Playwright Ifeoma Fafunwa ‘It was permission, all of a sudden, to speak’
almost 5 years in The guardian
The Nigerian architect turned dramatist on the impact of her play Hear Word!, her Edinburgh festival debut – and why directing is a lot like designing buildings
Ifeoma Fafunwa is a playwright and director. She was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and at 17 moved to the US where she lived for about 20 years, training and working as an architect. Following her return to Nigeria, Fafunwa began collecting women’s stories for her play Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True. A success in Nigeria since 2015, it has also been staged at Harvard and the UN headquarters in New York, and will be at the Edinburgh international festival, 19-25 August.
How did Hear Word! start?Many, many years ago I watched For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide [Ntozake Shange’s 1976 play about African American women’s experience] and I thought it would be good to be part of a project like that. Then I saw The Vagina Monologues and it was like: “OK, yes, what I want to do can be done.” In 2009 I started collecting real stories, and there was an NGO in Nigeria that had a grant to collect data and stories, so I accessed some of that. Then I added my own personal stories too. Continue reading...
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