job. Made you feel like God. Sometimes after yet another of those multiple accidents involving those luxury buses, and the casualties were brought in and stacked one upon the other like so many lumps of yam in a barn, I’d stand among them, these denizens of the graves, alone, savouring the gut-smell of blood and bile and decay that filled the air like sour-sweet mango perfume. I would stand among them, smiling back at those who smiled … [Demonstrates.] “Hello, baby, how’re you doing? I like the way you smile. Like a bloody bitch. I like the way you smile. Honest to God I do. Like the patron saint of all bitches. If there’s a hell, I’ll meet you there. Buy you a drink. And that’s a date.”
[Pause.]
“Hello, old man.” [Fondles an imaginary protrusion.] “Now, that’s my man. Went and croaked with a hard-on, didn’t we? I’ve got half a mind to give you a blow-job right now. Just to see the look on God’s face. I bet you must have been some teenage idiot’s sugar daddy. Were you thinking dirty when it happened? A big problem for the undertaker. I hope you realise that, you fool. Dying with an erection for God’s sakes, have you no decency?” [to LAGBAJA] The more I look at you, the more I’m reminded of those corpses. You look – ordinary – most inordinately ordinary, have I never told you? Every time I look at your face I have this nauseating feeling that you could have been anyone else. You could have been me, for instance. Or my father or even my mother. You could have been anybody. Anybody. But… [Spits in disgust] …you chose to be you. I could sometimes almost mistake you for myself when we meet in the doorway.
[He turns pointedly towards LAGBAJA, who has all this while been staring passively into space, a fatuous grin permanently installed on his face.]
Have we never met in the doorway? [Waits in vain for a response.] I suppose we must have. Or you wouldn’t have that smug look in your eyes. You could choke a man to death with the stench of that smugness.
[He stares furiously at LAGBAJA’s passive, almost idiotic, absolutely smugness-bereft presence.]
You are the smuggest bastard I’ve ever met, do you hear, do you…
[Pause.]
Time is passing.
[Pause.]
I wonder what else it should be doing. Every minute of my life I’ve been the sole witness to the birth of another minute. It’s the most monotonous experience you could witness. God is a rather dodgy old sod, is what I say. I wish he would do something distantly radical one of these days. Stop the hand of the clock, for instance. But I guess he couldn’t. Might give him an orgasm, stain the holy robe, you see. And that’d mean a police record. Ruin his chances of a re-election.
From
PANDORA’S BOX
by Ade Solanke
Pandora’s Box by Ade Solanke was produced by Spora Stories and first performed at the Arcola Tent in Hackney, east London on 9 May 2012. The production was directed by Ola Animashawun, with the following cast; Ben Onwukwe (Principal Osun), Susan Aderin (Mama-Ronke), Damson Idris (Tope), Olatunji Sotimirin (Baba), Bradley John (Timi), Yetunde Oduwole (Sis Ronke) and Anna-Maria Nabirye (Toyin).
Pandora’s Box explores the dilemma facing many first- and second-generation African parents regarding the decision to educate their children in London or Nigeria. Thirty years ago Pandora (mother) chose to leave her daughter Ronke in Nigeria while she continued her studies in London, with the hope of returning back home. Now, thirty years later, she returns to Nigeria for the first time, accompanied with her other daughter Toyin, who she raised in England, and her grandson. As the play unravels, we see history repeat itself as single mother Toyin struggles to decide whether to enrol her unruly son in the best boarding school in Nigeria or bring him back to a potentially dangerous life in London.
About the Playwright
British-born and of Nigerian heritage, Ade Solanke was raised in Ladbroke Grove, west London.
Solanke is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and Founder and Artistic Director of Spora Stories (a theatre company dedicated to new stories about the African Diaspora). She has been educated in America and England, gaining a MFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California, postgraduate diploma in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College in London and an honours degree in English Literature from the University of Sheffield in England. She has also attended the Royal Court Theatre’s Critical Mass Writers Course.
Ade Solanke’s stage plays have been performed as part of Tiata Fahodzi’s Tiata Delights at the Almeida Theatre, and Talawa’s Unzipped at the Young Vic. In 2012, Ade Solanke was voted Best Playwright in the Nigerian Entertainment and Lifestyle Awards 2012. Pandora’s Box was nominated for Best New Play in the Off West End Theatre Awards (Offies). In 2011, she won the Afro-Hollywood Film Award for ‘Best Playwright’ for Pandora’s Box. Ade is currently a member of Soho Theatre writers’ HUB and Writer-in-Residence at Goldsmiths University. She has also been associated with the British Film Institute.
Her company Spora Stories is probably best known for co-producing the writing festival entitled Lagos via London, a new writing festival celebrating Nigeria’s 50th anniversary, as well as producing the film Family Legacy about Sickle Cell disease.
Summary (Extract)
PRINCIPAL OSUN, a fifty-year-old man, tries to convince single-mother Toyin to enrol her unruly son Timi in his boarding school.
PRINCIPAL OSUN
(To RONKE.) Changing. (He turns back to TOYIN.) It’s always the same. First, he’s bright eyed and bushy tailed. Doing his homework on time, enjoying getting good marks, leaping up to let old ladies sit down on the bus. Praised by everyone. The apple of your eye. Then, somehow, somehow, he loses interest in school. He’s there, oh yes, but now he sits in class staring out of the window. What is he thinking about? He tells you school is boring. He doesn’t like the work. His results start to slip and he begins to play up in class. Worse, he’s beginning to get home late from school; then later and later. When he is back, he’s off out again and disappears till midnight, (Off her exp
ression.) or later. And now all sorts of people are calling for him at home, at all hours, people of a different sort to the friends he used to mix with. They call him by a strange name and he says it’s just his nickname. The school reports worsen, there are minor incidents, but it’s always ‘all a terrible mistake, Mum’…
…
…and you believe him. You want to believe him. You have to believe him because you’re helpless. There’s no role model to help him change into the kind of man you wanted him to be. You talk to him, you plead with him, you bribe him: iPods, iPads, the latest phones, clothes, hey! But to no avail…he’s still changing, now so fast, sometimes you don’t recognize the cheerful boy he was just two years ago. Those moods, so strange. So gradually you accept the truth: you need help. You have to let him go. And now the time has come.
…
So, here’s the contract. You’re signing to save him. Are you ready?
From
BLACK T-SHIRT COLLECTION
by Inua Ellams
Black T-Shirt Collection was written and performed by Inua Ellams and directed by Louise Blackwell and Thierry Lawson. Commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre and produced by Fuel, the production opened at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool, England on 9 March 2012 and then toured nationally.
Black T-shirt Collection is a heart-breaking tragedy about the growth of a family business which results in the loss of a sibling. This one-man monologue play tells the story of two close-knit foster brothers, Muhammed and Matthew, who create a successful T-shirt business in Nigeria. When homosexual Muslim brother Muhammed is caught kissing another man by a journalist, the brothers have no choice but to run away from Nigeria. After reestablishing a successful T-shirt business in Cairo, the brothers get the opportunity to spread their business to London and China. As quickly as their business grows it soon comes crashing down, as the first disagreement between the brothers is met with fatal repercussions.
About the Playwright
Inua Ellams was born in Nigeria in 1984. He moved to the UK as a teenager and now lives and works in London. He is an award-winning playwright, poet and graphic artist, who is renowned for performing his self-written monologue plays at the National Theatre, Soho Theatre and Edinburgh Festival. Ellams wrote his first play The 14th Tale in 2009, which won a prestigious Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, before returning to London for a sold-out run at the Cottesloe, National Theatre.
Other published plays by Inua Ellams include; Untitled, 14th Tale, Knight Watch and Cape.
Summary (Extract)
Muhammed and his brother were able to avoid the homophobic backlash following Muhammed’s actions, but his mother and sister were not as lucky. The last update the brother’s received from close friend Santana confirmed that their home was burnt down and their family lashed. Now in China, and at the peak of their global T-shirt business, they receive a telephone call which reconnects them with their mother and sister. Stricken with guilt Muhammed agrees to return home but Matthew has other plans.
Muhammed, he burst into Matthew’s office holding his phone – Santana’s on the line! He’s found them – Muhammed turns the speaker phone on – Hello? – There is weight in the air, the stillness before the rain – Hello? //Muhammed, where are you? // Mama, I’m fine. // Muhammed, come home, it has been too long // Mama, things aren’t…simple // You are my son Muhammed, come home – Muhammed holds his phone, and there are tears – OK, I’ll leave tomorrow – Matthew turns sharply – //err…there’s work to do, we’ll come in a week or two. // Matthew, I’m going home // We have to finish the job…er…Mama, Santana, we will call you later? // Matthew don’t you dare – Matthew shuts the phone – Muhammed, what’s up? Why are you in a rush? Business is going well…// Matthew, look around. Why are we here? Have you seen downstairs? Those people, how much is Honshen paying them? How much are the shirts? Did we come to China to exploit these people? // No! Muhammed, we are helping them // This is help? // Yes! The factory almost closed, Honshen said, we’re putting food on their tables. You said yourself, families are broken, children sent away // Oh, so it’s about you, eh? Everybody clap for Matthew Zangho, saviour of China. We have our own problems at home. You know how crazy this business is? Desperate cotton pickers sweating for coins, Americans and their slave trade farms, bribing Brazilians to shut up so they sell cheap product across the world. Second-hand shops that ‘collect for charity’ and sell Matthew, SELL! In Nairobi, Haiti. Chemicals in the fields that cause cancer; those dark-skinned kids in India paid nothing, nothing, and we are one of them! You can map global poverty down to one shirt, one black T-shirt Matthew. From our stall in Jos to this huge factory, something’s wrong, something always goes wrong. This is too big for us Matthew, let’s go home. We can control things there, we can do this. // Not with you Muhammed, not with you! They’ll kill you // I don’t care anymore! I’m tired // Why d’you want to go where you can’t be…yourself. London, Milan, San Francisco, you can be who you are there! // I don’t know who I am. I’m tired, of ticking boxes, I’m gay, I’m an ex-pat, I’m African, I’m a black African, I’m Hausa, I’m Nigerian O! Muslim, this one, that one…journalists asking stupid questions ‘What’s it like to be…I DON’T KNOW! I just want to be a man again eh? Where people look like us, talk like us, No labels, no colour, no shirts, nothing. They are waiting for us Matthew… Halima, Ayah, our family. We’re connecting death here, one shirt at a time. Let’s go home brother // I’M NOT YOUR BROTHER! You ruined my life Muhammed. I wanted to do this in Naija, build this there, but I have it here, now. I’m helping, I’m doing something right. I’m helping them, all those…those men you are fucking! Think I don’t know about Wang Bin, that I don’t see you?! 15 years we grew up together, sharing the same bed, fighting the same fights, crying together, bleeding and you kept that away from me? ME! Muhammed, ME! You still won’t talk to me about it. You faggot! Fuck off! Go back to Naija, I hope they lynch you there, you will burn in hell fire anyway, go and fuck all of them! I don’t care!
Muhammed, sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just…I’m…
Muhammed is pressed flat against the door, as far from Matthew as he can stand. His hand is to his chest as if stabbed there. He reaches for the door – Muhammed wait, let’s talk – Muhammed leaves the room, crossing the bridge over the mixing vats, its blades turning, Muhammed runs to him – slow down – he shouts, he grabs Muhammed’s hand, who snatches it back, Matthew holds his shoulder, Muhammed throws his foster brother to the ground, Matthew grabs his feet. Muhammed loses his balance.
When he gets here, Muhammed’s falling off into the churning vat, its blades turning, that cave his skull in, break through the bone, the black dye mixing with Muhammed’s blood, chewing through limbs, twisting him up. There’s no order, guilt is not enough. Nothing makes sense and Matthew, he trembles, speechless, in the room. He flinches in Jos, he shudders in the gloom, he quivers on the carpet, Halima watching. From afar, he looks like a child who had lost something old, something deep, a hopelessness grooms his eyes. Closer, by the light that holds him, his still mouth, his hunched shoulders, Matthew looks like a man who had lost everything.
– Tell me how he died – Halima whispers – WHAT HAPPENED! – Ayah shouts. Matthew cannot speak. How to begin? What not to describe? What might hurt least? – What’s in the box? – Halima asks – The first one, the first black shirt // It’s true isn’t it? You want to close the shop? – Matthew nods. Ayah stands – I can’t let you, you will not –
From
B IS FOR BLACK
by Courttia Newland
B is for Black by Courttia Newland was produced by The Post Office Theatre and first staged at the Oval House Theatre in London on 1 October 2003. This production was directed by Riggs O’Hara with the following cast: Joe Trill (Ben Nelson), Emma Rand (Kate Nelson), Carol Moses (Imani Shaw), Ronald Markham (Raymond Armitage), Dominik Golding (Michael Cerwin), Akpome Macaulay (Don Kenworthy), Daniel Booth (Jones), Leon Barr (Lamming) and Veronica
Isabel (Spencer).
Courttia Newland’s fifth play B is for Black completes the success of the Chamberlayne play trilogy, which included The Far Side and Mother’s Day. B is For Black explores the cultural and class divides between the gatekeepers and the community within the arts industry. Courttia Newland controversially chooses to place the focus of his play on lead character Ben, a black Oxford graduate, who lives in a white middle-class suburban area with his white wife. Ben is appointed as the first black senior manager for West Chamberlayne Arts. Disconnected from his own family members, Ben is now given the challenge of building relationships with the black working-class community of the Greenside estate.
About the Playwright
Courttia Newland is an acclaimed British author, playwright, and screenwriter of Jamaican and Bajan heritage. He began his professional writing career as an author in 1997, with the critically acclaimed novel Scholar. The success of his first novel encouraged Courttia to write the novels Society Within and Snakeskin. Riggs O’Hara, theatre director and founder of The Post Office Theatre, and Black British actress Carol Moses encouraged Newland to write for theatre. In 1998, Courttia Newland took their advice and collaborated with Carol Moses to produce his first stage production, Estate of Mind in 1998. The success of his first production led to Courttia Newland’s appointment as the permanent writer for The Post Office Theatre.
Other published plays by Courttia Newland includes The Far Side.
Summary (Extract)
Ben, whose new-found reconnection to the black community and his identity, grows distant from his middle-class white wife. Unable to find a way to balance his fight for black power and racial equality in the arts, whilst having a loving relationship with a white woman, Ben is forced to make a heart-breaking decision.
The Oberon Book of Monologues for Black Actors, Monologues for Men, Volume 1 Page 7