Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong on stage
A fierce new romance for anyone desperate for a different kind of love story, starring Tosin Cole & Heather Agyepong.
The ACTORS
Heather Agyepong’s theatre credits include: School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Lyric Hammersmith); Celebrated Virgins (Theatr Clwyd); The Body Remembers (Battersea Arts Centre); Noughts & Crosses (UK tour); Girls (Soho); So Many Reasons and Best Friends (Ovalhouse); Hatch (Hackney Showrooms); Jagged Edge (Acrylick); Still Barred (Initiative.dkf).
For television, her credits include: The Power (Amazon); This is Going to Hurt and Enterprice (BBC), and for film; Joy and Sylvia. Heather is also an award winning visual artist with her photography focusing on mental health and wellbeing, invisibility, the diaspora and the archive. Her work is currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize.
Tosin Cole is a rising star whose work encompasses stage and screen. Tosin most recently wrapped production on Netflix’s highly anticipated series, Supacell created by Rapman. He will soon start production on Girl from the North Country, opposite Chloe Bailey and Olivia Colman, and will next be seen as Tyronie Downie in Bob Marley: One Love opposite Kingsley Ben Adir. Recent film projects include Warner Bros. feature House Party, a reimagining of the cult 1990’s classic.
He also took on the seminal role of Medger Evers in Chinoye Chukwu’s acclaimed drama, Till, which starred Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, whose pursuit of justice for her son triggered the Civil Rights Movement. Other notable work includes, 61st Street from BAFTA Award winning screenwriter Peter Moffat; Debbie Tucker Green’s screen adaptation of her hugely successful stage play, ear for eye, which premiered at the BFI Festival; Doctor Who; The Sourvenir; Star Wars: The Force Awakens. His theatre credits include, They Drink It In The Congo (Almeida) and STOP (Trafalgar Studios).
The Production: SHIFTERS
“It’s only in looking back that I realise we were always in motion, always morphing, always shifting. Weren’t we?”
Des and Dre. Destiny and Dream.
Young. Gifted. Black.
She left. He stayed.
Now, tragedy brings Des and Dre crashing back into each other’s lives, carrying new secrets and old scars. Caught in the space between memory and reality, they must struggle to navigate the shifting borders that threaten to rewrite their past and reshape their future.
Shifters is a tribute to the enduring power – and fragility – of memory and love. This surprising and tender world premiere is a new Bush Theatre commission directed by Evening Standard Theatre Award winner Lynette Linton (Blues for an Alabama Sky, August in England) and written by Benedict Lombe (Lava, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Playwriting).
Stars Tosin Cole (BBC’s Doctor Who) and Heather Agyepong (School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, Lyric Hammersmith)
The INTERVIEW
ALT A:
What made you want to star in Shifters?
Heather Agyepong:
The story’s really complex. It’s a beautiful love story that you don’t often see. it shows the trials and tribulations of what it means to be in love. Not just relational love, but love with your family, love with loved ones, people who are lost. So that complexity just feels really refreshing. So that’s why I wanted to do this.
Tosin Cole:
It’s a love story but not told in the most typical way. We play with time, we play with emotions, and it’s basically the cause and effect of certain things. So certain things you see the cause effect and you see where it stems from. A kind of deep dive into a love story or a relationship in general and just really diving deep into certain themes and topics and having conversations, just seeing how that transpires throughout the time, the years. So yes, man, it was really complex and I’ve never seen anything like it.
ALT A:
How do each of you resonate with your characters Des and Dre.
Heather:
Des is very different from me. She’s very outspoken, but she’s very protective. I think what’s really interesting, is it shows sometimes this need for black women to protect themselves or look after themselves. It’s really nice to see this. From the surface you’re like, why is that person being really protective? But the show unravels, she’s trying to protect her heart, protect herself, so it kind of cracks stereotypes of black relationships, which feels refreshing. So her boldness, I don’t have that, but that’s what she’s like.
Tosin:
I think Dre, he is like me, but he isn’t like me if that makes sense. There are a lot of similarities and stuff, but I think the thing that separates us the most is his vulnerability. Dre’s super, super vulnerable.
It makes me almost scared at looking at his vulnerability, I just kind of tap into that vulnerability and I think as a man or my idea of a man or what masculinity is to me or what I perceived it to be is very headstrong, no emotions. Seeing what he goes through to be very vulnerable and open and trust in someone. Your heart’s a very scary thing and I think that’s something that he dives into and articulates very well. His vulnerability separates me from him, keeps us apart.
ALT A:
What is it like working with Lynette Linton?
Tosin:
It’s a dream to work with her, she’s super collaborative. It’s a safe space. There’s no such thing as a bad idea. You can try certain things and you have the space to talk about your ideas. She’s super clever about what she wants, what’s going to work and just trying things out. She makes time in rehearsal a space to try new things in a safe space, to try and error basically. And I’m really enjoying the process right now.
Heather:
Yeah, the same. I feel the same Lynette is very collaborative and super clever?
ALT A:
Heather, you are also a visual artist, which space do you prefer and how do you navigate between those two places? Being on stage means you are not in a gallery. I know you’ve got something at the National Portrait Gallery at the moment.
Heather:
Navigating spaces. Oh, that’s so interesting. I think with my art practice, it’s just coming out of me, so it’s more about my own agency. But always my acting it’s such a breath of fresh air because it’s also really collaborative and I rely on Tosin, I rely on Lynette and there’s a shared communal way of making art. So it’s a different head I wear, but I love them the same I would say.
ALT A:
Tosin, you have done TV like Dr. Who., Till, do you prefer the stage or the screen?
Tosin Cole:
I think it’s definitely different mediums. I think that theatre is very present, I do appreciate getting the time to really hone in on telling this story and trying to perfect the story. There’s s so many different variables, but just to actually just sit down and focus on one thing and focus on that, it’s a treasure, which I do appreciate.
ALT A:
Who or what would you most like to work with or on. Is there a story either of you would like to be a part of for example?
Tosin:
It changes every couple of years, you know what I mean? I think every couple of years. Someone asks What’s your favourite? I feel like I’m always evolving so anything that’s good. I think if I see it, anything that’s good. Sometimes you think you want to work with people and you get it and you’re like crap because that person is not in that same pocket as they were when you fell in love with that thing.
So I feel like if I connect with it and the people that I’m working with make sense, a lot of people that I want to work with, they’re all getting old now. They’re all getting older. I just want to do anything that I feel connected to and resonates with me at the moment in time, what I’m feeling and what I feel at that moment. I just think, yeah, this is what I want do at this moment, at this time. So yeah,
Heather:
That’s a good answer. I think mine’s Ava DuVernay. I just think how she just humanizes, especially women, that I don’t even have the words for it. She just moves me so much of how she directs and how she our skin and creates this kind of cinematic world. I’m obsessed with her. So at some point I would love to work with her.
ALT A:
You talk about the way she likes our skin. So, do you think these creative spaces, whether it’s theatre, whether it’s an art gallery, whether it’s TV and production, do you think it’s getting more inclusive?
Tosin:
Hundred percent. I mean, we’ve still got a long way to go. The fact that we need to ask that question, I think when it becomes a norm for everyone, one person’s ethnicity or one group or another, and when it’s just a thing where it’s just like this is just the norm, this is where we’re at, everyone’s working, everyone’s being represented, everyone’s story is getting told. Once we get to that, but there is still progress to be made. Once you eradicate it from our minds, we don’t have to think about.
Heather:
I hear it. Yes.
ALT A:
Why should anyone come out and see Shifters tell us?
Tosin Cole:
It’s a new play on love, on a perspective you haven’t seen before, and you see the journey of their love and what is love? Is love this perfect thing that just happens linear or is it the up and the downs? I mean, it’s like what is your take on love and you see different aspects of love at a different time. You know what I mean? I think it’s really insightful, engaging and there’s heartbreak.
Heather:
All of those things. Oh my gosh, it’s an emotional rollercoaster and I think we’re only discovering that now. It’s got everything. Laugh out loud moments. Moments which break your heart moments, which feel really relatable. I think that’s the thing we get excited about, where it’s like this happens in so many people’s lives and this idea of your first love and how that can transform your life I think we can all relate to that. We always talk about what it means to be human. That’s what the play feels like. Yes.
ALT A:
Heather, Tosin, thank you so much for talking to ALT A.
Dates
16 February – 30 March
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