We sat down for an exclusive interview with Esohe Uwadiae. Uwadiae’s latest show is told through an intimate, vivid and fast-moving monologue. To Be You charts the shifting bond between two girls growing up in Essex and their desperate hunger to belong: one Black and aching to be seen, one biracial and determined to reinvent herself at any cost.
To Be You explores memory, guilt and the complicated politics of belonging. What was the first moment or idea that sparked the creation of this story?
The idea for this play came to me in 2020, during lockdown. Earlier that year, I’d debuted my first play SHE IS A PLACE CALLED HOME at VAULT Festival. I knew it would be the first in a series of plays about British Nigerian women, with each play being set in a different room in the family home. I was now thinking about the second play and really liked the idea of a one person play set in a bedroom. The Black Lives Matter protests were in full force, which was, among other things, prompting conversations with my friends about our experiences in secondary school and how those experiences shaped us in adulthood. From that, the idea became clear to me.
The play unfolds as an intimate monologue while the protagonist packs up her childhood bedroom. What drew you to use this quiet, personal moment as the frame for such a powerful emotional journey?
Bedrooms are such intimate spaces. For many people, they are one of the few places you can be alone, without pressure to perform or to pretend to be something that you aren’t. It’s where you prepare yourself to face the world, and where you go to retreat from it. So, I thought it would serve as the perfect backdrop for someone whose life is unravelling at 2am. In particular, I wanted it to be her childhood bedroom – almost like she’s returned to the scene of the crime, only now she has the vocabulary and tools to properly face it.
The friendship at the centre of the play is shaped by race, colourism and the desire to belong. Why was it important for you to explore these themes through the lens of girlhood and adolescence?
Girlhood is a deeply formative period and one where you are particularly vulnerable to the negative aspects of things like race, colourism and a desire to belong. And during that time, belonging was key to survival, especially because you couldn’t leave. No one was immune to it. It was interesting for me to explore a relationship set in this period of adolescence because of how complex it makes relationships. As much as someone may love their friends, as much as their friends may be a safe place, their friends are also trying to survive. They are your inspiration. Your competition. Even your perpetrators at times. And because it’s such a key developmental moment, I also wanted to bookend the play by considering how this affects individuals in adulthood when unaddressed.
The piece blends raw honesty with dark humour. How did you approach balancing those tones while telling a story that deals with painful memories and identity?
It wasn’t as hard as I expected to strike a balance. For most people, life isn’t all bad. Even within the terrible, there are moments of lightness and humour. I personally really enjoyed reflecting back on the ridiculous things I did as a teenager in my own quest to belong. These endeavours almost always ended badly e.g. accidentally shaving off massive chunks of my eyebrow. At the time, the stakes felt so high but with the perspective of an adult (as well as the gift of time), it’s easier to laugh at myself.
The play asks a striking question: what is the cost of belonging? When audiences leave the theatre, what conversations do you hope that question might spark?
The play touches on so many different themes, so it’s hard to narrow it down to one thing. I hope this play feels like a friend to audiences and a gentle reminder that they are enough. Hopefully, it will also prompt people to reflect on aspects of their life or identity that they’ve adopted but which aren’t really theirs. I also hope it sparks wider conversation about what it means to raise children in predominantly white spaces, what additional support or safeguards are needed as part of the education system to protect children as they navigate building their identity in a racialised world and, finally, what do you do if you realise that you were a perpetrator in school? Can you make amends? Or is it too late?
To Be You was shortlisted for the Mustapha Matura Award and supported through the Catalyst for Culture Initiative. How have those opportunities shaped the development of the play and your journey as a writer?
Getting shortlisted for the Mustapha Matura Award and receiving the support from Catalyst for Culture came fairly on in my writing career. So it was a huge boost for my confidence, as it gave me the that feeling that I was creating work that resonated with other people. To Be You is stylistically quite different from other plays I’ve written, especially the version that I submitted for the award. It’s prose-like and deeply vivid in terms of imagery but it’s also incredibly me and remains the most vulnerable and personal thing I’ve ever written. My first love was prose so it’s not surprising that this way of writing made its way into my theatrical work. So I also appreciated learning that there was space for plays like this.