We sat down for an exclusive interview with Mya Onwugbonu, director of Do You Want Something to Cry For, coming to Theatre Peckham on the 20th and 21st May. Written by rising playwright Jerome Scott, this lyrical new production follows two black boys through different iterations of themselves—teen, adolescent, adult—as they navigate love, longing, and survival in a world that denies them softness.
What drew you to Jerome Scott’s script, and how did you first envision bringing its poetry to life on stage?
What struck me first was the lyricism in Jerome’s writing – as a poet, I’m always inspired by how deeply words can move people. The way he maps emotional terrain feels urgent and tender. And, honestly, it was a challenge I welcomed – something that began as pure poetry, needing to be shaped into a narrative. From the start, I imagined a space where text, sound, and movement held equal weight. It just needed focus. Jerome and I worked closely at the beginning to shape the relationship between these two black men – how their emotional world could travel from the page to the stage. That’s where the world-building began.
As a director, how do you create a space where vulnerability and softness can thrive, especially in a story about Black boyhood?
From the beginning of my journey as a director, I’ve gravitated toward stories that live in me – in my friends and family, in the communities I serve and am a part of. So everything I work with holds emotional weight. I have a duty to encourage them to be soft in the rehearsal room. The story itself is all about breaking down masculinity, vulnerability – allowing black men to feel seen – so I allow my performers – Jerome Scott and Abimbola Ikengboju to just be. Vulnerability is hard to perform if it’s not being modelled offstage. And I’m proud that our cast and creative team feel able to bring their full selves into the room.
How did you approach balancing the surreal, movement-driven elements with the raw emotional truth of the characters?
We never saw movement and truth as opposites – if anything, the movement unlocks what the characters can’t articulate. There’s a kind of surreal logic to the way trauma and memory operate. Scientifically, trauma can live in the body for up to seven years—held in muscle memory, nervous system responses, and breath patterns. That reality shaped our physical language. What if the body remembers what the mind avoids? What does grief look like in the limbs? What does joy sound like in a breath? We had to spend time finding both the physical and emotional intention of each movement element – this was aided by having established professionals – like Mateus Daniel and David Gilbert – observe our rehearsal room.
What was the most surprising or emotional moment for you during rehearsals?
There’s a moment in the piece where Abimbola’s character begins to decay – his body melts. Initially, he moved through it with intensity and speed, but it wasn’t until he was pushed to slow down – really slow down—that something clicked. Each micro-movement began to hold the full ache of the character’s internal world. That was a turning point. We talked about “the body keeping score” – how trauma can be stored in the body – but in that rehearsal, we saw it. When a performer is truly in their body, the acting isn’t performed – it’s real. Since then, I’ve been constantly looking for ways to stretch and challenge the cast, so the performance emerges from truth, not technique.
How do you collaborate with performers to help them embody multiple iterations of the same soul—teen, adolescent, adult?
The characters aren’t bound by age – they exist in echoes, in dreams, in limbo. So in rehearsal, we talked about the essence of that age – the milestones and rites of passage. This allowed us to shape character; how do they walk? How do they speak? What is it to have posture at age 10? And this was all tied to their experiences through those ages or the people in their lives that are those ages. We had many conversations; from university tales, injuries to securing a first whine – our performers didn’t have to “act younger” or “older” – they had to remember, physically and emotionally.
What conversations or emotions do you hope audiences carry with them after seeing the show?
This show is rooted in black boyhood and so often they have a passionate rhetoric around how they should exist because of how people see them or what they have learnt being a ‘black boy’ means – I hope with this work they can shake that off – and just be.