Nollywood Dreams Tickets

By: Jocelyn Bioh
Director: Saheem Ali
Producer: MCC Theater
Cast list: Abena, Charlie Hudson, III, Nana Mensah, Sandra Okuboyejo, Ade Otukoya and Emana Rachelle.
Design: Arnulfo Maldonado
Lighting: David Weiner
Costume: Dede Ayite
Sound: Palmer Hefferan
Other info: Projection
Design: by Alex Basco Koch

Nollywood Dreams is a new romantic comedy play for anyone with big dreams and stars in their eyes. Get Nollywood Dreams tickets on TodayTix now.

Nollywood Dreams is a play that follows Ayamma, a young girl living and working in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1990s. She has a job at her parents’ travel agency, but what she really wants is to be a star in the Nollywood film industry, which is booming around her. One day, she gets the chance of a lifetime to audition for a major Nigerian director. But she quickly becomes entangled in two relationships that complicate her smooth path to stardom: a rivalry with the director’s usual leading lady, and a budding romance with the industry’s most famous leading man.

Jocelyn Bioh mounted her first fully-produced play, School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play, at MCC Theater in 2017, gaining multiple accolades including the 2018 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. Now, with the world premiere of Nollywood Dreams Off-Broadway, Bioh returns to MCC once more. Led by director Saheem Ali, the creative team includes lighting designer David Weiner, sound designer Palmer Hefferan, set designer Arnulfo Maldonado, costume designer Dede Ayite, and projection designer Alex Basco Koch. Get tickets to Nollywood Dreams in New York on TodayTix.

What to Watch For

• The term “Nollywood” is a portmanteau of “Nigeria” and “Hollywood,” first coined in a 2002 New York Times article. The word has sparked debate as to what kinds of films count as “Nollywood” films. Besides referring to films shot, produced, and distributed in Nigeria, the term has also been applied to Ghanian English-language cinema produced or distributed by Nigerian companies, as well as films made in other African countries with a Nigerian audience in mind.
• The Nollywood Dreams play was included on the 2016 Kilroys’ List, an annual recognition of exceptional plays by non-male playwrights. The year before, another of Bioh’s plays, School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play, also made the list. Both these shows received the honor before they were even fully produced.
• Bioh’s work often deals with pressing social issues, especially surrounding race, through comedy — a departure from many stories about Black suffering. In an interview with The New York Times, she said that one literary manager liked Nollywood Dreams but “couldn’t understand why all the characters were so happy.” Bioh said she prefers to write about “funny and wild and silly” characters that remind her of her relatives in Ghana, rather than tell sad stories.
• It takes two! Nollywood Dreams is the second of three collaborations between Bioh and director Saheem Ali within a year. He directed the Shakespeare in the Park production of Merry Wives in summer 2021, which Bioh adapted, and is set to direct a new musical called Goddess by Bioh and Michael Thurber in California in spring 2022.
• Costume designer Dede Ayite’s work has been seen in multiple recent Broadway productions including A Soldier’s Play, Slave Play, American Son, and Children of a Lesser God.