Barber Shop Chronicles is a generously funny, heart-warming and insightful new play set in five African cities, Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos, Accra, and in London
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a cross-art-form practitioner, a poet, playwright, performer, graphic artist, designer and founder of the Midnight Run - a nocturnal urban excursion. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and a designer at White Space Creative Agency. Inua Ellams' previous plays at the National include The 14th Tale (Fringe First award) and Black T-Shirt Collection. Other plays include The Riddler at Theatre503; Knight Watch at Greenwich + Docklands Festival; Mostly Like Blue for Islington Community Theatre; Cape at the Unicorn; The Long Song Goodbye at Battersea Arts Centre; Fastcuts and Snapshot at West Yorkshire Playhouse; Marsh Orchids & Concrete for China Plate; Reset Everything and An Evening with an Immigrant at the Soho; and Turned at Trafalgar Studios. Radio plays include The Ballad of Abdul Ha z and Wild Blood. He has published three pamphlets of poetry 'Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars', 'Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales' and 'The Wire-Headed Heathen'. His poetry is published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, and several plays by Oberon Books. His new book #Afterhours is published by Nine Arches Press. inuaellams.com
This is an absolute cracker. Inua Ellams has the simple but
ingenious idea of exploring black masculinity through the humble
barber's shop... It's funny, fast, laced with music and dance, and
performaed with irresistable good humour and style... But deep down
this is also a thoughtful, serious and moving piece of drama... he
writes with zip and a wonderful ear, and the piece is beautifully
woven.
*Financial Times*
It’s a play crammed with questions, discussing African attitudes to
parental discipline in one scene, and the role Nigerian Pidgin
plays in cultural identity in the next. Idea follows idea:
Christianity as a business fattening the wallets of pastors; the
western media’s depiction of Lagos; the way that words can be used
to debase and destroy. Again and again the plays returns to the
theme of black masculinity and the different shapes it can take...
The tone of the play shifts fluidly from comedy to poignancy to
rage... This is all handled with skill and a huge amount of warmth.
Barber Shop Chronicles is a pleasure to experience. The level of
joy in the room is high... Rich, exhilarating theatre that opens a
window into a world of men.
*The Stage*
'Introducing us to 30 individual characters in barber shops the
world over, Ellams reminds us of the sheer cultural diversity
wrapped up in blackness... "This is our pub," insists one regular.
Simply by putting such a culturally exclusive space on a public
stage, Ellams is doing something potent – opening up a closed
space, airing its conversations on a wider scale and inviting
others in... this is, in more ways than one, a play about roots.
London's black community is made up of different diaspora – each
with its own heritage, parentage, politics and perspective...
Fathers recur, as do public role models – rappers and politicians –
and the idea of inherited values, identities and histories comes to
the fore. Ellams ties unresolved issues and historic injustices to
the prevalence of mental health issues in black men, suggesting
that the political affects the personal.
*What's On Stage*
'Inua Ellams has always explored ideas of masculinity and migration
through his plays and slam poetry performances. Here, he pushes
those themes onto a global stage in this new piece, which braids
together various conversations in six different barbershops, from
London to Lagos to Johannesburg, across the course of a single
day... Ellams has an instinctive feel for the polyphonous rhythms
of dialogue, and the way his characters use language is both a
texture and a theme of this play, which threads in debates on
Nigerian Pidgin and the use of the N word with casual ease. He
skilfully maintains control of his sprawling cast... This is a show
full of sadness and great joy.
*The Telegraph*
'It’s always bracing to watch the National open its arms, doors and
repertoire to new work, new audiences, new experiences. There’s
certainly not been anything like this all-male, all-black piece
from poet/playwright Inua Ellams, which bounces with brio as it
whisks us around a series of African barber shops in six countries
on two continents over the space of a single day... it becomes
gradually clear that these resolutely female-free spaces are also
part confessional, part psychiatrist’s chair for both the staff and
customers. Hefty topics ripple and re-echo over the thousands of
miles that separate the establishments: how to be a father, how to
be a son, how to be a man. A joke about a fly in a pint also
travels effortlessly.
*Evening Standard*
Simply by putting such a culturally exclusive space on a public
stage, Ellams is doing something potent opening up a closed space,
airing its conversations on a wider scale and inviting others in...
this is, in more ways than one, a play about roots....... Ellams
ties unresolved issues and historic injustices to the prevalence of
mental health issues in black men, suggesting that the political
affects the personal.'
*What's On Stage*
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