To Be You

To Be You charts the shifting bond between two girls growing up in Essex and their desperate hunger to belong: one Black and aching to be seen, one biracial and determined to reinvent herself at any cost. A raw and darkly humorous piece – it questions the cost of belonging and what you’d kill to pay it. 

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

While packing up her childhood bedroom before a sudden move to Nigeria, a young woman discovers that the past never lays dead. Old photos, forgotten sketches and half-remembered rituals pull her back into the brutal, beautiful tangle of girlhood and adolescence—where belonging was survival, and one friendship shaped everything she became.

Told through an intimate, vivid and fast-moving monologue, To Be You charts the shifting bond between two girls growing up in Essex and their desperate hunger to belong: one Black and aching to be seen, one biracial and determined to reinvent herself at any cost. After their worlds collide with lies, longing and the politics of colourism and desirability, the past resurfaces, demanding a reckoning she can no longer outrun.

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