Imagine Festival: Inua Ellams - Search Party

This March, we are delighted to welcome Imagine Festival to The Crescent for a series of events.

Award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams as he brings his chaotic, audience-led poetry event to Imagine.

A man walks into a room with his life in his hands. He is the internationally acclaimed artist and playwright Inua Ellams (Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half God of Rainfall) and he has filled thousands of pages in an ongoing attempt to be heard, to give his genius wings that can travel. Every word he’s ever written is captured, all the poems and plays and essays, the drafts of projects abandoned and works as yet unknown, indexed, rendered as binary, and waiting patiently within the confines of the electronic tablet he’s holding even now.

Pick a word, any word.

Prompted by audience suggestion and open conversation, Inua searches through his archive, unearths refined or raw gold, and presents his treasure in a spontaneous performance.

Search Party is an act of call and response that hearkens back to the birth of storytelling. At this uniquely futuristic and puckishly chaotic interactive event, the artist couldn’t be more present. He’s inviting you to join the work. What do you say?

Written and performed by Inua Ellams. Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother in what is now considered by many to be Boko Haram territory, in 1996 Inua left Nigeria for England aged 12, moved to Ireland for three years, before returning to London and starting work as a writer and graphic designer.

Imagine Festival is Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics which takes place in Belfast every March and presents a unique way of imagining the future of this great city — and the wider world. They present high-quality showcases for the discussion of contemporary political and societal issues including new ideas on politics, culture and activism from some of the world’s leading contemporary thinkers.

But it’s not all brain-melting policy discussions: there’s something for everyone in the form of exhibitions, humour, family events, music, theatre, tours, workshops and film and whatever else they can find to fire your imagination. Visit ImagineBelfast.com to discover more.