The 9-play ‘Ufot Family Cycle’ opens with ‘Sojourners’ at The Huntington

Celina Colby

Celina Colby is an arts and travel reporter with a fondness for Russian novels.... VIEW BIO

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Playwright Mfoniso Udofia has been telling the stories of her characters in the Ufot family since 2009. Now, for the first time, her Ufot Family Cycle of nine plays will be performed consecutively at The Huntington over the course of two years. This all-encompassing art experience begins this month with “Sojourners.”

The epic saga, which eventually will have a total of 10 plays — Udofia is currently finishing the 10th — follows a Nigerian family that has immigrated to the United States. Told through the matrilineal succession and primarily through female characters and stories, the cycle examines themes of culture, lineage and legacy through generations.

“I was asking myself at the time of writing it, what and if or how the Nigerian dream could operate while in America,” says Udofia. “What happens to that kind of dreaming when you actually taste America for the first time?”

The first play, “Sojourners,” at The Huntington Oct. 31-Dec. 1, opens this multi-generational story. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons, this play shows the origin story of the family matriarch, Abasiama, as she and her spouse land in Houston in 1978 hoping to earn their degrees in the United States and then bring the fruits of that education back to Nigeria. 

Though this is the first play in the cycle, it wasn’t written first. Going back to the beginning of the story after charting its course allowed Udofia to plant the seeds of what’s to come for the Ufot family in the next several decades. It also gave her a better understanding of her matriarch character.

“I am fascinated by the role of women’s work within the building of lineage and legacy,” says Udofia. “You    don’t see too many cycles that are matriarchal in the theater world. So you will keep coming back to what it is for a woman to be building lineage.”

It’s important to Udofia and The Huntington team to reach audiences who can relate to the Ufot story. In order to do so, they’re staging free pop-up performances of “Sojourners” outside the city and in Boston neighborhoods like Roxbury, Hyde Park and East Boston where high percentages of immigrant populations reside. On Nov. 25, the show will pop up at Roxbury Community College for free. Seats can be reserved on The Huntington’s website.

Though “Sojourners” and the Ufot Family Cycle deal with complicated themes of identity, origin and community, there is also much joy to be found in the performances. They’re not comedies, but they embody the natural comedy of the human experience, a necessary tool to cut the tension and stress of new experiences.

Udofia hopes audiences will feel connected to their own histories while watching the show and that they’ll remember how powerful a tool empathy can be, particularly on the eve of a divisive election in the United States.

“I hope that they remember that sometime in their history of landing here in this country, there was a build that had to have happened,” says Udofia. “And I hope that remembrance just builds a little sight, scope, empathy and warmth for whomever they meet.”