The ‘Swamp Dwellers’ makes it’s return to the United Kingdom after a more than half a century hiatus. Written in 1958 by Nigerian and Africa’s first Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, after graduating from the University of Leeds at the age of 24,

The one act play made its last appearance in 1975 in the UK at the African Caribbean arts centre Keskidee in Islington, then directed by Nigerian playwright Yemi Ajibade. It makes it’s return at Utopia Theater, in Sheffield, from June 29 to July 11. It is directed by former human rights lawyer Dr. Mojisola Kareem also featuring Royal Shakespeare Company regular-Jude Akuwudike.

The Swamp Dweller is set in the Niger Delta of the late 1950s, in a swamp bound community faced with disappoints, poverty and environmental degradation. The Director, Dr Mojisola Kareem calls it one of Soyinka’s “quietly powerful plays,” with themes of migration, inequality, relevant tension between tradition and modernity, stating, “what strikes me is how little has changed,” she said. “Almost everything Soyinka was writing about is still happening somewhere in the world today.

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