Ufot Family Cycle continues at Strand Theater Co.
Her Portmanteau by Mfoniso Udofia — the fourth installment in the nine-play Ufot Family Cycle – follows a Nigerian matriarch, Abasiama, and her two daughters as they reunite after years of separation. Set in a Harlem apartment, the play explores the tensions between Nigerian traditions and American realities (not to mention some quintessential mother-daughter dynamics), generously but unflinchingly illuminating the complexities of assimilation, generational trauma, cultural inheritance, and forgiveness.
In only a single, intermissionless act, Udofia’s play covers enormous chronological, genealogical, and emotional breadth. As laid out in an account of this play within the cycle as a whole,
Abasiama’s past becomes present when, Iniabasi Ekpeyoung, the daughter she let go in SOJOURNERS returns to America, demanding her birthright. Trapped in a one-bedroom New York City apartment, Abasiama and her two eldest daughters from two different marriages, Iniabasi and Adiaha, have a war of words. Each daughter sits on mountains of grievance – and neither of them can, nor want, to see into the other. Abasiama faces the greatest reckoning of her life and must contend with the choices she made in her youth. If not, if Abasiama fails, her family will remain an ocean apart. [https://www.mfonisoudofia.com/the-ufot-cycle]
My full conversation with production director Sandra L. Holloway and Strand’s artistic director Alma Daventport is here:
More information and details on the production are online here.
