Missing in Action: Fathers Making a Quick Exit in Mojisola Adebayo’s Muhammad Ali and Me

Abstract

Set in an English foster home in the mid 1970’s, Muhammad Ali and Me tells the story of Mojitola, a child who is abandoned by her father and grows up in care. The space her father leaves is filled through a fantastical friendship with athlete and activist, boxer and dancer, pugilist and poet, hero and hate figure, sportsman and disabled man, Muslim and magician, the legendary, Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali and Me follows the parallel lives of this gay girl child and a Black male hero, tracing their struggle for survival and self definition in a system set against them. The play invites the audience to consider the complex relationship between children, absent fathers and father figures; the establishment, war and Islamic masculinity; the Black community and gay identity; the USA and urban Britain today, through what Adebayo describes as an ‘Afri-Queer’ multi-media accessible storytelling style. Deirdre Osborne provides an introduction which examines Adebayo’s work by investigating representations of sport in plays by Black writers; Black, Mixed and ‘trans’ racial identity and the experience of the care system in performance; Black male heroism and the marginalisation of Black women writers on the British stage.