Inua Ellams

Pick a word, any word. Prompted by audience suggestion and open conversation, Ellams searches through his archive, unearths refined or raw gold, and presents his treasure in a spontaneous performance.

A man walks into a room with his life in his hands. He is the internationally acclaimed artist and playwright Inua Ellams (Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half God of Rainfall) and he has filled thousands of pages in an ongoing attempt to be heard, to give his genius wings that can travel. Every word he’s ever written is captured, all the poems and plays and essays, the drafts of projects abandoned and works as yet unknown, indexed, rendered as binary, and waiting patiently within the confines of the electronic tablet he’s holding even now.

Search Party is an act of call and response that hearkens back to the birth of storytelling. At this uniquely futuristic and puckishly chaotic interactive event, the artist couldn’t be more present. He’s inviting you to join the work. What do you say?

About Inua Ellams:
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright and  performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of:  The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban  walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates live literature and  music, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates poetry and film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins & Bloomsbury.



Image credit: Inua Ellams and Adama Jalloh