To Be You

"The sky has the stars and I have you by my side."

Her name means “one who is worthy of adoration”.

Osuyi has spent most of her life not believing it.

At 2am - fresh from ending her engagement, hours from a flight to Nigeria - she’s in her childhood bedroom, packing a suitcase and unravelling twenty years of trying to make herself enough.

To Be You charts the shifting bond between two girls growing up in Essex: one Black and aching to be seen, one biracial and determined to reinvent herself at any cost. A one-woman show about the particular hunger to belong - and what it costs when the person who knows you best decides to become someone else entirely.

A raw and darkly humorous exploration of guilt, memory, and the identities we shed....and the ones that refuse to let us go.

It asks what the cost of belonging is. And which parts of yourself you’d kill to pay it.

Shortlisted for the inaugural Mustapha Matura Award 2021.

Supported by the Mercury Theatre and Marlowe Theatre through the Catalyst for Culture Initiative.

Writer - Esohe Uwadiae
Performer - Efé Agwele
Director - Shakira Newton