Mfoniso Udofia

Mfoniso Udofia is a first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator. Her plays Sojourners and The Grove will be produced by the Huntington Theatre, and productions of her plays Sojourners, runboyrun, Her Portmanteau and In Old Age have been seen at NYTW, A.C.T., Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, and Boston Court. She is the recipient of the 2017 Helen Merrill Award, the 2017-18 McKnight National Residency and Commission and is a member of New Dramatists.

Mfoniso Udofia will be working on two plays. Lifted is about a brilliant and fiercely independent scholar, Toyoima Ufot, who has forged her own lonely path, isolating herself in the hallowed halls of academia, but can't outrun her past forever. Forced to contend with her choices and her history, Toyoima makes a voyage to her fatherland – Akwa Ibom, Nigeria – and finds herself on a healing journey where she is ultimately exonerated, because amongst family, one can never be made an outcast. In Old Age is a play about Abasiama Ufot and an elder man who make an unlikely spiritual connection.