The secret to Inua Ellams’ success is “And that’s when I thought, okay. This ‘All the Boys of Plateau Private School’ getting 1,000 words down a day. So says was an opportunity for me to critique and described him as being the ‘half-god the London-based writer, performer and colonisation, by setting it during the of rainfall’. self-professed ‘jack of all trades’ whose Nigerian Civil War,” he continues. “I could Like many of Ellams works, Half God new play in epic verse, The Half God look at colonial history and the role of is already destined for other things. of Rainfall, was recently published by the Soviet Union and the British in that Originally spawned from a Kiln Theatre Harper Collins. conflict. Also, I have two sisters and commission, the verse play is being The admission comes as no surprise: I’m the only male child so I thought, if shit staged there from April. “It’s also going once you get Googling the Nigerian-born gets difficult, I can just write about my to be an audio book, and hopefully a radio wordsmith and all-around creative force, family, and that’s totally what I did.” play, and I think it might make an you’re in for a wild ride through the worlds The newly released The Half God of awesome video game…” of theatre and poetry, fiction, graphic art Rainfall sees Ellams once again taking on Ellams is keenly aware that audiences and participatory programmes. ‘Prolific’ the big guns, this time by summoning the for theatre aren’t always the youngest, is a word often thrown around, but in thunder gods of myths from around the or the most diverse. It’s a difficulty he tries Ellams’ case, it’s a good fit. world — from Zeus in Ancient Greece to to tackle first hand. “Whenever I work “I’m strict, I put a lot of pressure on the Hindu Indra to �àngó, the most feared with established organisations, one of the myself,” he tells me at the café-bar Yoruba god, in all their lightning-sharp things I do is give fifty per cent of my on Deptford High Street in Southeast wrath. “The more I got into it, the more tickets away for free to people who might London where we meet to chat. “There’s I wanted to find out about as many of the otherwise never come,” he says. “Also the financial need to work when you thunder gods as possible — there are whenever people give me free tickets to live in a city like this, but also, especially hundreds of them,” Ellams says. “There’s things I put them on Twitter — I’m like: in theatre, there are many people and a scene where �àngó heads off to invade ‘I have a free ticket for whoever wants to schedules that depend on you hitting your Mount Olympus, he’s charging from come.’ So, you know, I’ve had a couple target, so if you don’t, there’s a trickleNigeria to Greece like this massive black of awkward blind dates.” down effect.” If he doesn’t hit his daily thunderbolt, and the other thunder Yet another project that Ellams is mark, the 34-year-old plays catch-up. gods are like, ‘oh this is so embarrassing developing is called Alcohol, City Light On the day we meet he’s looking at could you not do this?’ It’s been really and Slow Songs — the title is a lyric a backlog of 3,000 words, but he’s not fun to write.” from a Drake song. “It’s because I don’t sweating it. “I’m also a workaholic,” But there’s more to the story than get alcohol,” he says, as he explains that he admits. “I love what I do, my job is ancient myth. Ellams — who moved to the this play focuses on what it’s like to be my hobby.” UK when he was 12 and who refers to young today. “Hangovers have always From the most illustrious stages to himself as a ‘third-culture kid’ — is waking been the deterrent for me. So I'm trying to the most exploratory of personal projects, the gods in order to explore hybridity write about that — about political apathy Ellams seems unafraid to take on any and the multiplying of identities, something through the lens of young people who live challenge — a strategy that’s paid off. he knows from his own experience of in a city and drink a bit too much. It’s Barber Shop Chronicles, his study of moving around and adapting. The play’s also about trying to get to grips with what masculinity in a global age, is returning action centres on what happens when it means to be British in the twentyto London this summer, to the Roundhouse, a young man’s court skills rouse Zeus’s first century.” after two sell-out runs at the National anger, and his mortal Nigerian mother I ask Ellams, who has done multiple Theatre and a world tour. He’s also steps in to protect her son. “I thought of writing workshops and worked in schools, adapting his one-man-show Black T-shirt that cliché ‘making it rain’, which is if he has any advice for young people Collective, about a pair of Nigerian foster said when someone is a good shot in to help them find their confidence, to trust brothers whose lives are torn apart basketball, then I created Demi, this that they have a voice worth sharing. when their clothing brand goes global, figure who is half mortal, half god and “I try to focus on how finite life is,” he says. for American television network NBC. And who is a good shot. When it came to “You’re only alive now, only you see the he’s writing a book on his phone called thinking about his ethnicity, I decided world as you see it, your perspective Fuck Forty Five: “it’s gonna be forty five to make him half Nigerian and, because is entirely yours and you have nothing to poems that are all subtle ‘fuck yous’ — I am a huge fan of Greek myth, I made lose in sharing it — especially with poetry, to Donald Trump, Tommy Robinson, him the son of Zeus.” which can be easy to create and if you Shakespeare, Kipling — very lyrical,” The writer is no stranger to fantastical don’t like it — you just throw it in the bin.” he explains. Or there’s his R.A.P (rhythm thinking. Last year on BBC Three’s This tenacity is the real secret to and poetry) parties, which pop up The Essay, Ellams recounted his discovery Ellams success, and perhaps the reason regularly across London; a mix of music of Terry Pratchett’s comedy-fantasy behind his dedication to those everand readings, a celebration of hip hop Pyramids, which was the first book “with important 1,000 words a day. It’s a quality and the spoken word. no pictures that made me laugh out he attributes to his upbringing. “Nigerians One big project on the horizon is his loud — there was something about the can’t be last,” he says. “We have the spirit adaptation of Chekov’s Three Sisters, alchemy of it, so I began to read more to make something out of nothing, make which opens at the National Theatre this Pratchett and he introduced me to British a dollar out of fifteen cents, or just stand autumn. Seemingly un-phased by taking humour and I thought, okay, maybe I with a sense of entitlement — even if we on such a canonised play, Ellams found can find a way of living in England.” have no reason to be entitled. I had that in his way into the project by drawing As for the genesis of Half God, it bucket loads. I grew up with black privilege connections between the 1900 Russian started as a lot of Ellam’s projects do — in Nigeria and when I came to the UK, classic and more recent events — some of with an image. “This image usually I never felt like less than anyone, so I talked which are close to home. “When I first becomes a metaphor for something,” he to my teachers in a way most of my black read Three Sisters I was like nah, I don’t explains. “I question it or find a narrative friends didn’t, because they grew up in think so, these are just some middleor concept to attach to the metaphor. a racist society. But I was like, this is just class Russians,” he says. “But the second In this case there was a kid who I was at who I am. And I kept that intact. I still time I read it I picked up on the internal school with in Nigeria. His party trick was have it.” architecture, how it was a bit of genius, to spit as high as he could and catch and the third time I read it, I thought ‘ahh, the saliva in his mouth. It’s kind of gross, Read an excerpt from The Half God they’re just over the top, this is so Nigerian!’” but I wrote about him in a poem called of Rainfall on the next page.
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