Susan (2019)

When Susan Hawley was a sophomore in college, she fell in love with a doctoral student from Nigeria. They were married for seven years, had two children, and just as their dream life seemed to be coalescing, her husband went back to Nigeria to visit his family and never contacted her again. 

SUSAN, Ahamefule J. Oluo’s darkly comic musical portrait of his mother, builds one story out of many, a journey from Section 8 housing in 1980s Seattle to the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta to the Clallam Bay Correctional Facility. With stunning new compositions performed by some of Seattle's best musicians, combined with soul-baring stand-up interludes, Oluo explores two intertwining narratives: his mother’s life as the white, Midwestern wife of a Nigerian chief and, later, a destitute single mother; and his own journey to Nigeria, as an adult, to visit his late father’s village and discover a family on the other side of the world. 

SUSAN, the follow-up to Oluo’s acclaimed musical Now I’m Fine, is a story about the failings of men and the endurance of women. It is a crystalline slice of American life; a collision of class, race, bodies, love, and men with bad intentions; a tragedy about the most comically optimistic person on earth. Through decades of chaos and catastrophe, one thing was always consistent. Susan loved her children. She loved them so much. SUSAN is a story about doing what it takes.