Ahamefule J. Oluo goes solo for Intiman Theatre show

Drumming on the walls of a cardboard box with a microphone inside creates a sound much like a heartbeat.

That comforting, disconcerting heartbeat keeps intermittent time throughout multidisciplinary artist Ahamefule J. Oluo’s “The Things Around Us.” The silly, earnest, personal and universal solo show is an Intiman Theatre production running through May 4 at Broadway Performance Hall. 

Using looping technology, Oluo builds a lush soundscape of their original compositions with trumpet, clarinet and various percussion pieces like the amplified cardboard box, which they interweave with storytelling throughout the show. The stories can be lighthearted or intense, with Oluo turning to music when they need a deep emotional underpinning. But Oluo, calling on their stand-up comedy past, is also happy to undercut earnestness with a joke.

“A lot of stories in this show are about different perspectives, complicated narratives, multiple truths,” they said onstage on opening night, before pivoting into a punchline about what Oluo dubbed “the Seattle chapter of white ladies being wrong” that had the audience howling. 

This solo show marks a departure for Oluo, whose previous theatrical works have featured large casts of musicians. But the 42-year-old is a very different artist than they were in 2014, when their first big show, “Now I’m Fine,” premiered at On the Boards. They followed that piece, which centered on a shocking medical crisis and Oluo’s Nigerian father leaving his family when Oluo was a baby, with 2019’s “Susan.” That show, also backed by a sizable band, told Oluo’s mother’s story, which they called “a tragedy about the most comically optimistic person on earth.”

Oluo, a lifelong Seattle-area resident and artist who spent decades gigging around town as a jazz trumpeter and bandleader, now lives in the woods near Hood Canal, which the self-described introvert enjoys immensely. 

Given that trajectory, it makes sense that Oluo has removed themselves as a central figure in their show’s story this time around.

Alone onstage, Oluo exudes a casual, introspective energy spotlit against a wall of cardboard boxes. The boxes are a clever symbol of the COVID pandemic during which the show was born, when deliveries became both a necessity and a break in one’s daily routine. They’re also, cannily, a very affordable building material for a set.

“My whole next year of income just went away,” Oluo said in a recent interview of the COVID collapse that spurred this show’s creation. “I had to figure out some way to both personally keep performing, but also to make a living.” 

Luckily, a small commission from the University of Washington’s Meany Center moved online instead of getting canceled, and that led to the composition of a piece Oluo called “The Things Around Us,” which is now the eponymous show’s closing musical number. 

A bigger creative impulse to build that composition into something more sparked during a later trip to New York to see the experimental shows of the off-Broadway Under the Radar festival, where both “Now I’m Fine” and “Susan” had played in previous years. 

“It was weird because I was actually walking out of a show that I didn’t enjoy very much, and I just thought, ‘If I were to make another show, what would I make?’” Oluo said. “And in an instant, this entire show flashed in my brain.”

Within days, Oluo said they had pages and pages of notes written down of stories from their life, but they weren’t about Oluo’s personal experiences. While the stories at first seemed random, “I could feel how all these stories pointed in that same direction, toward the idea of the isolation of being an observer,” they said.

The stars of these stories include a white woman with a very misguided farming plan, a newly divorced mother of a friend and the host of the long-adored local comedy show “Almost Live!” John Keister. Everyone whose story is told in this show has been invited to see it and share their thoughts, Oluo said. As an artist and a leader, they’ve always prioritized a good working environment for their collaborators, and these folks are no exception. 

After the nine-year slog to finish “Now I’m Fine,” Oluo surprised themselves by creating “The Things Around Us” in just two years. 

“It absolutely turned me into a workaholic,” they said. “But I really do love what I do.”

Oluo developed the show at prestigious art residencies including a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship and a 2024 workshop at Seattle Rep. “The Things Around Us” premiered at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art last fall, then ran at legendary experimental theater venue La MaMa in New York earlier this year before Oluo brought it home. 

“I very intentionally wanted to bring Seattle a finished, polished show,” they said. 

Onstage at Broadway Performance Hall, “The Things Around Us” is indeed polished, but not overly so. This finished piece still has plenty of craggy, human edges where Oluo can vamp, experiment or just make themselves laugh. As they’re layered on top of one another, the seemingly random stories Oluo tells generate kinetic energy like atoms heating up. 

Some stories resonate with you more than others, but together they all remind us that, like it or not, we’re made up of the things around us, the people and stories, the ideas, jokes and relationships. Exploring that truth from the perspective of an artist hitting the confidence of midcareer while simultaneously hitting a tremendously difficult time to be an artist adds up to a thought-provoking whole. 

But, as Oluo said in the show: “Sometimes things get better, even when it seems like they’re getting worse.” Maybe, hopefully, that idea can be a heartbeat that will keep us all going.