Bode Asiyanbi wins African Performance playwriting competition

We are delighted to announce that Nigerian writer Bode Asiyanbi has wonthe 2011 BBC African Performance playwriting competition. Bode is just completing his first year of the Lancaster Distance Leaarning MA in Creative Writing. He is a recipient of one of our International Scholarships for 2010-12. It is the second time he has won the accolade – he was selected as the winner in 2005. This year’s winning play, Shattered, addresses the subject of rape, exposing in a powerful way the silence that often surrounds this crime. This year’s judge, Ugandan American actor and writer Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, said, “Shattered, for me, was the most layered story technically speaking and the most suspenseful…It dealt with a theme that is being wrestled with not just on the African continent but globally, and it did it in a way that…shed light and heart on what is a complex issue.”