Studio 889 interview with Mfoneso Udofia of In Old Age
Mo Wilks interviewed playwright Mfoneso Udofia about her nine-play cycle of the Ufot family in the production “In Old Age” which will be performed at ArtsEmerson’s Liebergott Black Box Theater, 559 Washington Street, Boston, MA, from June 13-28. The play is courtesy of theatre company Front Porch Arts Collective @FrontPorchArtsCollective Mfoneso discussed her background as a first-generation Nigerian born in Houston who pursued writing professionally. Mfoneso discussed her mission to ensure representation of immigrant stories on theatrical stages and to explore diasporic healing. Mfoneso explained her decision to set the story in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she grew up, to provide a familiar environment for detailed writing. The interview concluded with sharing her social media handles @mfudofia and website for audience follow-up, artsemerson.org/events/in-old-age @ArtsEmerson @ersplus889 @WERS889
Interview
Mo Wilks
Welcome back inside Studio 88-9, I’m Mo Wilks. Welcome. It would seem like a difficult task to write one stage performance production, let alone nine, but that’s exactly what my guest, playwright, Mfeneso Udofia has actually done. Bravo on that accomplishment. The Ufot Family cycle written by playwright and educator and Wellesley grad Miss Udofia. The play is basically an installment in her sprawling nine-play cycle tracing generations of a Nigerian-American family. The origin story told in their migration to Houston, Texas.
And the name of the performance, the name of the production is called “In Old Age.” It hits Arts Emerson’s Liebergot Black Box Theater, which is the Paramount Center, 559 Washington Street, Saturday, this Saturday, June 13th through Sunday the 28th, and it follows Abasiama, an 80-year-old Nigerian woman living alone in Worcester, Massachusetts. I’m gonna ask about that. And so, welcome to Studio 88-9 Mfeneso Udofia. Welcome to Studio 889. Thank you very much for giving us a couple of minutes today.
M Udofia – I’m so happy to be here. It’s wonderful to meet you, Maurice.
Mo Wilks – So, share a little something about you for the audience who doesn’t necessarily know who you are.
M Udofia – my name’s Mfoneso Udofia. I am first-generation Nigerian. I was born in Houston, Texas. What else might you want to know about me? Oh, I used to, be a… I was a musician first, so I play jazz trombone, and I sing opera, and I’m also a writer, so I just gave you some bullets on a resume.
Mo Wilks – How did the musical… how’d the music… Either influence the writing, or how come you didn’t get pulled into music versus the writing?
M Udofia – Well…
Mo Wilks – Or maybe you’re… maybe you are, and I just don’t know it.
M Udofia – No, I don’t… I don’t do a lot of musical performance for public. It was one of those things for me where, it needed… I needed to have one form of art that I could do in my home and know it was just for me. Just for my family. And singing was definitely that for me. The writing, you can add a deadline, I can be within a kind of writing machine and be okay, but I didn’t want to do that singing, and I definitely didn’t want to do that in terms of instruments, so I kept that for myself.
Mo Wilks – Now, as I mentioned, writing one piece of work, art, is probably difficult. Most people would say, okay, I’ve done that, now it’s, you know, okay, I’m gonna take a break. Nine. Is that, like, a special number for you? How did you go through doing that, or did you just, like, write this entire big work and say, I gotta chop this up?
M Udofia – Okay, so I… I started out writing one. I started off real regular. It was one play. And that was The Grove, which the Huntington put on as part of the cycle. But when I first wrote the play, The Grove, I didn’t… it wasn’t great. I didn’t love it. And so, you know, when you make something, it’s not ready to be out there in the world. I put it in my drawer, and I started writing something else. And I started writing the story of Adiaga, who is the main protagonist in that play. I started writing the story of her parents, Abbasayama and Disciple, and that opened up a world for me.
And I, one play became three. I edited the grove inside of that period. Then I got interested in not just the parents, but exactly, Abbasayama’s story. I wanted to see her to her death, and that became five plays.
And then I became even more interested in the other children, which made it swell to 9. So I grew to 9. And then in the press, I had to say, it’s 9, so it would not grow anymore.
Mo Wilks – So you literally created a universe, basically.
M Udofia – I did, I did.