Inua Ellams's new play Once Upon a Time in Sokoto runs at Brighton Dome Corn Exchange for five nights in November, as the first production from Touring Together, a nationwide initiative built to take new theatre out to audiences across England.
A new play by Inua Ellams tends not to sit still, and this one was never meant to. Once Upon a Time in Sokoto runs at Brighton Dome Corn Exchange for five nights in November, on a tour designed to put work of this scale in front of audiences who rarely get first sight of it.
Ellams, the Nigerian-born poet, playwright and artist, has written a family drama set against the events that led to the creation of Nigeria. At its centre is a friendship between an enslaved woman and the man who once owned her - beautiful, the production's own billing says, and unlikely, which is the more interesting of the two claims.
What gives the Brighton dates their weight is what the production is opening. It is the first from Touring Together, a brand-new nationwide initiative committed to bringing bold new theatre to audiences across the country rather than concentrating it in a handful of London buildings. Launching that programme with an Ellams play says a good deal about the kind of work it intends to move, and about the size of room it expects to fill.
The Corn Exchange is one of Brighton Dome's three venues, alongside the Concert Hall and the Studio Theatre. It reopened in 2023, together with the Studio Theatre, after a refurbishment of the listed spaces on the Royal Pavilion Estate.
The production is announced as part of Brighton Dome's autumn season of theatre, dance and circus.
