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Nothing struck me more forcibly than the soft voice I was greeted with when I met Sefi Atta at her Victoria Island home. I almost couldn’t reconcile it with the strong passionate voice in her writings. It was when I watched one of her plays ‘The Cost of Living’ staged at the Terra Kulture that I decided to interview her. We immediately got down to business at the poolside. I asked the one question that had been bothering me first: why had she decided to write a Niger Delta story like everyone else?

Not the Niger Delta story

‘The Cost of Living’ is Sefi Atta’s second play to be staged in Nigeria. ‘The Engagement’ performed at the Muson Centre, Lagos in 2005, was the first. The author maintains that although ‘The Cost of Living’ is set in the Niger Delta, it is not a Niger Delta story.

“You could also say it’s a Louisiana story. It’s limiting to say that it is a Niger Delta story but people can interpret it how they want. I think if they come to see it, they can make up their own minds,” she says.

Atta describes the story as that of a dying man and a young man trying to make a living; and how, through negotiations, they learn life’s true worth. “I think the title pretty summarises the premise of the play. Obviously, there are much deeper themes than that and sometimes the title is just a gateway into the complexities of whatever play you are presenting; and in this case, it’s a summary and a gateway.” According to her, the play isn’t issue-driven, so the idea of it being a Niger Delta play doesn’t work for her.

“My work is never issue-driven. There’s very little mention in the play about the impact of oil companies in the Niger Delta region. The conflict in the play results from a clash of culture; and apart from sharing that space overnight, the two men have in common the cost of living and how it impacts on them.”

Sefi Atta is the author of two novels, ‘Everything Good Will Come’ (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in 2006) and ‘Swallow’. Her collection of short stories, ‘Lawless’, now published internationally as ‘News From Home’, won the Noma Award in 2009. She says she was inspired to write her one-act play, ‘The Cost of Living’, by her move to the small city of Mississippi where she lives with her husband and daughter. She found it interesting that men from Mississippi moved to Rivers State to work while others moved from Nigeria to Mississippi. She thinks her visit to Port Harcourt as a guest writer (for the Garden City Literary Festival) on two occasions, might have also inspired the story of the play. Still insisting that it is not a Niger Delta story, she says she could have set the play in Lagos but it just so happens that the issue of kidnapping is more frequent in the Niger Delta.

Delving into theatre

The writer who trained as an accountant in London, shares her thoughts about Theatre in Nigeria. She appreciates the hard work put into stagecraft but feels that there’s a long way to go. With her play being staged this month at Terra Kulture, Atta has seen that theatre isn’t as much appreciated as she once thought. “I’ve learnt that it’s harder to attract a full house than I thought. Some people show up late and receive phone calls on their cell phones. But it was wonderful to have old friends, people I didn’t know and especially very young kids, 10-year-olds and elderly people. People of my parents’ generation, some of whom knew me as a kid before I started writing, (were also there) and I thank all of them for coming.” She also expressed joy at the appreciation shown for the production by some distinguished writers. “J.P. Clark came for one performance and Soyinka came for another. I hear he actually clapped and for me, that’s as good as it gets,” she says.

Writing career

Born 1964 in Lagos to a Yoruba mother and Igbira father, Sefi Atta began her writing career in 2002 with radio plays. She has written stage plays and screenplays, including ‘The Sentence’, also a one-act play that will be produced later this year in Germany. ‘The Cost of Living’ is the first to be produced in Nigeria. It has also been recorded for serialisation on by Smooth F.M, a radio station.

Atta describes her writing career as something that started accidentally. Although she had always been writing in her spare time, writing became full time in 1997 when her family moved to Mississippi. “I never thought I would make a living from writing. It was just an accident,” she says. She considers her career as full-time and even credits writing for her achievements so far, including her part-time teaching job at Mississippi State University. “All in all, I do make a living from writing, as a guest speaker and through my royalty cheques.”

About style

She doesn’t feel restricted to a particular style of writing. “I write what I want to write. I write what pleases me and interests me and that way, I feel I am always winning,” she declares.

Like many writers, Atta is a voracious reader. She likes to read newspaper articles and the news she finds in them are often a quarry for story ideas.

“Rather than turning from it, I like to delve into it from the writer’s point of view,” she says. What she hears and observes also influence her stories. As she informs, “My stories come from what I observe, hearsay, gossips, history, from my own experiences and the experiences of others that I get to learn about.” Although she has fun writing, she believes in taking time to write in-depth stories. She also has her preferences in the choice of books she reads.

“I like clean prose, almost journalistic, humourous writing, bordering on cynical, realistic writing, no fantasy, more informal than formal, strong voices and unique voices,” she declares.

Atta Girl

Sefi Atta has decided to take charge of her works business wise, by launching a self publishing outfit called AAA press. “It is in honour of my late father, Abdul-Aziz Atta who taught me about the importance of books. I was eight years old when he died and I remember how much he revered books. We had all the classics at home,” she recalls. However, “I didn’t read them then because I was too busy playing.” She also wants to launch her own production company, ‘Atta Girl’, based on the nick name given her by friends in school when she first caught the bug for writing plays. The company will be responsible for the production of her screenplays. “‘The Cost of Living’ is my first production under ‘Atta Girl’ – I’m a co-producer with Terra Kulture and Monu & Monu Productions,” she informs.

The future

In addition to screen and stage plays, the writer also she has a film in development. “It’s set in Lagos and it’s a family comedy drama. We’ll see how that goes. I’m just taking things day by day; and right now, I’m learning a lot from my collaboration with Nick Monu because I really don’t have theatre experience and he has had the best classical training worldwide as an actor and as a director.” And if all that is not enough, there are also two novels in the works. “I’m coming back to drawing on my own Nigerian experience. There will be a lot of reference to Lagos society. One novel is set in the early 2000s. It’s a thoroughly modern Nigerian story and the other is set in the mid – 1970s. It has more of retrospection on the history of Lagos, in particular Lagos society,” she says.

For Sefi Atta, it isn’t just writing as a means of living that pleases her but the fact that she does what she loves. The author says she still has a lot of writing to do and she doesn’t believe she has attained that career high yet.

“I’ve just started writing. I feel I’ve passed the elementary stage and I’m now in the intermediate stage. I measure my writing in dog years. I’m still a baby and I’m learning as I go along. One day hopefully, I’ll look back and be able to tell what my career high was.”