Nkenna Akunna meets with Aml Ameen and Shantol Jackson to talk about their roles in Idris Elba’s directorial debut, ‘Yardie’.
Author: Nkenna Akunna
Nkenna is an Igbo playwright and performer from London. Her work has been staged in the UK and USA, and she is a winner of the 2021 Rosa Parks Playwriting Award and 2021 Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, the 2021 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Playwriting, and the 2021 Papatango Prize. Nkenna is currently an MFA candidate in Playwriting at Brown University and she is represented by Alex Rusher at Independent Talent.
Nkenna has been writing and editing for Skin Deep since 2015, and has lead on our online editorial work, including our written interview series Skin Deep Meets. She is currently based in New York and missing London every day.
Email: nkenna at skindeepmag dot com / Twitter: @nkenna_akunna / Insta: @nkenna_akunna
Breakin’ shit down and workin’ shit out: a dissection of anti-black racism, action and protest in ‘ear for eye’
Nkenna Akunna meets Kayla Meikle to talk about her role in debbie tucker green’s latest production ‘ear for eye’ at the Royal Court, London.
Skin Deep meets filmmaker hajooj kuka
Nkenna Akunna chats to filmmaker hajooj kuka about making his film aKasha and telling stories of joy, war, love and rebellion.
Skin Deep meets Arinzé Kene
Nkenna Akunna meets Arinzé Kene, the second Black British playwright in history to have a West End open. They chat Misty, telling truthful stories of Black masculinity, and how he is exploding conventional methods of theatre-making.
Simi Agbaje is highlighting the minds behind the music
The Producers Edit, an early evening foray into the musical minds of some of the UK’s most talented producers.
“What they know about a black woman soul?” Reflections on Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking
Nkenna Akunna on finding herself in Pinnock’s play Leave Taking, and what it means to be seen in a world built to erase you.
Returning to the London stage, ‘Umuada’ voices unspoken hurt in British Nigerian homes
On writing a play that confronts the nuances of mental health, migration and motherhood in the urban African diaspora.
In conversation with Last Yearz Interesting Negro
Our Skin Deep resident reviewer Nkenna Akunna spoke to performance artist Jamila Johnson Small.
Cultivating the everyday #BlackGirlMagic: The Year of the Rooster Monk at the Pleasance Theatre
Nkenna Akunna sits down with Giselle Gant and Nathalie Adlam to chat about The Year of the Rooster Monk at the Pleasance Theatre.
Loss, laughter and resisting the black universal: Nine Night at the National Theatre
Skin Deep’s Nkenna Akunna meets Roy Alexander Weise to talk about his play Nine Night, currently on at the National Theatre, London.