I still play to their chords. Livin' within conventions. Livin' within restrictions. Livin' within a structure. Lettin' someone write my story. Toye is preparing for his piano exam to get into a prestigious music school. He's doing it for the contacts, the opportunity, the love of art. But when he notices the lack of Black British history in his school's curriculum, he begins to question himself and the world around him. Toye wants to follow his dream. but he can't let these institutions write his story. He decides to teach his classmates about Black cultural icons himself, but quickly discovers that not everyone wants Black historv to be celebrated. Dipo Baruwa-Etti's inspiring new play about the pressures of being young, gifted and ready to change the world premiered at Roundabout in Kingston, in a Paines Plough and Rose Theatre production, in July 2022.

I've given up on fighting for change. That's a strange, imperfect illusion that allowed confusion to reign in my life. I took a knife to its neck and sliced it open. When a passionate activist, Wunmi, is invited into a middle-class Black family's home, a fire is lit. The family members have always seen themselves as pillars of society: they are charity workers, therapists and politicians. But as they begin to realise what Wunmi really represents, their certainty begins to crumble, the tension rises and a suffocating ash starts to fill the air. Full of forensic fury and incandescent poetry, Dipo Baruwa-Etti's fiercely political new play opened at the Almeida Theatre, London, in September 2022.