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Author: Adebayo, Mojisola (Author, Queen Mary, University of London, UK)

Plays, playscripts

Published on 1 December 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Oberon Books Ltd) in the United Kingdom as part of ‘the Oberon Modern Playwrights’ series.

Paperback | 320 pages
206 x 132 x 20 | 402g

Includes the plays Moj of the Antarctic, Desert Boy, Matt Henson: North Star and Muhammad Ali and MeThis collection signals the emergence of a distinctive new voice on the British theatre landscape. Moj of the Antarctic is inspired by the true story of an African American woman who cross-dresses as a white man to escape slavery; taken on a fantastical odyssey to Antarctica. Time Out Critics’ Choice‘The language is rich and densely poetic. Reveling in the materiality and playfulness of words, cracking open complex ideas like eggshells.’ – Total Theatre MagazineMuhammad Ali and Me is a lyrical coming of age story, following the parallel struggles of a gay girl child growing up in foster care and the black Muslim boxing hero’s fight against racism and the Vietnam war.

‘As a piece of stagecraft, an entertaining kaleidoscope of social and political history, only one description will do: this is a play that ‘floatslike a butterfly and stings like a bee.’ – WhatsOnStageDesert Boy, a time-travelling a capella musical, offers a sharp twist on the subject of knife crime, black youth and absent fathers.

‘…a spiralling journey through colonial history not unlike Dante’s introduction to the Inferno. The juxtapositions are sometimes startling, and often quite comic.’ – Guardian Matt Henson, North Star is a biographical tale of Arctic betrayal, mixed with Greenlandic folk tales; all about love, climate and change.

These plays queer the boundaries of sex and race, fact and fiction, history and geography, poetry and politics to illuminate contemporary themes through a dynamic African Diasporic theatrical aesthetic that leaps off the page.