The poet, playwright and cultural impresario on supporting his family through poetry, his love for comic books and why ‘home’ is really his laptop, Meredith
The first preview of Barber Shop Chronicles was a night Inua Ellams will never forget. Set in an African-Caribbean barbershop on the night Chelsea beat Barcelona in the 2012 Champions League semi-final, it had been tentatively scheduled for a brief run at the National Theatre’s Dorfman auditorium in the summer of 2017. But as the all-male cast took their bow it was clear they had a hit on their hands. “We couldn’t believe the ovation, the noise,” Ellams says. “We stepped out of the theatre asking ourselves: ‘What just happened. What have we done?’ The love it has, and keeps on having, has been the most humbling thing.”
Hailed by Michael Billington as one of the 25 best plays of the decade, it was showered with praise on a nine-venue outing to the US and Canada, and has now set off on a nationwide UK tour. But when we meet on the South Bank, where it all began, Ellams has other things on his mind. He is struggling to persuade his mobile phone, nicknamed Maud, to help in publicising his newest work, a verse narrative called The Half God of Rainfall, which was born simultaneously as a book and a play this month. While he’s confident the play will look after itself, he’s not so sure about the book – and he’s not taking any chances. “Naija no dey carry last,” he quips – a pidgin slogan he roughly translates as “Nigerians strive to finish first”.
I wrote about things I was afraid of and performed to people who applauded louder the more vulnerable I was
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