Prof. Mojisola Adebayo (BA, MA, PhD, FRSL, FHEA) is a playwright, performer, director, producer, mentor, workshop facilitator and teacher who has been making theatre for social justice for over 30 years, worldwide, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe.  

Mojisola’s own plays include Moj of the Antarctic: An African Odyssey (Lyric Hammersmith); Muhammad Ali and Me (Ovalhouse); 48 Minutes for Palestine / Oranges and Stones (Ashtar Theatre, Ramallah); Desert Boy (Nitro / Albany Theatre); The Listeners (Pegasus Theatre); I Stand Corrected (Artscape, Cape Town); The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (Bush Theatre); Wind / Rush Generation(s) (National Theatre: Connections); Nothello (Coventry Belgrade Theatre) and Family Tree (Actors Touring Company / Belgrade Theatre / Brixton House), which won the Alfred Fagon Award for Best Play of 2021.

STARS (Tamasha Theatre Company / Institute of Contemporary Arts) was developed on a residency with idle women, shortlisted for the George Devine Award 2022, is nominated for three Off West End Theatre Awards including Best Play, premiered at ICA London in April 2023, and tours nationally May-June 2023.

Oranges and Stones, co-devised and directed by Mojisola, has been touring the world with Ashtar Theatre for the past 12 years (including across Brazil, Britain, Germany, Palestine, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey…) and is still going strong.

Mojisola’s widely studied publications include Mojisola Adebayo: Plays One and Plays Two, Wind / Rush Generation(s) in NT Connections: 2020; Family Tree, STARS and Black British Queer Plays and Practitioners: An Anthology of Afriquia Theatre which was co-edited with Lynette Goddard (all published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama); The Theatre for Development Handbook, co-written with John Martin and Manisha Mehta (Pan Arts) and various academic chapters. 

Mojisola… is the first Black woman to perform on Antarctica; the first Black theatre artist to be invited to speak in the German Bundestag (Parliament); staged the first Black lesbian kiss in a play in Britain; South Africa and Singapore; and is the first Black playwright to have two new plays running and touring the UK simultaneously.

Mojisola teaches at Queen Mary, University of London, is an Associate Artist of Black Lives Black Words, AICRE, Pan Arts, the Building the Anti-Racist Classroom collective and an Honorary Fellow of Rose Bruford College.  Mojisola is currently on a research fellowship at University of Potsdam, Germany and is a Writer-on-Attachment to the National Theatre (UK).