A lot can happen in 3 months.
During the month of March, I went into rehearsals for a revelatory choreoplay titled Foreign Bodies written by slam poet champion and Haitian-American Eboni Hogan. The show went up the first week of April at the Living Theater as part of the brilliant Women Centerstage Festival on the Lower East Side of New York City.
The play tells the incredibly honest story of Eboni's six month trip to Accra, Ghana and her experiences along the way with mental illness, whirlwind romances, endless nights of bar-hopping, and a life-threatening issue with her appendix.
I can't fully describe what a challenge the process was.
At first read, I was thrown off by the dream-like format of the script. But, what drew me back to it was the similarity in age between myself and the playwright and my ability to relate to her description of modern-day life and people in West Africa. Once on board, portraying my (several) character(s) wasn't so easy. I had to go from a cafe hipster to a brutally lynched woman to a severely high college student to a fresh off-the-coast slave to a haughty nurse to a cold doctor and end as a completely sane member of an ensemble. It was an obstacle course. In fact, it was madness - just like it was supposed to be. But, man, the peace and calm that occurred at the end of each performance, that moment where the entire ensemble shared the same sense of the playwright's self-discovery, was incredible. It reminded me of the value of going through a good struggle every once in awhile. You come out stronger, sharper, wiser...and more grateful for this gift called life.
Then, in May, came the release of the Spring Issue of APPLAUSE AFRICA magazine, started in Nigeria by my friend and constant businessman Michael Ikotun and his partner Adebowale Folorunsho. In it, are special interviews with international music star Ayo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, and Chinedu Echeruo, founder of HopStop, everyone's go-to-website for subway and bus directions in major American cities. There's also fresh and understandable advice from young business leaders and a thought-provoking article entitled "An Unpopular Perspective on the Popular Fela" by yours truly.
To purchase this high-quality graphic issue for $5 (plus $2 shipping), send an e-mail to mutiyatspeaks@gmail.com with the following information:
- Name
- E-mail address
- Mailing Address
- Number of Copies
You will receive a payment request through the service provider PayPal and your order will be shipped to your address. If you can't make this one, check my blog again in August for the Summer 2012 issue.
So what's the story with the month of June? A new play!
For the past year, I've been adapting my previous work Memoirs of an Oyibo/Acata for a one-act stage play entitled Sunny Came Home. The story focuses on a classic struggle that first-generation Americans deal with: the pursuit of modernity versus the pursuit of tradition. I am very eager to see how the audience, some of whom will be Nigerian-Americans, receive it.
Sunny Came Home will have it's first public reading in the New Works Reading Series, part of the 2012 DC Black Theatre Festival in Washington DC, Saturday, June 30, 2012. The performance starts 1:00pm at the Blackburn Center on the campus of Howard University.
So, there we have it. Challenging roles, challenging Fela, and challenging tradition. Hopefully, I'll get to rest in July and watch other athletes pursuit the challenge of the 2012 Olympics.
Stay tuned for updates on the play and other musings along the way ;)
