Alfred Fagon.

Last Friday, I won the Alfred Fagon Award for Best new play, Once Upon A Time In Sokoto.

I’ve been working on this play for about five years now, and it’s been one of the most challenging experiences of my writing life, for a number of reasons. Finally placing it before an audience was a humbling moment… hearing the laughter and tears from only a staged reading of a handful of scenes was deeply emotional and affirming. I sincerely hope this play gets to meet an audience one day.

Above all winning The Alfred Fagon Award was a blessing really beyond my wildest dreams. I have never won an award for playwriting – this is the first – and this play specifically dramatises the power of language and literature. I’m so grateful, so SO grateful, to the readers and judging panel for seeing all I was trying to do. I wanna applaud other winners: Ilayda McIntosh, Leanna Benjamin - it was a pleasure to share the evening with you - and all the nominees, longlisted and shortlisted. May your plays find their audiences.

My deepest gratitude goes to my long time partner-in-crime, Kate McGrath and the team at Fuel, my agent, Tanya Tillett, the experts who have guided and facilitated this play, Fatima Kelleher and Zaahida Nabagereka. To Sasha Salmon who held me up when I was most broken by the story, to Daniel Bailey for being my boy; for always being a supportive voice, and to Rufus Norris, Nina Steiger, Indhu Rubasingham and the National Theatre for initially commissioning this play.

Shout out to the actors on the day, Sule, Layo, Toheeb, Antonia, and Natasha for stage directions and Brigitte Adela for directing the reading.

It’s been described as an epic, it is, but fundamentally it a story about an unlikely friendship between a slave and her former owner; two incredible women caught between the fall of the Sokoto Empire and the rise of the British Empire.

I hope it finds a home and y’all get to see it in all its glory.

Photos by Sharon Wallace / AFA.

🙏🏿🙏🏿

#TenThingsLearnt w/ Dec 9

#TenThingsLearnt w/ Dec 9

1. A bakery owner in Chicago discovered that her long time customer was actually her son!

2. Coca-Cola abandoned its goal to reduce single-use plastic.

3. The culture war was a distraction from the class war.

4. Ethiopia, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa all have 13-month calendars.

5. Female bees sting male bees and throw them outta the hive in order to survive the winter.

6. A quarter of the population of Gaza is under 10 years old.

7. Queen Elizabeth refused to allow Israeli officials inside Buckingham Palace.

8. Hippos spend more time in the air than we thought. They run so fast they can be airborne for up to 15% of their stride cycle.

9. Woolly mammoths were roaming the earth when the great pyramids were under construction.

10. Japan have developed a new kind of biodegradable plastic that disintegrates in ocean water in a few hours!

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Dec 2

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Dec 2

1. The Oxford Union voted that Israel was an apartheid state committing genocide.

2. The great pacific garbage patch is bigger than Peru; a thick soup of fragmented plastic.

3. 250,000 tonnes of plastics are in the ocean. We all are literally waste-men.

4. People who identify as White make 7% of the global human population.

5. There are 300 types of Octopuses.

6. George R. R. Martin was a screenwriter before he became a novelist.

7. The belief that we are living in a simulation grows more and more plausible.

8. For 150 years, Latin Americans paid Europeans to “breed out” they’d darker skinned citizens.

9. More enslaved people were taken to the US from Angola than anywhere else.

10. 350,000 African artefacts, including human remains, were found in Cambridge Uni’s archives.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Nov 25

#TenThingsLearnt

1. The first computers were built to calculate distance for more precise artillery fire.

2. ‘Syncopate’ can also mean ‘to shorten’.

3. Nicole Kidman physique is amazing at 50! Turns out, she 57!

4. Britain still has 14 overseas territories.

5. The FBI admitted to having no legal basis for rejecting the warrant for the war criminal’s arrest.

6. “A Karen with a Dick is a Drake.” #KenDrake #Liemore

7. Black women in Europe were once banned from wearing their hair out in public.

8. Unwashed pillows have 17,000 times more bacteria than toilets.

9. No one in The Importance Of Being Earnest, is actually called Earnest.

10. Lin Manuel Miranda wrote parts of Moana (part 1).

#TenThingsLearnt w/ 18Nov

1. The Pope believes what’s happening has the characteristics of a Genocide.

2. China has 230 times the military shipbuilding capacity of the United States.

3. ‘Multipolarity’ is a newish term in foreign policy, and refers to a world with multiple super powers.

4. Bob Marley’s song lyrics in “war” are almost entirely taken from Haile Selassie I’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Oct 4th, 1963.

5. Water Buffalo can hold their breath for up to five minutes and swim underwater.

6. Rainbows are created when sunlight passes through water droplets in the atmosphere causing the light to split and bend. This is called refraction.

7. The language spoken in SIMS is an actual language.

8. Haitian French differs from Quebec French, both differ from Congolese French.

9. Resistance training can completely eradicate ‘menopause belly’.

10. Daniel Hannan aka ‘Lord Hannan of Kingsclere’ is a man of questionable agendas.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Nov 11

1. Uppercase letters are called that because they were stored in the upper drawer of the printing press. Lowercase letters… lower drawer.

2. Trump is so bad at business he bankrupted HIS OWN casinos.

3. China has more triple A star students than America HAS students.

4. The English word ‘Accent’ comes from the Latin words ‘ad’ & ‘cantos’ which mean ‘song added to speech’.

5. The word 'miniature' came from the Latin word ‘miniare’ - the lead paint used by artists.

6. The body fails to make distinctions between reality and imagination; it records the effects of both. Regardless, the body keeps the score.

7. Instagram reduces visibility of images with lots of text.

8. Back in the day, there was beef between Tottenham and Hackney NOT Peckham - got this wrong on stage.

9. The Pacific Ocean covers a third of earth’s surface. The Atlantic covers a fifth.

10. Mikey J Asante scored Kneecap.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Nov 4

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Nov 4

1. Sky Tv is the ghetto. They don’t care about customers.

2. Many tactical missiles are more powerful than the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.

3. Chess champions burn upwards of 6,000 calories a day during tournaments — sitting still & thinking.

4. ‘Recrudescence’ means the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.

5. America *thinks like Kamala, but *feels like Trump. Feelings Trump thought.

6. The ten richest people in the world became 64B richer the day Trump won.

7. Babies are small nuclear reactors.

8. Psychedelic drugs open up the brain on a cellular level and could be used to cure stroke patients.

9. Every year, people gather in Nigeria to hold a candle vigil for Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine.

10. A cloud weighs a million tonnes.

#TenThingsLearnt W/C Oct28

A good week:

1. Lauryn Hill’s voice only grows more golden.

2. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, has never adequately applied to Palestinians… because there’s never been a ‘Post’ period.

3. Ibn Wahhab was also a hypocritical wasteman.

4. Lego have failed to to make lego bricks outta recycled plastic.

5. Lilly Collins is a brilliant stage actor. #Barcelona

6. It took 13 years for Dante to write The Divine Comedy.

7. ‘Bad - Enoch’ is the perfect name. She is Enoch Powell, but worse.

8. Many a time a man’s mouth broke his nose - Irish proverb.

9. The Royal Company was eventually integrated into Unilever.

10. Sir George Dashwood Taubman Goldie (May 20, 1846 – August 20, 1925), sold Nigeria to Britain for £865,000.

10 Things I learnt last week.

W / C Oct 21

1. U.S. Parole boards are racist and random as hell.

2. An Israeli soldier admitted to CNN that he drove over hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza with bulldozers.

3. The names: Nuru, Nora, Nur, Noor, Nera, Nehara, Inara & Niamh all roughly mean the same thing – light!

4. Pharelle’s charity is actually dope.

5. Too many cultural institutions across the UK still have Aboriginal remains - the bodies of babies - stolen from Australia.

6. Fascism is a nationalist political movement that builds a cult around an all-powerful leader who vows to protect his loyal subjects from racially inferior others and the enemy within. #Trump

7. Harry Potter and The Cursed Child is also a Queer love story. Initially, it wasn’t.

8. “The violence of the oppressed does not justify their oppression*”

9. Damon Wayans once said “I’m a people person, but people ruin that”. And I get that.

10. Hitler studied Jim Crow laws, to understand systematic persecution.

*Can this become a poem?

On Terrorism.

5 years ago I was walking through Waterloo Station in London and a white man shoulder-charged me, knocked me down to ground and spat ‘take that fucking hat off’. He was referring to my Zanna Bukka hat; the ones I always wear. The following week I ordered five more. Last week, I also ordered five more. And every time racism and Islamophobia bares its teeth, I crown myself with what it is they hate, and stand even taller, walk prouder. In the wake of all this, I will order five more.

Most people, friends and family, think I wear them for pleasure, but I wear them for pain. I wear them to own the fear. Every. Single. Time. I expect to be assaulted, because this is England.

I’ve been touring An Evening With An Immigrant since 2016. Since Brexit, I’ve travelled up and down England, across the planet, telling my immigration story in an attempt to humanise us to those who think we are animals. Wherever I tell the story in another country, I research its immigration policy and narrativise it; I inform the privileged few in the theatre what is being done to immigrants there.

When I performed the show at the Sydney Opera House, 10% of the audience walked out because they didn’t want to hear the truth. This is the truth: none of what’s happening is surprising, it’s just disappointing. Because I / we / immigrants have been saying this for years.

We have been warning about what pathetic, inexperienced, useless, successive political leaders were fostering. From Badenoch saying just last week that ‘integration has failed’ to Sunak, Johnson, May, Patel, Braverman, Jenrick, Cameron, all those talentless walking cesspits of bile and bitterness craving power and demonising us in order to get it, never caring about the repercussions… this is it.

The chickens have come home to roost; their families, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunties, voters, electorate, constituents are torching our streets because they were miseducated and whipped into fleshy infernos of fear and furious inferiority complexes, then pointed at us. They are terrorists, homegrown by our politicians, now roaming the streets and hunting us. I have no words for them or for the terrorists, just for us.

So, to us immigrants, to refugees and asylum seekers: Don’t go looking for a fight. If arrested your citizenship could be revoked, the Home Office could claim you are a person ‘not of good character’ which would elongate your court battle, or worse, your ongoing claim could be completely rejected. All of this happened to me in my 26-year long battle. Instead, stay safe. Be vigilant. Find your tribe - people who genuinely care about you - Knuckle Down. Hold tight. For now.

A final thought. We must counterbalance the endless extreme stories told by mainstream media. They stoke fear and create extreme reactions. TV and Film industries can play powerful roles in commissioning nuanced and humanising migration stories. Too many of us who try to tell these are turned down or asked to write Black or Brown rom coms and crime dramas.

We won’t stop trying to tell our truths.

Xx

3Sis x Canada

I have only won one award for my work in theatre. It was for The 14th Tale, 15 years ago. I know awards don’t really matter - I don’t write for them - but something alchemical happens when you win something, when the industry seems to say ‘I see you, I see what you have done, keep doing it.’

Three Sisters is a play about the Biafran Genocide, about Nigeria’s civil war. When I saw this production in Canada earlier this year, I could not help but see what is occurring in Gaza reflected in the stories, lives, and bodies of the actors on stage. The judges of the Dora Awards saw the universality of human suffering, the attempt to find joy and meaning despite such difficulties, and awarded the incredible artists who came together, for telling my story, for letting it play out.

We won two awards, for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble.

Thank you to: Akosua Amo-Adem, Virgilia Griffith, Daren A. Herbert, Sterling Jarvis, ID Leslie, Tawiah M’Carthy, Ngabo Nabea, Oyin Oladejo, Tony Ofori, Makambe K. Simamba, Ordena Stephens-Thompson, & Amaka Umeh, Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, Weyni Mengesha, to Soulpepper Theatre and Obsidian Theatre Co-Production for mounting this production.

To the family members of people in conflict areas, people from Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, Kenya, Haiti and more, I know you are experiencing varying forms of survivor’s guilt in varying intensities, but we are privileged and lucky not be in the line of fire, so try to keep your guilt at bay and bear witness. Document the stories that you find, that come your way that future generations might learn and understand what it is happening now.

#thaswassup

No Moose by Mark Waldron

NO MOOSE
by Mark Waldron

An English seaside town at dusk, warmth
radiated by the stone buildings, warmth
emerges like sunburnt evening promenaders
from the stone buildings, warmth is secreted
like a pheromone from the stone buildings,
warmth emanates like the warmth of
the breath of a monotone speech from
the stone buildings, streetlamps brighten
on a darkening sky, a middle-aged man bares
his teeth and cracks through the choc’ of his
choc-ice as an unfortunate explorer might
crack through the ice in the thaw on
the Hudson Bay, his lips stretched back in
a grimace of terror as he vanishes forever.

And there, in the chip shop, lit by its strip
lights, a cramped and uncomfortable moose,
its antlers brush ceiling, its head pushes hard
against counter, its twitching rump against wall
with informative pictures of fish. A moose in
a setting like this is like a dog in your pool,
perhaps not a vagrant in your bedroom, sitting
on your pillow, or a noose in your playpen,
or sick on your patio, but a dog in your pool.
So remove it. Lit by the lights of the chippy, an
ordinary street; there’s a man with a choc-ice,
the fading scent of a moose, the heartening
odour of vinegar, and the warmth given off
like a sigh of relief by the stone buildings.

From Meanwhile, Trees (Bloodaxe Books, 2016)