By Abby Bielagus By Abby Bielagus | September 16, 2024 | People, Entertainment,
Nine plays in the Ufot Family Cycle by Mfoniso Udofia will be performed for the first time in their entirety beginning this fall.
Playwright Mfoniso Udofia
Southbridge native Mfoniso Udofia didn’t set out to write nine plays. She was on track to become a lawyer as an undergrad at Wellesley College, but after taking one look at the LSAT, she enrolled in graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater to train for an acting career. It was after graduation when she was without work and facing existential questions about the future and what it means to be queer and Nigerian that she finally put pen to paper. “I was writing in the way that I had studied because I was going through a hard time and I needed to process,” she says.
The story she began to tell of matriarch Abasiama Ufot swelled, branched off and eventually needed nine distinct plays to tell her life and the lives of her family. Named the Ufot Family Cycle (bostontheatrescene.com/ufotboston), it will be performed for the first time in its entirety over the course of the next two years, beginning with the opening of Sojourners on Oct. 31 at the Huntington Theatre. Five of the nine plays will be world premieres.
To get all nine plays written and produced meant engaging the entire city from professors to community organizations to the creative ecosystem. The casts are largely made up of local actors and the directors are mostly all female and African American. Interested theatergoers will be able to buy a nine-play pass.
Udofia, who now lives in New York City and writes for many popular television shows, will be along for every stop on the ride. “I’m helping to shape the play. I’m writing while watching bodies... writing that I can’t do from an office.”
Photography by: COURTESY OF THE HUNTINGTON