Nine Lives and Come To Where I'm From

Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born playwright and poet based in Leeds, UK. As winner of the Channel 4 Playwright’s Scheme, she was Writer-in-Residence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2014. Her first full-length play, Boi Boi is Dead, was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2014/15. Other theatre credits include: Tangled Roots (2014), Nine Lives (2014), Come To Where I’m From (2013), The Market (2013), Di Daakes’ Part A Di Night (2013), Home Has Died (2012), Why The Drought Returns (2012), The Night Shift (2011) and The Povo Die Till Freedom Comes (2010). She has been the recipient of the following awards: Award for the Arts 2011 (Leeds Black Awards) and the Young Black, Asian Writers Award (The Big Issue in the North's Short Story Competition 2011), and she was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2014/15.

A blazing new drama about people on the margins of a failing society. Zodwa Nyoni’s Nine Lives tells the story of Ishmael, a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker who has fled to Britain because he is gay, one of millions of victims of the new wave of extreme homophobia sweeping some African countries. In a fine 50-minute monologue . . . we watch Ishmael struggle with Britain’s intrusive and hostile immigration system, catch a brief glimpse of sexual freedom, and form a fragile but hopeful friendship with a young single mum he meets in the park. Nyoni’s interweaving of naturalism and poetry is superb, and lifts this show far beyond documentary, into unforgettable solo drama about one of the key experiences of our time.