Latest news with #HerPortmanteau
Forbes
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The Steinberg Playwright Awards: Celebrating Writers Illuminating The Future Of American Theater
From left: Mfoniso Udofia and Christina Anderson 'What do you do for joy?' Mfoniso Udofia was a student at Wellesley College, firmly convinced she was on the lawyer track, when an insightful dean posed that simple, yet enlightening, question. And Udofia's universe shifted in a colossal way. 'That question changed everything,' says the playwright whose plays like Sojourners, runboyrun, Her Portmanteau and In Old Age have been developed and performed throughout the United States. 'I believe the subtext was: What if the thing that brings you joy could also be your career?' She started singing, then acting, then writing. 'Just saying 'yes' to what felt right,' says Udofia. Although the seed was planted, it still took time to discover she had to be an artist. 'Even after writing my first play, the Grove, I didn't fully claim the title of 'writer,' says Udofia who graduated in 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, and was terrified of not going to law school nor choosing a 'traditional' career, especially when she had no money nor idea how to make this life work. 'It took years. I was doing the work long before I ever let myself say, I'm a writer. The realization wasn't a lightning bolt—it was a slow burn.' While Udofia's entry into playwriting was 'a slow burn,' her artistry caught fire. A first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator, her plays have been seen at New York Theatre Workshop, American Conservatory Theater, Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, The Huntington, Round House Theatre, Strand Theater, and Boston Court. She has written for the shows 13 Reasons Why, A League of Their Own, Pachinko, Little America and Lessons in Chemistry. She has also developed films for HBO, Legendary, and Amazon. Most recently, Udofia—along with acclaimed playwright Christina Anderson—received the 2024 Steinberg Playwright Award. Presented by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, each year the 'Mimi' Awards are given to early and mid-career playwrights with compelling voices who display artistic excellence and illuminate American theater. Devoted to nurturing playwrights, the trust has given over $100 million to theater organizations, with a particular focus on new play commissions, development, and production. 'The Steinberg Trust is dedicated to shining a light on distinctive and powerful voices, and to investing in the future of American playwriting,' said Steinberg trustee Carole Krumland who went on to add that Anderson and Udofia are 'two brilliant playwrights whose transcendent and transformative work will continue to inspire and inform the future of this art form.' For Anderson, a prolific playwright whose work has been performed at The Acting Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Geva Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, Kansas City Repertory Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre, the award has been seismic. 'In these uncertain times, the Steinberg Playwright Award is a life-changing gift of freedom and artistic stillness to create and dream,' said Anderson. In addition to writing plays like the Ripple, the Wave That Carried Me Home, How to Catch Creation, Man in Love, Good Goods, the Ashes Under Gait City, Hollow Roots, Blacktop Sky, and pen/man/ship, Anderson is also a gifted TV writer and screenwriter who produces hip hop instrumentals. And now, more than ever, the 'Mimi' Awards seem particularly vital. Especially when it's harder to be an artist. 'These awards ensure that those who document our humanity—who help us make sense of it, who remind us, and call us to our greater selves—can afford to keep doing so,' says Mfoniso. 'Security and certainty are rarely reliable, but those elements feel especially tenuous now,' shares Anderson. 'This award is a stable force that helps an artist stay the course.' As Mfoniso observes, the world needs storytellers. 'Theater artists hold a mirror to the world, especially in the most topsy-turvy of times. And we are in the midst of some of the strangest—and potentially most dangerous—moments in history,' she says. 'As certain sectors of our community struggle to negotiate what 'the truth' actually is, as cruelty becomes the currency du jour, and as portions of society willfully forget that our humanity is something to be tendered and cultivated—instead of nurturing empathy, a skill and ultimate goal, not a weakness—artists become both the memory and the chroniclers of pathways forward.' Jeryl Brunner: Can you share when you got word that you won the Mimi Steinberg award? Mfoniso Udofia: I was actually out of the country with my partner and some friends when I got the email. It was from Deb [Deborah] Martin, who introduced herself as the Administrative Director of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Trust, asking if I had five to ten minutes to talk. My stomach dropped—in the best way—because you don't get emails like that unless they're really good. My partner saw my face as we stood in this overseas clothing store, and I just froze. I was cycling through every emotion—excitement, overwhelm, absolute joy—while also trying to steady myself. But I replied immediately because, yes, I had 5–10 minutes. In fact, I had 30. I had an hour. I had the whole that day, Deb and I got on the phone, and she told me the news. After I hung up, I screamed, fully leaning into the moment and letting the feeling take over. Christina Anderson: When I received the call, I thought it was an invitation to be on the selection panel—which I was super excited to say yes to. It never occurred to me that I may have won anything. Deborah was like, 'the panel has already convened, and they've selected you!' I stood in my living room, speechless. Brunner: How will this award help you continue to be an artist? Anderson: It provides the breathing room to explore dream projects. I've already written a play that I don't think I would've written before receiving this award. I've carried the idea for almost ten years. But there's always this quiet pressure to write something marketable and fairly accessible. So, I'd gravitate towards other ideas in that lane. But this most recent play is a true passion project. This award ushers in what I hope to be a new phase in my writing. Udofia: Theater—God bless it—is my heart, but it does not always pay well. I'm currently mounting all nine plays of my Ufot Cycle in the Boston area over the next two years. It's a huge undertaking, and I feel incredibly blessed to have productions happening. But practically speaking? This money will help me sustain. It gives me breathing room to focus on the work. Brunner: What is some of the best writing advice you have received? Anderson: Paula Vogel told me, 'Be your own adjective.' It's maverick speak, and I love it. It's just an awesome piece of advice because there's freedom in it and power and strength. A Christina Anderson play is its own adventure. It's inspired by the things that inspires me. I define what's lifted up. Who's lifted up. My theatrical sensibility is filled with curiosity, poetry, possibility, and I try to instill that vision into each play I write. That sensibility also nourishes me to write the next one, and the next one, and the next. Brunner: Mfoniso, in the New York Times, you said that you are determined to show the nuances of African immigrant experiences—'that the continent isn't tragic, and its people aren't broken.' Can you share more? Udofia: I often teach from Binyavanga Wainaina's How to Write About Africa, a satirical takedown of how the continent is often depicted in literature. The first time I read it, I laughed—and then realized I was bleeding. Because so much of what I had seen followed that same tired script. I'm not afraid to write about pain—several of my plays tackle difficult themes—but I'm also invested in joy. In laughter. In eros, when sparks fly between two people and a whole new world begins. In healing, when trauma doesn't remain the defining factor in a character's life. I'm drawn to the African everyman—the Nigerian immigrant whose struggles, triumphs, and everyday moments are deeply human. The nuances might be different, but the core of the story? It's something we all recognize. Brunner: Christina, can you talk more about the book you are working on that explores playwriting as an accessible artistic life practice? Anderson: Being a Black woman writing the type of plays that I write, it's been a tricky journey navigating people's assumptions and expectations of how my stories should move and breathe on stage. I'm definitely not inventing the wheel, but I am stretching my ideas about how to move a story forward, how to capture and manipulate time on stage, how do we explore an immense history in an intimate theatrical setting. I braid the speculative and evidential into the lives of my characters to hopefully ignite conversation at a molecular level, a nuance level. And I'm also really committed to telling a good story. Can we see ourselves and see the world in these plays, on this stage. My plays, my playwriting practice is my activism that has made me a lifelong scholar. I'm writing a book that will explore this way of writing and, again, hopefully, encourages others to consider writing plays for their communities, their families, their circles, themselves.
Boston Globe
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Unpacking family baggage in Udofia's ‘Her Portmanteau' at Central Square Theater
Advertisement But compression does not equal contraction when a playwright is possessed of a vision as rich as Udofia's. The past lives vividly in 'Her Portmanteau,' as Udofia examines how choices made and actions taken, or untaken, have a way of reverberating down the years. A certain slackness creeps in a couple of times, but not enough to put a dent in the overall excellence of the coproduction by Central Square Theater and the Black-led Front Porch Arts Collective. Lorraine Victoria Kanyike and Patrice Jean-Baptiste in "Her Portmanteau." Maggie Hall Photography Directed by Tasia A. Jones, 'Her Portmanteau' features a flat-out wonderful cast of three: Patrice Jean-Baptiste as sixty-something matriarch Abasiama Ufot, facing hard questions from the daughter who was raised in Nigeria by Abasiama's former husband; Jade A. Guerra as that daughter, Iniabasi Ekpeyong, 36, whose own portmanteau is stuffed with emotional baggage; and Lorraine Victoria Kanyike as the dutiful Adiaha Ufot, 30, who tries to play peacemaker in the charged exchanges between Iniabasi and Abasiama. (Adiaha calls Abasiama 'Mommy.' Iniabasi emphatically does not.) Advertisement 'Her Portmanteau' concerns itself with matters of language and culture and legacy, and, writ large, the immigrant experience. But there's nothing generic about Udofia's characters. She has taken pains to craft individualized portraits of members of the Ufot family in all their complexity and, especially in Abasiama's case, contradiction. Udofia deploys silence in 'Her Portmanteau' to a much greater degree than in the first three plays. Guerra's Iniabasi says nothing for a long period after she arrives at the apartment, virtually chilling the air. When she does speak, it is to throw barbs at her mother, criticizing the ingredients she uses in meals, and, most damningly, describing Abasiama as to her face as a woman 'who can't even speak her real language. Yawping at me in English!' Udofia, who grew up in Southbridge, Mass., and attended Wellesley College, is an actor as well as a playwright. Indeed, she played Abasiama in ' Chunks of that dialogue are rendered in the Ibibio language, sometimes with subtitles that provide English translations, sometimes not. That approach is effective in terms of keeping both sides of the family's heritage on an equal footing, but it will likely make some members of the audience wondering what they've missed. This one did. Advertisement When it comes to the overpowering ending of 'Her Portmanteau,' though, no words are needed. HER PORTMANTEAU Play by Mfoniso Udofia. Directed by Tasia A. Jones. Coproduction by Central Square Theater and Front Porch Arts Collective. At Central Square Theater, Cambridge. Through April 20. Tickets $25 to $96. , or 617-576-9278 x1 Don Aucoin can be reached at
Boston Globe
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Her Portmanteau' grapples with the pains of separation and connection in family
Advertisement In the Ufot Cycle's second drama Advertisement But what about Iniabasi? For the past 36 years, as we learn in 'Her Portmanteau,' Iniabasi (Jade A. Guerra, 'The Piano Lesson') has been living in Nigeria with her father, and hasn't seen her mother in person in more than 20 years. She has a 6-year-old son of her own, Kufre. But her father has now died, and she's arrived in the States looking for help—and a connection—with her mother, Abasiama (Patrice Jean-Baptiste). Dawn Simmons, co-artistic director of the Front Porch Arts Collective, at rehearsal for "Her Portmanteau." Nile Scott Studios Tasia A. Jones, the play's director, says Abasiama had resolved to return to Nigeria, but life got in the way. Before she knew it, she was putting down roots. 'Abasiama's intention was always to go back or bring her child back with her. It was not meant to be a forever departure from each other, and she's been struggling for the last 36 years to find her way back to her daughter.' While Abasiama has kept in touch with Iniabasi and has been sending her money after Ukpong's passing, she's also dealing with a strained marriage due to Disciple's deteriorating mental state. The Cycle's third play 'runboyrun,' to be released as a podcast this spring, chronicles Disciple's unraveling and its roots in a traumatic childhood in war-torn Africa. ''Runboyrun' is Disciple's backstory, which helps you understand what makes a man like this,' Udofia said in a Zoom interview. 'You'll wonder where your empathy lies with him and where your boundaries are with him.' Udofia, who grew up in Southbridge and went to Wellesley College, was mulling over the idea of birthright in writing 'Her Portmanteau.' 'What is each woman owed?' she asks. 'What does each woman think they know about history and the history of their family?' Advertisement Indeed, Iniabasi has no idea of the challenges Abasiama endured when she was pregnant with her, alone in a foreign country with an absentee husband. Even Adiaha, who's now in her early 30s, can't fathom 'the emotional reality of what it means to be in Abasiama's position,' Udofia says. 'So these three women are sitting on narratives and assumptions and histories that need to be drawn out. And they're duking it out about who has first position, who has primacy, and what does it mean to have two eldest daughters. So that they can then go, 'Well, how do we take a step forward?' Set inside Adiaha's New York City apartment, the play finds the three women together for the first time in more than two decades. The story heaves with subtext and barely concealed pain, anger, resentment, and sadness. 'There's so much happening underneath the surface with these three people,' Jones explained, 'so much unspoken history between them and unanswered questions, all of this stuff that's just hanging in the air that they're not talking about. Then when they finally do start to talk about it, it can be explosive.' The title's dual meaning refers to both the old-fashioned red suitcase that Iniabasi totes with her to America and the combination of Abasiama's two 'eldest daughters,' whose lives shaped her own and gave it meaning and remain at the heart of their blended family. For Lorraine Victoria Kanyike ('Chicken and Biscuits'), who plays Adiaha in 'Her Portmanteau,' 'There's a lot of push and pull between the two of us of who's really in charge here, who's really the eldest daughter in Mom's eyes.' Advertisement In 'The Grove,' Kanyike pointed out, Abasiama tells her, 'You are the 'Adiaha' I could keep here.' I had to send my other one away.' So I think Abasiama is reckoning with all of her life choices.' Indeed, a through-line through all of the Ufot Cycle plays, Kanyike said, is 'the theme of sacrifice and the rewards or the consequences of your sacrifices. Iniabasi is both a reward and a consequence but also a person that Abasiama holds a lot of shame and pain around.' Meanwhile, Jones explained, Inibiasi, 'is hurting, and she doesn't know how to express the hurt. So she lashes out a little bit. She doesn't know how to express what she's been feeling for so many years.' With 'Her Portmanteau' and 'runboyboy,' which was presented in two recent public readings, the Ufot Cycle is now moving beyond the Huntington mothership. Five more plays are still to come over the next year and a half. Lee Mikeska Gardner, artistic director of Central Square Theater, says a project of this scope could only Advertisement The Ufot Cycle also has the potential to boost the Boston theater scene's profile nationally. Simmons says she's heard from playwrights around the country that there's buzz about this major citywide undertaking. 'They're like, 'Whoa, this is epic.' What does it mean for the future that an entire community can rally behind a writer like this? This is a big opportunity.' HER PORTMANTEAU By Mfoniso Udofia, co-produced by Central Square Theater and the Front Porch Arts Collective. At: Central Square Theater, March 27-April 20. Tickets: from $25; 617-576-9278;
