What are the themes of your play?
Never Look Back tells the imagined story of Kings African Rifle (KAR); the soldiers from East and Southern African commonwealth nations that fought for Great Britain in WWII. At the heart of the show is the relationship between veteran Komakech Ogwang and his curious granddaughter Anena Gladis. Bridging past and present, their conversations in present day Uganda transport back to 1944 to reveal the experiences of the KAR in the Burma campaign fighting the Japanese army. Together they recap the stories from the war in a bid to commemorate the sacrifices of the men who fought from these nations and question their legacy amidst historic and present racial inequality.
Why did you write it and why now?
There’s a line in the play which asks “Do you think history will build monuments upon which our names will be written, mine and yours and every other sorry African who fought in these jungles…?”
In WW1 my great grandfather fought for Britain. In WW2 my grandfather fought for Britain. Both on the frontline. This fact is not that unique to me, as a millennial from a commonwealth African nation. I have now been in the UK for about 20 years, and every November 11, I see these soldiers are not represented in the remembrance. They are invisibles. We never learned about them in history classes. We don’t see them in the blockbuster films. There are only a handful of books about them, most of which are by white writers. And they are practically non-existent in theatre. Their contribution deserves to be platformed. Their stories deserve to be told. And we have to truly ask what their contribution meant, and how has it benefited us today? In writing Never Look Back, I’m hoping to do so whilst honouring them.
Which playwrights are you influenced by and in what way?
There are two schools of influence for me, one is the skill and artistry in which a story is conveyed, and the other is subject matter. In the former, I am influenced by a number of artists including playwrights, musicians, poets, and comedians. In the latter I am mostly influenced by people, the day-to-day conversations and personal experiences. There are of course playwrights and artists whose work echoes both schools. Athol Fugard, the first African playwright I ever read, his work struck me and has stuck with ever since. Okot p’Bitek, incredible at balancing politics and individualism. Wole Soyinka, a master in capturing African Traditions and using a mixture of African and British storytelling.
What do you want to achieve as a playwright?
Whoever you are, whatever your artform, I believe you have a responsibility to represent the part of society that exists because of you. Your voice, so to say. And this is not just one thing. We are individuals, yes, but we are made up of countless differences and similarities. I am a male, working class, first generation Ugandan millennial living in Sheffield. So many different angles to take here. The one that I mostly feel connected to at the moment is the Ugandan part. The East African. The African. The black skin in the western diaspora. I plan to write twelve plays, which will be four trilogies, in my playwriting journey. The first trilogy is War Plays for which Far Gone and Never Look Back are a part of, the second is Africans in the Diaspora Plays, the third is The African Middle-Class Plays, and the final one is yet to be decided. If there is an umbrella theme that encompasses all these, I would say it’s something like challenging Britain’s colonial past in Africa and asking how it affects us now.