INUA ELLAMS Thunder gods have been summoned in this wordsmith’s latest literary work

The polymath wordsmith summons up the thunder gods in his latest literary work

Words ANANDA PELLERIN Photography DANNY KASIRYE

INUA ELLAMS

The secret to Inua Ellams’ success is getting 1,000 words down a day. So says the London-based writer, performer and self-professed ‘jack of all trades’ whose new play in epic verse, The Half God of Rainfall, was recently published by Harper Collins.

The admission comes as no surprise: once you get Googling the Nigerian-born wordsmith and all-around creative force, you’re in for a wild ride through the worlds of theatre and poetry, fiction, graphic art and participatory programmes. ‘Prolific’ is a word often thrown around, but in Ellams’ case, it’s a good fit.

“I’m strict, I put a lot of pressure on myself,” he tells me at the café-bar on Deptford High Street in Southeast London where we meet to chat. “There’s the financial need to work when you live in a city like this, but also, especially in theatre, there are many people and schedules that depend on you hitting your target, so if you don’t, there’s a trickledown effect.” If he doesn’t hit his daily mark, the 34-year-old plays catch-up. On the day we meet he’s looking at a backlog of 3,000 words, but he’s not sweating it. “I’m also a workaholic,” he admits. “I love what I do, my job is my hobby.”

From the most illustrious stages to the most exploratory of personal projects, Ellams seems unafraid to take on any challenge — a strategy that’s paid off. Barber Shop Chronicles, his study of masculinity in a global age, is returning to London this summer, to the Roundhouse, after two sell-out runs at the National Theatre and a world tour. He’s also adapting his one-man-show Black T-shirt Collective, about a pair of Nigerian foster brothers whose lives are torn apart when their clothing brand goes global, for American television network NBC. And he’s writing a book on his phone called Fuck Forty Five: “it’s gonna be forty five poems that are all subtle ‘fuck yous’ — to Donald Trump, Tommy Robinson, Shakespeare, Kipling — very lyrical,” he explains. Or there’s his R.A.P (rhythm and poetry) parties, which pop up regularly across London; a mix of music and readings, a celebration of hip hop and the spoken word.

One big project on the horizon is his adaptation of Chekov’s Three Sisters, which opens at the National Theatre this autumn. Seemingly un-phased by taking on such a canonised play, Ellams found his way into the project by drawing connections between the 1900 Russian classic and more recent events — some of which are close to home. “When I first read Three Sisters I was like nah, I don’t think so, these are just some middleclass Russians,” he says. “But the second time I read it I picked up on the internal architecture, how it was a bit of genius, and the third time I read it, I thought ‘ahh, they’re just over the top, this is so Nigerian!’” “And that’s when I thought, okay. This was an opportunity for me to critique colonisation, by setting it during the Nigerian Civil War,” he continues. “I could look at colonial history and the role of the Soviet Union and the British in that conflict. Also, I have two sisters and I’m the only male child so I thought, if shit gets difficult, I can just write about my family, and that’s totally what I did.”

The newly released The Half God of Rainfall sees Ellams once again taking on the big guns, this time by summoning the thunder gods of myths from around the world — from Zeus in Ancient Greece to the Hindu Indra to �àngó, the most feared Yoruba god, in all their lightning-sharp wrath. “The more I got into it, the more I wanted to find out about as many of the thunder gods as possible — there are hundreds of them,” Ellams says. “There’s a scene where �àngó heads off to invade Mount Olympus, he’s charging from Nigeria to Greece like this massive black thunderbolt, and the other thunder gods are like, ‘oh this is so embarrassing could you not do this?’ It’s been really fun to write.”

But there’s more to the story than ancient myth. Ellams — who moved to the UK when he was 12 and who refers to himself as a ‘third-culture kid’ — is waking the gods in order to explore hybridity and the multiplying of identities, something he knows from his own experience of moving around and adapting. The play’s action centres on what happens when a young man’s court skills rouse Zeus’s anger, and his mortal Nigerian mother steps in to protect her son. “I thought of that cliché ‘making it rain’, which is said when someone is a good shot in basketball, then I created Demi, this figure who is half mortal, half god and who is a good shot. When it came to thinking about his ethnicity, I decided to make him half Nigerian and, because I am a huge fan of Greek myth, I made him the son of Zeus.”

The writer is no stranger to fantastical thinking. Last year on BBC Three’s The Essay, Ellams recounted his discovery of Terry Pratchett’s comedy-fantasy Pyramids, which was the first book “with no pictures that made me laugh out loud — there was something about the alchemy of it, so I began to read more Pratchett and he introduced me to British humour and I thought, okay, maybe I can find a way of living in England.”

As for the genesis of Half God, it started as a lot of Ellam’s projects do — with an image. “This image usually becomes a metaphor for something,” he explains. “I question it or find a narrative or concept to attach to the metaphor. In this case there was a kid who I was at school with in Nigeria. His party trick was to spit as high as he could and catch the saliva in his mouth. It’s kind of gross, but I wrote about him in a poem called ‘All the Boys of Plateau Private School’ and described him as being the ‘half-god of rainfall’.

Like many of Ellams works, Half God is already destined for other things. Originally spawned from a Kiln Theatre commission, the verse play is being staged there from April. “It’s also going to be an audio book, and hopefully a radio play, and I think it might make an awesome video game…”

Ellams is keenly aware that audiences for theatre aren’t always the youngest, or the most diverse. It’s a diffi culty he tries to tackle first hand. “Whenever I work with established organisations, one of the things I do is give fifty per cent of my tickets away for free to people who might otherwise never come,” he says. “Also whenever people give me free tickets to things I put them on Twitter — I’m like: ‘I have a free ticket for whoever wants to come.’ So, you know, I’ve had a couple of awkward blind dates.”

Yet another project that Ellams is developing is called Alcohol, City Light and Slow Songs — the title is a lyric from a Drake song. “It’s because I don’t get alcohol,” he says, as he explains that this play focuses on what it’s like to be young today. “Hangovers have always been the deterrent for me. So I'm trying to write about that — about political apathy through the lens of young people who live in a city and drink a bit too much. It’s also about trying to get to grips with what it means to be British in the twentyfirst century.”

I ask Ellams, who has done multiple writing workshops and worked in schools, if he has any advice for young people to help them find their confidence, to trust that they have a voice worth sharing. “I try to focus on how finite life is,” he says. “You’re only alive now, only you see the world as you see it, your perspective is entirely yours and you have nothing to lose in sharing it — especially with poetry, which can be easy to create and if you don’t like it — you just throw it in the bin.”

This tenacity is the real secret to Ellams success, and perhaps the reason behind his dedication to those everimportant 1,000 words a day. It’s a quality he attributes to his upbringing. “Nigerians can’t be last,” he says. “We have the spirit to make something out of nothing, make a dollar out of fifteen cents, or just stand with a sense of entitlement — even if we have no reason to be entitled. I had that in bucket loads. I grew up with black privilege in Nigeria and when I came to the UK, I never felt like less than anyone, so I talked to my teachers in a way most of my black friends didn’t, because they grew up in a racist society. But I was like, this is just who I am. And I kept that intact. I still have it.”

Read an excerpt from The Half God of Rainfall on the next page.

An excerpt from The Half God of Rainfall by Inua Ellams Published by Harper Collins (2019)

For thousands of years, Gods enjoyed full dominion over the lives of men. From the northernmost poles to the southern, from the east of the sun’s rise down

to the west of the sun’s set, men promised their souls and gave their all in penitent servitude but this century marked a change. Their lives, from sole

god-worship, turned to fleshy pleasures and the glut of property. As prayers which fed and assuaged the might of Gods dwindled, they felt their power cut. once frightened kings, whose influence, whose merest hopes were turned to laws, and laws supreme, realised too late this dwindling servitude of men and hurled volts.

He killed them. Other Gods grew benevolent, cooled down, conserving power, but Zeus smote those who strayed from him, bolts asunder, this way, that, so thrice through

�àngó’s wide window Zeus’ terrible aim flayed the walls and �àngó had enough, thundered, vexed, sped towards Mount Olympus. As he charged, his way

was watched by other thunder-gods: from Egypt — Set, Chaac — Mayan, Indra — Hindu, from China — Feng Lung, Whaitiri — Māori, Thor — Norse God and the rest

too numerous to count watched �àngó’s raging run to Olympus knowing chaos would come. �àngó’s first bolt hit the doors with such force Hera’s throne spun.

Hera — Queen of the Greek Gods, screamed to Apollo — God of Archery to take arms against �àngó, as Ares — God of War, sat back to watch the show.

Artemis — Goddess of Hunting, grasped her long bow but �àngó burned it to ashes, his black fire wild in his hands. He hurled it at Hera, grasped low

its shaft when it struck her throne, whipped back its fire at Apollo. With the two archers down he hewed from a distance. He struck column after spire

after pillar after stone. �àngó’s anger stood down every attack, slaying their weapons until Zeus arrived in a thunderclap, primed for a feud.

You dare attack my home, �àngó? �àngó laughed, thrilled, for Zeus’ arrogance would sweeten his vengeance. Let he without fault throw the first bolt! How d’you feel?

Find yourself ... wanting? Zeus? Thrice you’ve struck my palace! / My aim was not for you! For men! Those bolts I threw to smite them. / Zeus, killing innocents is callous.

And my palace is wrecked. Redress is what I’m due! / And of all the ways, �àngó, furnishings? You crush furniture? Are we men or are we Gods? yelled Zeus

Choose better! He turned, snapping his fingers, the lush beauty returning to the halls as though �àngó hadn’t happened. Zeus, weakened by the effort, flushed.

Your power dwindles �àngó said You’ve turned yellow. Are you well? / Of course! Zeus snapped Let us settle this as Gods. A race! My kingdom to yours. Your might thrown

against mine. The loser answers the victor’s whims for an age, and the victor can take a mortal from the loser’s world. / Done! �àngó hissed, his bolt swift

in his grip. Hera rolled her eyes at how mortal Gods could be, how like men to reduce disputes down to sporting feats, but it was done: the stakes, awful,

the route to run, Zeus in his great and golden crown, in a monstrous gold chariot, �àngó displeased on his black bolt, face frowned, awaiting the countdown.