A Slice-of-Life: British-African Social Comedy in Bola Agbaje’s Council Estate Plays

Abstract

Somewhat in the shadow of the three playwrights discussed so far in this book, the second half of the 2000s decade was particularly significant for marking the emergence of a number of British West African playwrights onto the British theatre new writing scene, including Levi David Addai, Bola Agbaje, Oladipo Agboluaje, Michael Bhim and Lizzy Dijeh.¹ This was arguably the first decade in which explicit British-African plays were staged at Britain’s main new writing venues, compared to earlier decades when British-Caribbean voices dominated. Prior to this point, the more prominent African performances tended to be found in the realms of music and dance, in companies such as Adzido or Badejo Arts, while black theatre companies, such as Nitro, Talawa and Temba, foregrounded British-Caribbean writers and experiences. Thus the new raft of British-African playwrights, who are primarily of Ghanaian or Nigerian heritage, brought unique voices to the text-based profile of the contemporary London stage, adding to the prevailing images of black Britain with interrogations of some of the particular issues encountered by British-Africans in relation to predominant ideas about black British identity and experience.