From
PANDORA’S BOX
by Ade Solanke
Pandora’s Box by Ade Solanke was produced by Spora Stories and first performed at the Arcola Tent in Hackney, east London on 9 May 2012. The production was directed by Ola Animashawun, with the following cast; Ben Onwukwe (Principal Osun), Susan Aderin (Mama-Ronke), Damson Idris (Tope), Olatunji Sotimirin (Baba), Bradley John (Timi), Yetunde Oduwole (Sis Ronke) and Anna-Maria Nabirye (Toyin).
Pandora’s Box explores the dilemma facing many first- and second-generation African parents regarding the decision to educate their children in London or Nigeria. Thirty years ago Pandora (mother) chose to leave her daughter Ronke in Nigeria while she continued her studies in London, with the hope of returning back home. Now, thirty years later, she returns to Nigeria for the first time, accompanied with her other daughter Toyin, who she raised in England, and her grandson. As the play unravels, we see history repeat itself as single mother Toyin struggles to decide whether to enrol her unruly son in the best boarding school in Nigeria or bring him back to a potentially dangerous life in London.
About the Playwright
British-born and of Nigerian heritage, Ade Solanke was raised in Ladbroke Grove, west London.
Solanke is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and Founder and Artistic Director of Spora Stories (a theatre company dedicated to new stories about the African Diaspora). She has been educated in America and England, gaining a MFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California, postgraduate diploma in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College in London and an honours degree in English Literature from the University of Sheffield in England. She has also attended the Royal Court Theatre’s Critical Mass Writers Course.
Ade Solanke’s stage plays have been performed as part of Tiata Fahodzi’s Tiata Delights at the Almeida Theatre, and Talawa’s Unzipped at the Young Vic. In 2012, Ade Solanke was voted Best Playwright in the Nigerian Entertainment and Lifestyle Awards 2012. Pandora’s Box was nominated for Best New Play in the Off West End Theatre Awards (Offies). In 2011, she won the Afro-Hollywood Film Award for ‘Best Playwright’ for Pandora’s Box. Ade is currently a member of Soho Theatre writers’ HUB and Writer-in-Residence at Goldsmiths University. She has also been associated with the British Film Institute.
Her company Spora Stories is probably best known for co-producing the writing festival entitled Lagos via London, a new writing festival celebrating Nigeria’s 50th anniversary, as well as producing the film Family Legacy about Sickle Cell disease.
Summary (Extract)
PRINCIPAL OSUN, a fifty-year-old man, tries to convince single-mother Toyin to enrol her unruly son Timi in his boarding school.
(To RONKE.) Changing. (He turns back to TOYIN.) It’s always the same. First, he’s bright eyed and bushy tailed. Doing his homework on time, enjoying getting good marks, leaping up to let old ladies sit down on the bus. Praised by everyone. The apple of your eye. Then, somehow, somehow, he loses interest in school. He’s there, oh yes, but now he sits in class staring out of the window. What is he thinking about? He tells you school is boring. He doesn’t like the work. His results start to slip and he begins to play up in class. Worse, he’s beginning to get home late from school; then later and later. When he is back, he’s off out again and disappears till midnight, (Off her expression.) or later. And now all sorts of people are calling for him at home, at all hours, people of a different sort to the friends he used to mix with. They call him by a strange name and he says it’s just his nickname. The school reports worsen, there are minor incidents, but it’s always ‘all a terrible mistake, Mum’…
…
…and you believe him. You want to believe him. You have to believe him because you’re helpless. There’s no role model to help him change into the kind of man you wanted him to be. You talk to him, you plead with him, you bribe him: iPods, iPads, the latest phones, clothes, hey! But to no avail…he’s still changing, now so fast, sometimes you don’t recognize the cheerful boy he was just two years ago. Those moods, so strange. So gradually you accept the truth: you need help. You have to let him go. And now the time has come.
…
So, here’s the contract. You’re signing to save him. Are you ready?