Deptford Baby Chukwudi Onwere
I was invited to attend this one man show by Mitsy June (who performed recently at Winsome Moncrieffe Mitchell's album launch) and
am really pleased I took up the offer, having rushed straight from work which was
a challenge in itself! Chukwudi is both an actor and playwright, so took this
opportunity to display his versatility acting in his own show Deptford Baby. What really
came across to me was Chukwudi’s individualised, excellent story-telling style, and abundant energy.
Chukwudi’s main character and storyteller in this play is Chino who really
welcomes us to his world. Deptford Baby was conceived in 2020 and is actually a
lockdown baby itself- One of the positives that emerged from covid, and I think
we have much more to be thankful for than we realised at the time.
Having missed the introduction, event hosted by PD Coolie, and opening lines, I was
sitting there wondering how come this guy seems to be inside a big fish! Jonah
and the whale came to mind, naturally, but even with Jonah most of us don’t
take time to contemplate what it was like in the belly of said whale. Chino zoomed
in on his fish’s innards and described it to a tee, especially the stench! In
such graphic detail- good job I hadn’t eaten for several hours beforehand I
guess! We were also ‘in the dark’ about how long Chino was likely to remain inside
that fish as he clearly had no idea himself, deliberating long and hard about it, but what I gathered very quickly was
that this untenable position occured as the result of a mega flood hitting
Deptford.
I was in awe as the verbals flew past very fast and had no
idea how Chukwudi could possibly read/remember his lines with the script being
very detailed and umpteen pages long- I take my metaphorical hat off to him,
and let’s remember that this was a reading which will not be the case when the
play is fully realised. I had a glance at the script and by chance, travelled
to London Bridge afterwards with Vanessa, who is an actress. Vanessa kindly explained how they teach you to learn
scripts at drama school- I now know there’s a muscle in the brain dedicated to this
type of memory and like everything else, you use it or lose it.
Back to the story- and in a way my writing style today is
reflecting the movement of the script which ebbs and flows, having a main storyline,
however, deviates quite often to include many different characters and
scenarios- a bit like the Ronnie Corbett monologues really from days gone by.
Despite being from Peckham, which we discovered during question time, Chukwudi based his play in Deptford, so we all lived and breathed Deptford that night. Chino, who runs with his homies, did an excellent job of bringing his friends to life and I guess people are people, so we recognise them when they are skilfully described. We can all associate with Tenesha, Elisha, Keisha, Kadesha, Shanesha, Zenesha, Felsham, Fantesha, Fenesha and Felesha … such a tongue twister! I worked with Venesha and Delicia back in the day so it had me laughing, and I must add, we see these women all the time in the shops, TV and most recently on Tic Toc, sporting their extensions, lips, nails and let's not forget, accents. Tonight, they appeared right in front of us, as did Chino’s home boys- and relatives when he switched to African accents introducing his Father and Auntie, such characters. I think it important to add that with the internet we hear a lot of multi-cultural comedy these days where different mannerisms and perspectives are portrayed, so understand the humour more than we ever did before, hence we associate and find it funny. The presentation of our multi-cultural society really was on point having more than a touch of realism.
I think Chukwudi is a master of over-kill, clearly so from his strings
of names, and very good at including familiar points of reference, always with
a twist. He creates slogans based on slogans, ‘see it, fight it, restore the
community,’- You get that instantly, yes? I think this is a good ploy to help
us associate with the happenings. Still on overkill, Chukwudi uses exaggerated gestures,
introduced song, exemplifies the art of repetition and is able to use complex
story-telling techniques. In reality the story covered so much ground that it really needs
to be seen, and in my case, more than once, to be fully understood. Chukwudi
said during questiontime that the story ‘came to him,’ which many of us creatives can relate to, especially considering the mystical
elements in this mythical event.
I am just going to sum up briefly because you need to see it for yourself. The story is about bravery, finding solutions, camaraderie/human relationships and eventually restoring the equilibrium. Two major challenges outlined in this story following the flood are- escaping from the fish and defeating the snake who appeared later in the tale. Everything is open to interpretation, so what does the flood represent? Maybe time for change in a major way. How about the fish? The fish itself appeared placid apart from swallowing Chino, so to me it could represent the normal course of life that swallows us up full of glory and guts. Life was pretty same-old and we needed shaking up. Maybe the fish was just part of that transition and represented the turmoil, the unexpected and unknown, challenging us to become resourceful in unexpected circumstances. If you like making sense of non-sense, as nothing is explained, this play is a good brain teaser. Clearly the snake who appeared later was the all- powerful enemy, and every good story has to have a snake- Adam, Eve, Snake- Mowgli, Bagheera, Kaa-Snake. You have to have the snake whether it’s in the grass being under-bellied, or as is the case in Deptford Baby, literally in your face and swelling with the storyline, a modern tendency in film and cartoons, adding to the reasons why this film is suited to animation.
Given that the play was written during Covid,
the snake could simply represent the chronic state of world government and the
greed that erupted belly-up, sickening sums of money going to corporations and
individuals with direct access to world leaders. People being backed into a
corner worldwide and forced to take the jab. Let’s go no further and, thinking
about it, we still need to chop that metaphorical snakes head off in reality!
Over to you!!! Do you have a great
story to tell? What have you overcome and how? Are you organizing an event that
you’d love to share? Have you written an article, poem or short story you would
like featured? If so, please contact me with brief info via my Facebook
Group Its Braap and
I will get back to you. And subscribe to our YouTube channel at Its Braap TV
Jaz McKenzie~ The Word Magician
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