The Gods Are All Here, a beautiful blend of memoir and folktale, promises to be one of the most exciting productions of the Welsh autumn season. Hari Berrow talks to writer/performer Phil Okwedy about the show.
Phil Okwedy spent many years trying to find a way of storytelling that spoke to him.
“I was seeing lots of other storytellers – they were telling myths, and I was thinking ‘it’s about time I told some too’. I started looking and, although I enjoyed their tellings of myths from all over the world, I couldn’t seem to find anything that spoke to me,” Okwedy says. “I’m Welsh and Ebo – although I never lived in Nigeria or with my family, I was fostered so I didn’t actually grow up with my family – but I looked at the myths and stories from there and still felt outside. And I was thinking about it, and I had all these interesting bits of family history. So, I thought of mixing the two together to create something that, at least in my own mind, was my own kind of myth-making.”
After discovering a series of letters mapping the relationship between his mother and father, Okwedy discovered the tools he needed to begin to create his personal mythology.
“I always knew my mum. I saw her once a year or so, throughout her life,” Okwedy tells me. “When she died, I was the one who went to clear out her flat and I found all these letters from my father to her. When I found them, I wasn’t sure what to do with them and I put them away for a long time – nearly 10 years, I think. I didn’t know what to do with these letters. I knew they were gonna turn into a revelation about my parents’ relationship, but felt like I should something with them, and then I realised ‘they want to be a story-telling show’.”
This idea, however, was as risky as it was potentially rewarding.
“I love stories from Africa and its diaspora. I’d come across some stories that I knew would work and would fit. But there was, I guess, some kind of jeopardy for me,” Okwedy reflects. “I was quite happy. What was I gonna find in these letters? What did I want from them? I kind of thought I wanted to find the parents I never had, and that’s kind of how the show unfolds: this idea of me reading these letters in order to have some sense of these parents I never lived with.”
Okwedy wants to open storytelling to a new audience, and offer something that’s been so transformative for him out into communities that really need it.
“One of the things I very much want – that I’ve wanted from the outset – is to diversify the audience of storytelling. It’s a great audience, but it’s basically middle-class, middle-aged and white. Strangely, in that way, I’m 60 – I’d almost put myself in the same bracket. But there’s this whole audience out there.
“I’m negotiating doing some workshops for Maethu Cymru/Foster Wales, with some of the young people who have left care or about to leave care to investigate their own stories. We’re also planning a week in Butetown with the community, and a week with Oasis, which is a centre for refugees and asylum seekers. People are very much storytelling animals. It’s how we communicate with each other; we’re always telling each other stories, and so hopefully my story begets other stories, other people’s stories, so that they can have their voices heard and so that they’re listened to, you know?”
Okwedy hopes there’s something for everyone in this show where he shares not only his own remarkable stories, but the stories of many who came before him.
“These stories are very old. They’ve been through thousands of mouths – hundreds of thousands – and who knows how many pairs of ears. And they’ve been edited and edited until they’re kind of just this kernel of story – but within these kind of simple-looking stories, there is all this wisdom available.
“I’m putting it out there to entertain, but I’m knowing and trusting that these stories contain all sorts for those who are at a moment in their own lives where it might resonate with them. I’m hoping that people come and they’re entertained and moved, and maybe it resonates with their own lives and maybe they share something with others because of it.’
Phil Okwedy will be performing The Gods Are All Here on various dates from Wed 19 Oct until Tue 28 Feb – see the full list of dates here
words HARI BERROW
