Artistic Director of tiata fahodzi, Natalie Ibu speaks to Theatrefullstop about this year’s Tiata Delights Festival!

Hi Natalie! tiata fahodzi will be hosting the tiata delights festival on Saturday 7th November. How are you feeling ahead of the event?

tiata delights is an eclectic theatre festival offering an insight into the broad spectrum of theatre, from dramaturgy to directing. What can theatre goers expect to see and do on the day?

tiata Delights has two distinct offers. In the day – with the tiata artist day pass – artists old and new and the creatively curious are invited to join us in a series of workshops covering all sorts of disciplines. You can navigate your own path during the day so if you’re an actor who wants to use the opportunity to stretch your muscles, you can choose to do PUTTING THE PLAYGROUND BACK INTO THE PLAY with the astounding talent that is Cyril Nri (The Bill, Cucumber, Our Country’s Good) and then MonologueSlam MASTERCLASS with Triforce’s Gary Pillai.

Or you might be a writer who wants to know more about your collaborators’ processes so you might do a one-to-one SCRIPT SALON in Dressing Room 5 with the very experienced Ola Animashawun then do a movement workshop in LET’S GET PHYSICAL with Olympic Open Ceremony Movement Director Diane Alison Mitchell and then listen to the conversation about director training and development in the afternoon. It’s really up to you – you have an invitation to come and reflect on your practice, why you do what you do and how you might do what you want to do.

In the evening, we’re throwing a birthday party-cum-house-warming-cum-theatre festival. Expect food, drink and plays as I’m directing a retrospective of scenes from our history as well as a mixtape-performance of our vision for the future and what’s to come over the next three years.

I’ve programmed artist development festivals and produced a lot of artist development opportunities in the past so I always leave it later than I probably should! It can be confirmed very quickly or sometimes take forever for all the elements to fall into place. For tiata delights, it was really important to me that whilst it’s a festival for all – all ages, ethnicities and genders – that I platformed African heritage artists who I believe have something to offer us all, beyond those who share a skin colour or heritage. The artists I programmed, and those I missed out on, are inspiring, unique and specific in their approach to what they do and have a burning desire to speak to the world in which they live.

Simply; no, I don’t. My vision for theatre – which I adore and want more people to know about – is that every venue looks like the place it sits in – from who sells the tickets to who is operating the lights to who’s on stage and who’s reviewing it.

This question sits in my heart because it’s who I am, who my cousin is, who my friends are. What it means to be “African” is changing, it means something different to me than it did to Lucian and different again to what it meant to Femi. The African diaspora is changing and developing and I’m surrounded by people – of African heritage and not – who feel in the middle, othered from their otherness, a bit of everything and yet somehow nothing at all.

I felt that the work I was seeing that placed the African experience at the centre was one of two singular narratives – the African in Africa or the African in inner city, poor London and there seemed to be nothing speaking to – and of – those who sat in between those two versions of Africanness. Where’s the mixed race Scottish girl? Where’s the middle class British African who lives in rural England? I’m also interested in what makes you, you – heritage or experience? Does the fact my mum is half Scottish, half Cameroonian and my dad Nigerian tell you more about me than the fact I was born and bred in Edinburgh, went to uni in Leicester, live in London? For me, contemporary Britain is a mixed experience Britain and the work we’re beginning to make places the African heritage person at the heart of the story but is actually about really complex identity politics that we all share.

I was always really impressed that a company founded by one man with an idea had lasted and become more than that one man. I’d known of the company since 2008 but had always felt a bit intimated by the assurance it had – it was proudly African at a time when I was only just starting to engage in a conversation about my own identity, I’d only just realised that it’s unusual to be the only black person on your street and in your school (thanks, Scotland). But, by the time the job came up, I’d realised that there is no one way to be proudly African and that theatre had been simplifying the African diasporic experience. I had a vision for the company, for theatre, for Britain and a burning desire to bring about change. The rest is history.

Gosh, where to start. Don’t do what you think you should do, do what you need / want to do. Don’t stop asking questions and never be afraid to ask for help or say you don’t have the answer. Be nice to everyone – you never know when you’ll run into them next – but trust your instinct about people, it’s usually right. Go for lots of coffees with lots of people – think about who is making the work you want to make, who has the career you want in a year, five years, ten years. See lots of work – even work you know you won’t like. Don’t be a snob – watch Made in Chelsea as well as the opera; your audience will be watching it so it’s important you know what their references are. Drop me an email – I’d be happy to meet you. And come to tiata delights. You won’t regret it.