Mfoniso Udofia (MU): So, where do we start?

Gloria Oladipo (GO): I don’t know. I’m such a big—I hate the word “fan,” because I feel like “fan” doesn’t capture it. But I’m so enamored with your work and your vibe as a storyteller. There’s something very exciting about being in the room with another Nigerian. To get started, I could just ask you what you had for breakfast. I guess, ‘theoretically’, we should talk about the play.

MU: I just came back from a writing residency in Italy, so for breakfast, I had an Italian biscuit.

GO: Oh my god, that is so glamorous.

MU: Well, thank you—it’s the result of a lot of applications. Just like you applied [for the Emerging Writers Group] and got in for the Public, I applied and got in there. It’s just another application process. But it was a wonderful time, a wonderful part of Italy, with a wonderful crew at Bogliasco.

GO: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

MU: I will say it is quite wonderful to be talking to another Nigerian playwright as well. I read your play—one that is so directly tackling mental health issues, and also has a really fresh, maybe even an acerbic, biting voice that I don’t always encounter in Nigerian work or out of the West African canon…Not to say it doesn’t exist, because we know it does—but a profound congratulations, and I’m also very thankful to be talking to you.

GO: Thank you so much. I love that word, acerbic.

MU: Yeah, I mean you’re reading the play and you’re laughing, and then—there are some razor blades! And you’re thinking, I’m gonna stop laughing right now for a second, because that hurt. And so, you know, there’s a cost inside your play.

GO: Thank you.

MU: Can I ask about your inspirations behind writing the piece?

GO: I had people close to me navigating mental health issues, while also myself dealing with these pent-up feelings of rage. I really just mediating on [the question of]: How do you deal with these feelings?  How do you deal with the lack of dealing with it? I feel that is endemic to our people. I feel that we have a language and a metaphor for almost everything, and so many ways of describing our experiences, and then when it comes to the internal battle of mental illness, it just goes silent. There’s this blanket of, ‘We won’t discuss this.’ So I guess I wanted to give space to that. And also, I was interested in the question of, ‘What does it mean to try and create homes elsewhere? and the cost of doing that. To emphasize though, this is a work of fiction. I have a bone to pick with people—and this is not what you’re doing—but a lot of people will assume that because I’m Nigerian-American and this character is Nigerian-American, that it’s a one-to-one story. And I feel like that is racist. We’ll get to that later.

MU: We could get to it now! I have a bone to pick with it as well.

GO: I feel like white people get to have fiction based around little kernels of their life all the time. But as soon as it is a non-white person, it’s always assumed to be a level of memoir. We’re never allowed fiction. That, to me, just feels very racist, as if our worlds are limited, as though we cannot assert imagination within our world, and that if we were to create fiction, it would also just sound like a white person.

MU: I will tell you one of the biggest breakthroughs inside of my writing life. And I don’t know if she knows this, but I used to work for Dr. Saidiya Hartman and—

GO: Oh my gosh! Way to just drop her in—mm hm!

MU: Mm hm, I did. She read one of my plays. and I was talking to her about some of the feedback it had received. It was The Grove, and that is a play that holds chunks of me, but not all of me. And she said, well, you wrote it down, so now it’s a fiction. In order to take something out of yourself, put it down, and reframe it so that you understand something, you have done something to it which makes it a fiction. I think she was drawing from Toni Morrison, who said we have the right to imagine.

GO: I’m going to borrow that. And it makes me think about one thing about your work that I love, and that excites me just talking to you, is that it feels like you’re drawing from so much more than just the canon of—not just personal life, but the life beyond you, the life in front of you. I’m curious, beyond Saidiya Hartman and Toni Morrison, are there other writing mentors—even if you haven't spoken to them before—who illuminated something for you?

MU: Ben Okri is one. A Famished Road—what I loved about that novel is that it did not explain itself. And so I had to run into it. It did not run into me, and I appreciated that, along with how it held a lot of Nigerian folklore. Interestingly, I find a lot of my inspiration inside of contemporary African narrative. I love the work of Yaa Gyasi. Everything from Homegoing to Transcendent Kingdom, which I loved deeply. That’s a writer who writes with real scope and makes big swings in a way that I really admire. And at the heart of it, no matter how hard the story is, there’s always this question: “Where is the light?” I can get through almost anything if I can figure out where the light is, and I think Yaa Gyasi does that really well. So those are some of them. I call them my writing mentors, even though I have never had the pleasure of meeting them. Who are yours?

GO: She's not Nigerian, but Michaela Coel.

MU: I do love Ms. Michaela.

GO: Adore, adore. She’s one for me, when I think about someone singular, somebody who is bringing in language that a lot of first-gen people can tap into. And honestly, you. Not to be corny. But there’s not a ton of examples of what it means to do this in a way that feels so authentic, so truthful, that doesn’t feel boxed in by any expectation. The way you hold your characters, to me, is really powerful. And just watching you embrace different mediums. I also love Saidiya Hartman. Besides that, I’ve really been trying to tap into reading more queer Africans and especially Nigerians. 

MU: Who are you reading?

GO: I just finished this anthology of short stories, God’s Children Are Broken Little Things. It was beautiful. It was very sad. And then I also read The Death of Vivek Oji.

MU: Oh, Akwaeke Emezi! That is an amazing human being. I think I’m seeing the pattern in what you’re gravitating toward. Akwaeke’s writing—it’s as bloody a blistering wound as you can imagine—but then there’s also a great range of play. Who knows what genre, what form they’ll choose next. For me, it is so wonderful to watch Black folks play inside such wide, wide creative space.

GO: Exactly.

MU: Okay, okay! Because you can’t mention Micaela Coel, Akwaeke Emezi, without acknowledging—it’s muscular writing [that you’re drawn to].

GO: There are such high stakes to this thing that we are a part of, and there’s a grief and a pain to it, and that doesn’t mean that we need to sit in it, but it feels like there’s something to be witnessed. I always appreciate when people are willing to…like when you said “blister,” I was like, yeah. Or even a sunburn. It really hurts. Like scars, yeah.

MU: There is one piece of literature… Chinelo Okparanta’s, Under the Udala Trees, if you ever want to take a look. That is a queer story that takes place during the Biafran War. 

GO: Love it. I’ll be reading it. 

MU: Yeah, it blew my mind when I read it maybe five or six years ago. I didn’t realize a story like that had been written.

GO: I love how well read you are. I’m like, okay, hit after hit after hit! But you know, I feel there has been an attempt to erase these stories—or not erase, even, but as though [that] Africa never existed to begin with. And people attempt to reduce the legacy of queerness in Nigeria and Africa [to one of] one of… well, white people tricked us into thinking that it’s evil.

MU: I say this as somebody who has got a real belief structure to her. I’m not even gonna play as if I do not believe in a God. I do, and that is a very interesting intersection: to be Nigerian, and queer, and have a faith practice.

GO: I’m also Nigerian and queer and believe in God! Oooh!

MU: You know, they’re not identities that align easily, but for me, they can and do live together truthfully. Sometimes looking at Nigeria from a distance, or looking at how the people are from a distance, it can feel homophobic. But then you start going, “Well I can’t be the only one.” And if I’m not the only one, what does that mean? Have stories been squashed so we don’t see them? Are people living outside the mainstream, and we just haven’t shone a light there? Once I started questioning, the world opened up. And then I found authors like Chinelo Okparanta and Akwaeke Emezi who are writing in a vein that starts holding all—and your name, Gloria will be added to that list as well—and it helps to keep shining the light that these intersectional existences are real.

GO: When you realized that you were three in one—also that’s beautiful, the holiness of that, [a trinity]—have you found people or places that have held that?

MU: I will say, in the beginning, not as much. I began my writing career some time ago, and in the beginning, I didn’t find a lot of Africans or first-generation Africans writing for the stage. I came up with Jocelyn Bioh and Ngozi Anyanwu—that was my cohort. Not very wide. But now I’m looking at y’all, and I’m like, there’s so many! It feels like the world is expanding. Like we’ve made more room. It’s wonderful to get to know the new people coming up. Now I know you, Gloria. I met playwright Francisca Da Silveira, a Cape Verdean artist, some years ago. And I know playwright Abigail Onwunali, who is fierce. And so many more! This is why we do it, so that every year we see more and more, and we start to vary the voice, and what it means to be African.

GO: Has your family seen your work? Mine has not. I don’t know if this opportunity will be the place they do, but I’m wondering how that has been for you?

MU: My mom and my brother, and my brother’s significant other [and now core family member] come to absolutely everything. This is going to sound schmaltzy, but I am so epically blessed. I always offer them preparation on what I’m writing. Even though it’s not autobiographical, there a core truth, and there are pockets where things might sting—especially when I talk about mental, illness, even if it didn’t play out that way in our actual lives. Ealy on, I gave them the right to read the plays. And if they didn’t want to do that reading labor, I’d ask, “Do you want me to tell you what the play’s about?” I try to offer as many entry points for conversation as I can. But they’ll just come. They’re like, “Whatever homie—we’re gonna be there.” And it’s good. But I won’t pretend—it wasn’t always like that. At the beginning, I had real trepidation. I didn’t always handle things perfectly, Now I’m a lot more intentional about how I lay things out.

GO: I have not been great at having these conversations. Thankfully I’m not in a place where I feel like I can’t even write because, “What if somebody I know sees it?” For me, I feel like this play is a love letter about what it takes to survive. My family can be more private. There’s something very close-knit, a closeness about how we make it through these things together. I just don’t want them to feel betrayed by the work. I don’t want anyone to feel hurt or embarrassed ever. That’s where my anxiety lies. 

MU: I deeply understand you and also know that the more you lead with your care and your integrity, the better you’ll be able to stand tomorrow. It’s hard, and I know that this journey is very individual from person to person but, there will come a moment when you know the truth of the heartbeat of this play. And hopefully everything works out and braids itself back together. Even if there is a moment of, “Sister, what?” The more you stick your neck out and try, the better. 

GO: You’ve written about this intersection of being Nigerian, queer, and first-gen, which is why this pairing, to me, made a lot of sense and was so exciting. I feel like all of your plays…I just have not seen people give voice to the cost, that has nothing to do with white people. I was thinking about Sojourners, recently, and returning to that play. Especially now—not to bring in politics, but, you know, we could, if we wanted to. I don’t think people understand that cost. I love being Nigerian. I love the tradition. I love being a part of that. I honestly wish I had more…I don’t speak the language. My parents are Igbo and Yoruba, and I don’t speak either of those languages. There are parts where I wish I could tap more into that. But to talk about the theoretical safety of outside versus sometimes being pushed from the inside: there’s a cost of leaving, too, and a yearning to be part of the inside, still, even if it’s not comfortable all the time. 

MU: Yeah, for me, it feels baked into myself. 

GO: Yes, yes, totally.

MU: Those are my people. We all look alike. We all have the same weird lisp.

GO: (Laughing) We do have a lisp.

MU: We all waddle the same way. You know, this is my family. And that is important to hold.

GO: Right now I’m in the process of very tepidly doing rewrites. I struggle to crack the play open in terms of the Sleep Demon especially, the desire there, and what the call to action is. I really love a naturalistic play, funnily enough. This is not that. It leans a lot more theatrical than I’ve been wielding in terms of genre, and the work I usually gravitate towards. I struggle with understanding, ‘What is the call being made from inside the house?’ I think you said it so beautifully, this idea of building a wild life on the outside, moving away, far from your family. But I don’t know what the call to action is. Maybe it’s to stay? I don’t know.

MU: I think it’s okay not to know. Because this is going to be a reading, so you’re going to learn so much from what comes back. I do think it’s a wonderful question to keep interrogating how the Sleep Demon works, why it is activating itself now, where that demon is lodged inside Charity, and what its particular desires are. You’re really onto something. Charity is sitting on a bloodline that might be holding some real mental health tragedy, and she’s never been told about it. And, quite frankly, she’s medicating heavily—with an older woman—and all of this is hidden. Until something happens that makes it so she can’t hold it anymore. So maybe ask yourself: what happened that she can’t hold it anymore? That’s a story I don’t think I’ve seen tackled before. 

 

Gloria Oladipo is a playwright and critic based in New York (but proudly from Chicago, IL). She writes Black comedies about Black families who do not know how to love each other, but do the very best they can.Gloria is a 2023-2025 Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group Fellow. Gloria is a 2025 Velvetpark Writers Fellow. She is the 2024 recipient of the Dramatists Guild Foundation Thom Thomas award and Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow alumnus. Gloria’s work has been in residence or developed by: New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, New York; the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York, New York; Boston Court Pasadena in Pasadena, California; Workshop Theater in New York, New York; Seven Devils New Play Conference in McCall, Idaho; the Fresh Ground Pepper Group, and other institutions. Plays include: The Care and Keeping of Schizophrenia (and Other Demons) (excerpted in the Cincinnati Review), I wanna kill, Annie G., Potential Energy. Gloria is also an arts critic and journalist. She is the 2023 recipient of the American Theatre Critics Association's Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism. She is a 2022 National Critics Institute Fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, an opportunity she was selected for via the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). She later taught theatre criticism at KCACTF. Gloria's work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, and other publications. gloriaoladipo.com

 

Mfoniso Udofia, a first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator, attended Wellesley College and obtained her MFA from the American Conservatory Theater [A.C.T.]. While at A.C.T., she co-pioneered, THE NIA PROJECT which provided artistic outlets for San Francisco youth. From 2024-2026, a consortium of theatre companies and activation partners across Boston will produce all of Mfoniso’s 9-play UFOT FAMILY CYCLE, which follows three generations of a Nigerian-American family. Productions of her plays SOJOURNERS, RUNBOYRUN, and HER PORTMANTEAU (all part of Ufot Cycle) have been previously produced at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, Strand Theater Company, and Boston Court. She’s the recipient of the 2024 Steinberg Playwright Award, the 2021 Horton Foote Award, the 2017 Helen Merrill Playwright Award, the 2017-18 McKnight National Residency and Commission and is a member of New Dramatists. Mfoniso’s currently commissioned by the Huntington Theatre, the Round House Theatre, Hartford Stage, Denver Center, ACT, and South Coast Repertory. Her plays have been developed by Manhattan Theatre Club, A.C.T, McCarter Theatre, OSF, New Dramatists, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, Hedgebrook, Sundance, Space on Ryder Farm and more. Since 2018 Mfoniso has been working extensively in television; She is currently co-writing YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY with Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney as a feature for Outlier Society and Amazon. She previously developed features at HBO and Legendary. In TV, Mfoniso was most recently a Co-EP for the Emmy Award-nominated and WGA Award-nominated LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY (Apple). Previously, she wrote on LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Showtime), A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (Amazon), both seasons of LITTLE AMERICA (Apple), AWAY (Netflix), PACHINKO (Apple) and 13 REASONS WHY (Netflix). She has developed TV projects with Apple, UCP, and HBO among others.