KU professor’s play aims to be conversation starter

“The Search for Anno Domini MMXXI-I-VI” employs a multiethnic cast, with each character representing a different race, seated face-to-face onstage. Serious topics mix with humor, and some of the action revolves around a character who mistakenly believes Anno Domini to be the name of a person who is in a Latin street gang called MMXXI-I-VI. That the true meaning of the title becomes evident only in the course of the play is part of Ukpokodu’s strategy to highlight the ignorance that often underlies racial stereotypes.

“I’m putting representatives of all the races on the same platform to talk,” Ukpokodu says, “because oftentimes you’ll hear a member of one race saying something about another race, but hardly do you get them to sit together and talk. So it begins with that ignorance.”

Community engagement is evident in the play’s focus on the ways racial violence affects communities in general and—through a focus on certain ripped-from-the-headlines incidents—Kansas City in particular. Outreach also guided the decision to produce the play at the Melting Pot, which supports African American playwrights and work dedicated to social change.

Nicole Hodges Persley, KU’s vice provost for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and a professor of American studies and African and African-American studies, is the artistic director for Melting Pot Theatre and will direct the play’s four performances May 30 to June 2. In addition to the discussion slated to take place after each performance, her staging will draw on theatre traditions that sometimes involve dialogue between actors and audience members during a play.

“We’ll be encouraging call and response with the audience and breaking the fourth wall,” Hodges Persley says, referencing the imaginary boundary that traditionally separates actors from theatregoers. “In African American and African theatre, it is part of the aesthetic to have a dialogue with the audience in the sense that the work is hoping to address things that those audiences are experiencing in their lives.” The Melting Pot hopes to attract a diverse audience to view and discuss the play, Hodges Persley says. “It’s really about having the audience be able to have a voice and be able to figure out how are they enacting and engaging their experience as citizens in the world around them. I think that’s important in a climate where people are very polarized about politics.”

Ukpokodu taught in his native Nigeria for five years after completing his PhD in theatre at KU, then returned to the Hill in 1990 to join the departments of theatre and African and African-American studies. He served as chair of African and African-American studies for several years, and in 2022 he became the first professor in the 50-year history of the program (one of the first such programs in the country) to be named a distinguished professor. He says he feels “lucky and glad” to be in the first cohort selected for the racial equity awards, which he views as an attempt by the University to create a racially sensitive campus that is fair to all.

“I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think there is any human being who has all the answers,” Ukpokodu says of his intention for “The Search for Anno Domini MMXXI-I-VI” to serve as an engine for community discussion. “If we did, we wouldn’t have these problems. From my point of view, the community, the people themselves, we have ideas about why things are as they are and what is the way to resolve these things. I am saying, ‘OK, you people who have watched the play, I want you to dig down and discuss the issues it raises.’”