The Yard to stage Channel 4 Playwrights' Scheme winner Dipo Baruwa-Etti's debut play
Baruwa-Etti, the Channel 4 Playwrights' Scheme winner and BBC TV Drama Writers' Programme 2020 participant, previously performed at the venue as part of the Yard's Live Drafts festival in April 2018. He is an alumnus of the Royal Court and the Tamasha Playwrights scheme.
Set as well as staged in east London, the piece follows a young black man who has been unemployed for seven years, exploring themes of masculinity, witchcraft and magic alongside the clash between West African and Western attitudes to mental health. It will be directed by Taio Lawson and designed by Rosie Elnile with movement direction by Lanre Malaolu, sound design by George Dennis and lighting design by Ciaran Cunnigham. The casting is to be announced.
Baruwa-Etti said: "I am thrilled to have An unfinished man on at The Yard. Since starting this project with them in 2018, I've been given the support to fully express my voice. I've been able to go to places I can only imagine – including creating my own fictional language! There's nowhere else I would have been able to tell this story in the way I wanted to tell it."
Tickets for the show, which runs from 17 April to 16 May, go on sale at midday.
You can watch the creative team discuss the show here, in a video created by Hunter Allen:
