Playwright Mfoniso Udofia Might Like to Get a Drink From the ‘Bubbler’

What made you want to become a playwright?
I don’t think I woke up and said, “Yes, this is for me.” I had wanted to be a lawyer. I had the dreams of my parents so firmly set inside of me. Then I got to Wellesley College and decided, or learned about myself, that that was not who I was. I started trying different artistic forms. I sang opera. Then I took an acting class. I got out into the world in 2009, when every single economic tragedy had hit. I started writing then, but not because I wanted to be a writer. I was writing as a playwright because that was the form I had last studied. By that time, I’d read what felt like at least 200-plus plays. And that’s how it started, not from any dream.

You’ve done plays. You’ve done film. You’ve done TV. Do you have any interest in writing a novel?
I have an interest in that, but I think you will most likely see me doing short stories first. I like that bright burst. I think they’re quite difficult to get right as well. But because of the magnitude of the play cycle I’m writing, I’m going to wait a beat, rest, and see what naturally wants to come out of me.

Courtesy photo

The cycle is nine plays about the same family. Are they all written?
Eight of them are, as of today. I’m also writing them out of order.

How difficult is it to make dialogue sound natural?
For me, I think because I was an actor first, it’s not awful. I will tell you, I take my crack at structure first. I can be a bit of a structuralist, so I think about what form this play wants to take. After that, I will do my overlays of dialogue. I actually act out all the roles. So I move it away from the head and into the body, which is why, when I’m writing, I like to be alone, or else I look like a crazy person.

Where do you get your ear for dialogue? Do you eavesdrop on people in public?
I do. I am a keen listener as to how people put their sentences together. I know that my way of doing it is quite strange because of how I grew up. When I was a child, I had a Nigerian accent. So there’s something about my musicality, even as my accent dropped away or faded into the background. I speak with a mostly central-Massachusetts accent. On top of that, when my parents first came to this country, they landed in Houston, Texas, so there are southernisms as well. And then, because of British colonization in Nigeria, there are Britishisms like “bloody.” Then I also say, “I’d like to get a drink from the ‘bubbler.’”

Why do you think Nigerians are heavily represented in the arts and specifically in literature?
In literature, that’s very different than when we’re talking about drama. I feel as if that surge was earlier than the theater and really crested with everybody knowing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her work.

What about Chinua Achebe? Things Fall Apart is pretty close to a perfect novel.
It’s the story of what it is to be lost in translation in the homeland you come from. It located, for me, a conditionality that I know I come out of. For me, yes, it is perfect.

Do you have a signature, like Harold Pinter’s pauses or David Mamet’s “Mametspeak”?
I think my plays come with a key, because I write with a bit of a musician’s brain. So a musical key. As opposed to the Pinter pause, for me, a period is just so that you understand the flow of thought, but you never stop until you see me write the word “silence.” And then you only speak when it becomes so uncomfortable that another word has to be said. By the time you get to a silence, it’s ugly. So that’s definitely part of my writing.

Courtesy photo

Do you insist on absolute fidelity to your script?
I have been open to collaboration, but my instinct is actually true lockdown. I will always entertain the question of “Why do you think that?” And if it’s right, I’ll move it, but then it’s on the page and must be said that way. Again, it’s tied to the music in my head, and there are just certain things that break a rhythm.

Who is your favorite playwright?
I would say Wole Soyinka, because he has the audacity to put ritual onstage and not to explain it but to allow the audience to be inside of something they might not have a full understanding of, but he still crafts a story that they can get. It’s beautiful craftsmanship. And I also love Tarell Alvin McCraney. I can’t name just one. It’s like different plays for different moments in your life. Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play is extraordinary, as is Donnetta Lavinia Grays’s Last Night and the Night Before.

Is there a dream theater for you?
Yeah, and I’m getting close to that dream right now. The thought of being at the Huntington, which is a Broadway-size house, is thrilling. But I want to put alongside that, if I could find a way to be programmed in London and also in West Africa, for a full-scale production, that would be like a real cherry on top.

Is there an actor you dream of working with?
Folake Olowofoyeku from Bob Hearts Abishola. The first time I saw her was on Transparent. And I’m always amazed by Michaela Coel. If she could come and do a part in Runboyrun, I would be exceptionally happy. So those are examples, but usually, when I write in my head, I see characters who are not necessarily celebrities. I see people on the street, refractions of and amalgamations of human beings.

Biggest difference between writing for TV and film versus the stage?
On the stage, the whole story is held inside the dialogue, and so how these people are speaking and moving is how I’m building the story. In TV and film, I find that to be less the case. I’m building the story through what the camera sees. Dialogue is almost a secondary position—the camera is the eye. I have to write what the camera sees with real proficiency, or else it doesn’t matter what the dialogue is doing.

Thing you like most about working in TV or film?
I love that it has more access points. It’s harder to get to the theater. It’s more money to get to the theater. But most people have a Netflix account or an Amazon account, so to tell, say, an immigrant story on film or TV means more people get to see that. More people’s minds might be changed, or you might color a worldview that might make the world a better place. I love, love, love theater, opera, and ballet, but they are just harder to access.

What do you think all great plays have in common?
They illuminate something about humanity on stage and do not necessarily answer a question but leave that for the audience to interrogate.

Is there a play that you wish you had written?
I adored The Band’s Visit, which is a musical. It was such a small thing. It wasn’t overly spectacular, and it did make me weep at the humanity, and it followed very few of the tricks of musical theater. I didn’t know you could do that when I saw it, so I was just floored by its audacity to be simple. And I chase that honesty in my writing.

Have you ever wanted to write a musical?
Yes, and I did think for a while that one of the plays inside of this cycle was going to be a musical. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of work, and I am in the middle of writing something right now with Emily Saliers [of the Indigo Girls], which will end up being a musical. And so that’s exciting.

You adapted Othello. What’s your favorite Shakespeare play?
Me and Shakespeare, sometimes we fight. And I do say pretty publicly that I am not a Shakespeare fiend. When the Play On! project approached me to do this, I picked the one that I knew because I didn’t know too many of them. I thought that Othello was a romance, and then I got inside and really grappled with who and what Iago was, and my 10th-grade understanding of romance was blown apart. But out of all of them, my favorite might be Romeo and Juliet. I think we misunderstand Juliet so much. She’s a hot-blooded kid, and we put a lot of poetics on top of what I think is a pretty lusty, bawdy play about dumb kids who end up dying over a series of bad decisions. I also have a very soft spot in my heart for King Lear.

Is it a goal of yours to see your work performed in Nigeria?
It is. If I could get my play on the ground in West Africa, specifically in Nigeria, that would be a dream for me.

You call yourself a storyteller first and foremost. Aren’t we all?
I think so. It’s just how present it wants to be inside your life. I mean, a part of what humanity is is telling the story of the day to your partner. But I activate that and go, “My role is to do that.”

Name one thing Bostonians should know about Worcester.
I’m gonna say that in Worcester—and if I can include Southbridge and some of these other rural pockets around it—there’s a wealth of different kinds of learning that’s happening. Southbridge made a person like me. Worcester made a person like me. And so I’d urge Bostonians to remember that hubs of learning can happen differently in different areas, but they are happening.

Photo via Creative Commons/Beyond My Ken

By the Numbers

Making History at the Huntington

The theater’s dramatic digits take center stage.

0

Number of tax-exempt theaters that existed in the United States before the playhouse that is now the Huntington opened in 1925.

739

Number of seats in the Huntington Theatre.

14,000

Number of square feet in the planned extension to the current theater building.

3.5 million

Size of the audience the Huntington Theatre Company has played to since its founding 43 years ago.

18

Number of plays presented at the Huntington that have gone on to Broadway or
Off-Broadway.

2013

Year the Huntington won a Regional Theatre Tony Award.