#mfoniso

Q: What is your story? How did you fall in love with theatre/the stage/storytelling?

I have always loved performance. In middle and high school I played the trombone. At Wellesley I began taking opera lessons. It wasn’t until Wellesley; however, that I discovered that the joy I had on stage could become the joy I had in life. I was singing, dabbling in the theater arts and restoring myself from the inside out and, during my senior year of College, I decided to make my extra-curricular delight, my life’s work.

Q: What was your professional path like? How did a political science major end up in theatre?

My parents had a singular hand in molding and preparing me for Wellesley. I enrolled with the intention of following the footsteps of Madeleine Albright and/or Hillary Clinton. I was interested in the dispossession of so-called third-world countries. I wanted to understand how institutions like the World Bank/IMF worked within West-African nations. What was the help? What was the damage? I loved what I learned at Wellesley and I did well within my chosen major. Plus, I was happy to be manifesting a family dream. Something did change; however, when I discovered that the Arts were just as much a tool for social change as policy-making. I let Political Science, as a career go, and my parents, in time, shifted their dreams for me. I still use what I learned as a Political Science major within my my work. I am writing a 9-play cycle that follows a Nigerian family from Akwa Ibom, Nigeria to Massachusetts, United States. Audiences watch how governments and policies clash against actual human bodies and their dreams for themselves. Audiences then go home and consider the hidden life of people they never knew, and that can change a ballot as well.  

Q: What are the biggest challenges you faced trying to build a career in the arts?

I graduated from Wellesley in 2006. I then immediately enrolled at the American Conservatory Theatre and received my degree in Acting in 2009. I did not dream of playwriting at this time; I wanted to be an actress. 2007-2008 was the great global financial crises, referred to by many as the largest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression. As I stated, I graduated in 2009 with a terminal degree in the Fine Arts and then went to New York City to begin my life as an actress. I had  thousands of dollars in student loan debt, no security net, and no job prospects. Getting hired in any capacity  proved impossible during that time. Building a career in the Arts is a difficult business even when the economy is flush. Non-theater jobs had dried up, not to mention theater based work. I cobbled together a life. I babysat. I substitute taught in NYC public and charter schools. I volunteered with youth. I auditioned as best as I could. It was not easy. I started writing in 2009 to process what was happening in and around me. It was a faithful artistic outlet that I could do no matter what the world was doing. My playwriting career seeded during this time.

Q: What have been the greatest rewards?

There have been many rewards. Seeing people learn and then change their minds about African bodies has been rewarding. Seeing the way theater institutions are banding around the cycle and educating themselves about how they can showcase the plays with integrity and authenticity has been rewarding. One of my greatest rewards; however, has been watching West-Africans see representations of themselves on the American stage. During my run at New York Theatre Workshop [they produced two of my plays, Sojourners and Her Portmanteau], a group of Ibibio women were in the audience. Once they heard one of my characters speaking in Ibibio they started whooping and talking back to the stage in glee. My spirit flew so high that day!

Q: Were there every moments throughout your career when you doubted yourself/what you were doing? How did those moments resolve?

Of course there were moments I doubted myself. I keep a document that shows how many residencies and grants I apply for. In the beginning of my career it felt like I was applying and applying with no return. I couldn’t break through. I depended on my spiritual center, my family and friends who kept pushing me to find the fortitude to keep writing and applying. I also diversified approach. Friends from American Conservatory Theater helped stage readings and workshops of the plays to strengthen them and to build a community around my work. From there I started seeing acceptances roll through, and I have been able to keep members of that beginning community around me today.

Q: What advice would you give to your younger self/someone just starting in the field?

Go! Go! Go! Use energy to multiply energy. Experiment with form. Experiment with ideas. Write what you know and what you haven’t seen.  Apply for residencies and grants. Let family and friends bolster you and feed you.  Fail forward into your hard-earned success. Say thank you. Say thank you again. Rest. Rest. Rest. Repeat.

Q: What is your creative process like? How do you begin?

I usually write in the morning. 4am is my time to write. Most humans are sleeping, the world is readying itself to waken and flow is easier. All of my plays also begin with a question. Questions such as: Can the Nigerian dream live within American environs? Can trauma become tradition? All of my plays begin in the aforementioned fashioned. What differs in my process is “the way.” I am able to write some plays in one sitting, a veritable conjure that pours out of me. Some plays make me work and I am grasping thoughts and hoping I catch them fast and soft enough to write them down.

Q: Can you tell us about a piece of art that deeply moves you? The one that convinced you that this was the right path?

There are many. I read a lot of contemporary West African literature. A Famished Road by Ben Okri was a seminal work for me. Of course, I count Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, as a master work and one that helped shape my writer’s mind. Some other works that also helped shape me are: Nwapa’s, Efuru; Adichie’s, Purple Hibiscus, Chauvet’s, Love, Anger, Madness; Danticat’s, Brother, I’m Dying…and there are more. So many more.

Q: Your identity as a Nigerian-American features heavily in your work. How has your identity (and by extension your work)  changed over time?

My identity is the ever-evolving truth of myself. When I started writing I knew only 25 years of myself, and my plays only held that. I am now 33 and plays hold 33 years of myself. I cannot wait my plays look like when I am 70 years old.

Q: Do you have any advice for other artists in the age of Trump (given the administration’s stance on immigration)?

Interviewee response: My advice to any artist attempting to create in the age of Trump is to “go forth boldly.” Greed, antipathy and lack of education has caused a devastating case of American amnesia. That amnesia has caused us to forget the plight of the immigrant body, the plight of descendants of those forcibly kidnapped and bound to a land foreign to their ancestral home. This amnesia has caused some of us to forget that this land used to belong to others and has not always been ours. The artist can remember our humanity and place it on stage for all to see. Despite danger, we must strive to create with impunity. So one is always is watching. Healing is always steps away.  

And just for fun:

Q: What is your favorite way to unwind/practice self-care?