Processing in Play

The year is 1978. The place is Houston. A young woman with dark skin, her hair wrapped up in a purple cloth, perches on the edge of a worn, striped, tan sofa, singing to her very pregnant belly. Suddenly she feels a sharp pain in her midsection. The woman’s eyes tear up, but she scolds herself. “No more purposeless water,” she says with an Ibibio accent. Another pain. She gasps. “I think we’re hungry. Usuŋ?” she asks her baby, offering a Nigerian soup made with root vegetables. No more pain, and she smiles. “OK. Usuŋ,” she confirms, and she slowly stands to check on a pot on the stove.

This young woman is named Abasiama, and she is the matriarch in the Ufot Family Cycle, a series of nine plays by Mfoniso Udofia ’06 about a family of Nigerian immigrants moving from “surviving to being to thriving,” as Udofia says. This scene is the opening moment of Sojourners, the first play in the cycle and Abasiama’s origin story, produced by The Huntington in fall 2024 and called “compelling, timely, and powerful” by the Boston Globe. It marks the launch of an ambitious two-year undertaking to produce all nine of the Ufot family plays in and around Boston, including a collaboration with Wellesley College.

An imperfect Wellesley woman finds joy

When Udofia arrived at Wellesley in fall 2002, she wanted to be a lawyer. Well, she thought she did. “That’s why I came to Wellesley,” she says, “to model myself after Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright.” Growing up in Southbridge, Mass., the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Udofia believed in her father’s dream for her—following in the footsteps of these famous alums. But things did not go as planned.

At Wellesley, Udofia was “so laser-focused on succeeding I took on too much—burning myself out, trying to be the perfect ‘Wellesley woman.’ But then, after a moment of crisis, one where I found myself at an inflection point at Wellesley, I encountered an incredible dean who asked me what I did for joy,” she explained to Callie Crossley ’73 in an interview for The Huntington. The dean, Kim Goff-Crews, suggested Udofia make a list of all the things that she did just for the pure joy of it, not for the trajectory of her academic and professional career. “That advice was a turning point for me,” says Udofia. She remembered the affinity for the arts she had growing up—singing and playing trombone. She started taking voice lessons with Gale Fuller, an instructor in Wellesley’s music department, singing opera, and enrolling in acting classes. Everything changed when Udofia took a course with senior lecturer in theatre studies Lois Roach.

“It all started at Wellesley,” says Udofia, “and it kept growing and growing until it’s my life now.”

Roach’s course led Udofia to think about performing arts in a whole new way. The class introduced her to for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange. “It blew my mind,” Udofia says. Roach recalls, “Mfoniso presented one of the most challenging monologues at the end of the play, the one that begins with ‘there was no air.’ It was very powerful, very difficult. I still tease Mfoniso to this day and say there was no air because she left all of us speechless with her performance. Mouths dropped wide open.”

Udofia quickly signed up to take another class, this time with Diego Arciniegas, senior lecturer in theatre studies. “Those two professors fed the bug,” says Udofia. She also found inspiration in a class taught by Africana studies professor emeritus Selwyn Cudjoe, who took his students to The Huntington in fall 2004 to see the production of Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson starring Phylicia Rashad. “It was a nighttime seminar, and the play was not necessarily part of the syllabus,” explains Udofia. “But Professor Cudjoe told us that one of the most prolific and important playwrights of our era has a play being produced. We have to go.”

Gem of the Ocean was life-altering for Udofia: “I didn’t know you could do a juba on stage. … I didn’t know that I could see something that deeply, authentically, profoundly Black on stage. I had never seen that.” Cudjoe even introduced his students to Wilson, who was chain-smoking outside the theater. After that, Udofia never looked back. She still majored in political science, but by junior year, she had let go of any dreams of becoming a lawyer. “I didn’t even complete the law prep classes that my mom had paid for,” Udofia said in her interview with Crossley. “I probably still owe her money for that.”

By the time she graduated from Wellesley, Udofia had acted in many theater productions, including a student-directed version of Angels in America; she had programmed arts events on campus through Ethos, serving as the chair of the Black Arts Committee; and she had decided to audition for acting MFA programs, turning to her theater professors for coaching. “She became the standard I held other students to,” says Arciniegas. “I routinely coach students for graduate school auditions now, but they have to live up to Mfoniso. Even as an undergraduate, she could play age, she could play character. She’s an old soul with emotional depth and presence and stature.”

A writer is born

After graduation, Udofia moved to San Francisco for the American Conservatory Theater’s master’s program. After earning her degree in 2009, she headed to New York City to start her acting career. However, despite her talent, Udofia had a hard time landing roles. Once again, things did not go as planned.

“I don’t know if this is statistically true, but I can tell you the truth in my body was that there weren’t a lot of parts for a woman built like me, a thickset brown-skinned girl who is more sweet than sassy,” says Udofia. “I had a hard time securing roles, because it felt like I didn’t fit the aesthetic.” She continued to go out on auditions, but Udofia began writing, too, “processing in play” the frustration she felt. “I was writing to understand the world,” she says. She was drawn to writing in the play format because that was what she was immersed in at the time. “I wasn’t thinking about it like, I’m going to be a playwright.”

But that’s exactly what happened: “It took a little while for my mind to catch up to what my hands were doing,” Udofia laughs now. “I was kicking and screaming, I’m an actor! when I was doing the work of a writer.”

While Udofia may have been caught off guard by her shift, her teachers and mentors were not. “Nothing surprises me about Mfoniso Udofia. Nothing,” Roach says with a laugh. “It’s been a pleasure to watch her adapt and shift, become nimble and pivot, and be prepared to accept the opportunities and challenges as they come her way.” Roach explains that the Wellesley theatre studies program encourages students to try to do it all. “Write it, produce it, direct it, create it, turn it into a business! We are an interactive department,” says Roach. “We do what we teach, and we often work together professionally as well.”

“There’s talent, and then there’s work ethic,” says Arciniegas, “and I think for success, particularly in this business, you have to have both simultaneously.” He adds that there is so little structure when it comes to a career in the performing arts that people find their paths in many different ways. “Sometimes people find their voice in a parallel element of theater—sound design, costume design, set design, visual art or writing or directing or acting,” Arciniegas says. “I wouldn’t say that it has to be a prerequisite to be a writer, but [there’s] no one better than someone who’s been acting for a while for figuring out believable dialogue between human beings.”

Udofia wrote her first play, The Grove, to better understand how one can be both Nigerian and queer; in writing that story, she said, the characters took hold of her: “The cycle erupted underneath my feet.” The Grove is now the second play in the nine-play series, which begins with Sojourners, and the Ufot Family Cycle follows Abasiama and her children and grandchildren over the course of decades. “I built these plays to stand alone, all nine of them,” says Udofia, “but I wanted them to be constructed well enough to be able to tell a huge arc of story when viewed all together.”

A cycle is set in motion

When Loretta Greco joined The Huntington as the Norma Jean Calderwood Artistic Director in July 2022, she already had her eye on the Ufot family. Before moving to Boston to take the helm at The Huntington, Greco had spent 12 years as the artistic director of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre. A self-described “go big or go home producer,” Greco first met Udofia when Udofia was acting in graduate school. Years later, they reconnected in New York after Udofia had started working as a playwright, and Greco, along with her associate producer at the time, Ryan Purcell, invited her back to the Bay Area to be part of the Magic Theatre’s Virgin Play Festival. Following that, Greco produced three of Udofia’s Ufot family plays at the Magic: the West Coast premiere of Sojourners and the world premieres of runboyrun and In Old Age.

“One of the things I love best about Loretta is she’s the most non-risk-averse person I know,” Udofia said in a 2020 interview about Greco for American Theatre magazine. “She provided a home base, which is really important for a play-wright. … She’s one of [the] biggest mouthpieces for my work and getting it out there—she was a champion for me.”

After arriving in Boston, Greco invited Udofia to lunch at Bootleg Special in Back Bay, and she asked if Udofia still dreamed of seeing all nine Ufot family plays produced and if she would be interested in seeing that happen in Boston. When Udofia enthusiastically agreed, Greco immediately set to work to make producing the Ufot Family Cycle in its entirety a reality. “We know the transformational power that occurs when we come into the theater and are given the privilege of walking in someone else’s shoes for an hour or two … coming together in our shared humanity,” Greco said at a press conference for the Ufot Family Cycle project at Boston’s City Hall in June. “Building empathy and perspective is essential, and we know that writing as rich and specific as Mfoniso’s becomes universal, speaking to all of us with immigrant roots. And while all that is true, we also know the limitless power of what it is to have audience members who are not used to being centered in the stories on our stages, to find themselves, to see and hear themselves, in the center of the narrative.”

With The Huntington taking the lead, all nine plays are set to be produced in full over a two-year period through a collaboration of a dozen Boston-area theaters and arts groups, including the College’s own Wellesley Repertory Theatre. “Her work is so ambitious,” says Arciniegas of Udofia’s plays, “and I love that it sparked the ambitions of the producers in the area.”

The Huntington kicked things off, producing Sojourners on its main stage this fall: Dawn M. Simmons, the co-producing artistic director of Boston’s Front Porch Arts Collective, directed Sojourners, and it starred Abigail C. Onwunali as Abasiama and Nomè SiDone as her husband, Ukpong, with Asha Basha Duniani and Joshua Olumide as Abasiama’s friends Moxie and Disciple, respectively. The cast and crew began rehearsing on Oct. 1 (appropriately, Nigerian Independence Day) and the production ran from Oct. 31 to Dec. 1, earning rave reviews. Don Aucoin, theater critic for The Boston Globe, wrote, “It’s hard to imagine a more auspicious debut for this ambitious undertaking than The Huntington production of Sojourners,” and Jacquinn Sinclair, performing arts writer for WBUR, said that the production “expertly sets the stage for the next eight narratives.” The last scene of Sojourners is a cliffhanger, which feels satisfying as an open-to-interpretation ending illustrating Abasiama’s many possible life paths as a young immigrant. It invites audiences to follow Abasiama on her journey through the decades to see what her fate holds. The Huntington will also produce the next play in the cycle, The Grove, which jumps in time and focuses on Abasiama’s daughter, Adia. The Grove will run at the Calderwood Pavilion/Wimberly Theatre from Feb. 7 to March 9.

After the first two plays, The Huntington will pass the baton to other arts organizations in the area. The third production, runboyrun, will be adapted into an audio play by Next Chapter Podcasts in partnership with WGBH, with readings held at the Central and Roxbury branches of the Boston Public Library in February and March. Her Portmanteau, play number four, will be produced by Central Square Theater and the Front Porch Arts Collective, with shows at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge from March 27 to April 20. Boston Arts Academy will produce the fifth play, Kufre n’ Quay, in July with support from The Huntington and Wheelock Family Theatre; and play six, The Ceremony, will be produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and Boston University College of Fine Arts in the fall.

The seventh play in the cycle, Lifted, will be a homecoming of sorts, produced by the College’s Wellesley Repertory Theatre in March 2026 in collaboration with another Boston area theater. “The general theme of Lifted is academic freedom from an intercultural perspective. I think it will be of great interest to our audiences,” says Marta Rainer ’98, the artistic producer of Wellesley Rep, which was established in 1998 by founding artistic producer Nora Hussey and supported by donations from Ruth Nagel Jones ’42. Fittingly, Roach will serve as the dramaturge for the production.

Wellesley Rep will also host a developmental workshop for Lifted on campus, which will provide opportunities for students to work on a world premiere professional production. “We will learn so much from this visionary process during the first year of the Ufot cycle and look forward to joining the momentum in 2026,” says Rainer. “We’re thrilled to be engaged, and we will be there for Mfoniso all along the way.”

The last two plays in the cycle, In Old Age and Adia and Clora Snatch Joy (a folk opera), will go up in spring and summer 2026: In Old Age will be produced by ArtsEmerson and Front Porch Arts Collective, also directed by Simmons, and Adia and Clora Snatch Joy will be produced by Boston Lyric Opera and The Huntington on The Huntington’s mainstage, coming full circle. The Huntington even coordinated an Ufot Family Cycle pass that will allow Udofia “super fans” (e.g. Wellesley alums) to see all nine plays in the series at a discounted rate. (See www.bostontheatrescene.com/the-ufot-pass for more information.)

Roach said she emailed Greco after the announcement about Boston’s Ufot Family Cycle to say thank you. “She was new to town and took on this amazing project,” says Roach, praising Greco’s commitment to purpose, consistency, and community. “We’ve always had different theater companies support each other,” Roach adds, “but nothing to this scale that I remember. … Dreaming big can take a lot of work!”

But no one can dream bigger or work harder than Udofia, and she finds inspiration and champions in those in her circle—like Greco, Roach, Arciniegas, and Rainer—and in friends like Fazeelat Aslam ’07, a filmmaker whose documentary short Saving Face won a 2012 Academy Award, or even other Wellesley alums in the performing arts she may not know personally but cheers on from afar, like Ali Barthwell ’10, who writes for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. “I’m like oh my God, go, go, go! Get your Oscars! Get your Emmys!” says Udofia.

And there is no doubt that Udofia’s many admirers—including those in the Wellesley community who have turned out in force to see her plays—are wishing the same for her.