12:00 AM 22nd June 2026
Soyinka's "Forgotten" Play The Swamp Dwellers receives Sheffield Revival After Over Half A Century
Urielle Klein-Mekongo, Obi Maduegbuna and Jude Akuwudike in rehearsal for The Swamp Dwellers
A one-act play by a Nigerian Nobel laureate that has not been performed in the UK since 1975 opens in Sheffield later this month.
The Swamp Dwellers was written by Wole Soyinka in 1958, when he was just 24. The writer and activist completed the rarely staged work a year after his graduation from Leeds University with an honours degree in English.
Soyinka's better-known works, which are regularly produced on international stages include Death and the King’s Horseman, which is set in colonial Nigeria in the 1940s and is based on a true story and The Lion and the Jewel.
The Swamp Dwellers was last staged in the UK in 1975 at African Caribbean arts centre Keskidee in Islington, north London. It was directed by Nigerian-born playwright, actor and director Yemi Ajibade, the centre’s then artistic director.
A recent resurgence of interest in the early work has seen a 2024 production in Lagos and a 2025 outing at Theater for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn.
Utopia Theatre's artistic director Dr Mojisola Kareem is now resurrecting the piece for UK audiences, saying she believes it to be one of Soyinka’s most “quietly powerful plays”.
A story of survival in a landscape pushed beyond its limits, former human rights lawyer Kareem says this 70-year-old tale now hits harder than ever.
"On the surface The Swamp Dwellers appears deceptively simple," she said, "but underneath, it asks profound questions about what happens to communities when the world around them begins to shift. For me, that is why the play feels so urgent now.
"What strikes me is how little has changed. Almost everything Soyinka was writing about is still happening somewhere in the world today. Young people still leave home believing the city will solve everything, only to find disappointment and disillusionment. Communities are still being fractured by poverty, environmental damage and lack of opportunity. People are still being exploited by false spiritual and political leaders. Land continues to be damaged by powerful interests while those with the least power carry the consequences.
"The play feels incredibly contemporary because it touches on issues we are grappling with globally: migration and the search for a better life, climate anxiety, inequality, economic desperation, environmental collapse, fractured communities and the tension between tradition and modernity."
Kareem will stage the work in Utopia Theatre's 50-seater Sheffield city centre venue for a 14-night run from 29 June 2026.
The cast features Jude Akuwudike (National Theatre, RSC), Urielle Klein-Mekongo (Yvette, Black Power Desk), Theo Ogundipe (RSC, Old Vic, Royal Exchange), Obi Maduegbuna (The Order of Things, Iwaju, Checkout), drummer Mr Culture and Joshua Roberts-Mensah (Dem Times, DRUM, Liberation).
The Swamp Dwellers was first published in 1963 by Mbari Publications as part of Three Short Plays: The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong Breed, The Trials of Brother Jero.
Soyinka, now 91, was named the first African winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986 when he was in his early 50s. The judges said: "Wole Soyinka’s writing is full of life and urgency. For all its complexity it is at the same time energetically coherent."
During the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s he was arrested, accused of conspiring with Biafran rebels and held as a political prisoner for 22 months. He fled Nigeria for the US in 1994. In 2025 he had his US visa revoked.
29 June-11 July 2026 (weekdays 7pm, Saturdays 2pm and 7pm)
Utopia Theatre, 11 Rockingham Gate, Sheffield, UK S1 4JD
Tickets: £20/£12 https://wegottickets.com/utopiatheatre
https://www.utopiatheatre.co.uk/