Acting for me is a vocation, not a job – Chuk Iwuji

by Rachel Ogbu//

Chuk Iwuji was born in Nigeria in 1975. When he was ten, he started boarding school in the United Kingdom after his parents began working for the United Nations Organisation in Ethiopia. He then attended Yale University and studied economics where he joined the university’s drama society. He took his love for drama a step further by attending drama school in Wisconsin.

He graduated from drama school in the summer of 2000 and moved back to the United Kingdom, successfully auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Iwuji has mainly worked onstage for the Royal Shakespeare Company (replacing David Oyelowo in the title role of the Henry VI trilogy in the 2006 revival of the This England: The Histories project).

Whilst he was appearing in their production of ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ he was offered an acting scholarship.

He has played the lead character in a good number of Shakespeare plays: Henry VI in the history plays, Enobarbus in Antony, Cleopatra, Buckingham in Richard III, Edgar in King Lear, and Hamlet.

The Guardian UK interviewed Chuk Iwuji on his role in Hamlet asking how he became interested in theatre. Chuk Iwuji replied, “I did theatre as a kid in Nigeria. But I didn’t think anything of it. When I moved to boarding school in England, you have the athletes and the non-athletes. And I love sports, I did my rugby and my track, so theatre went out the window. But when I found myself heading for law and economics, there was a side of me that quietly panicked. At Yale, I decided to start experimenting with theatre again.”

“My older brother died when I was finishing at drama school in the US,” he tells The Guardian. One of the last conversations we had was just after David Oyelowo had played Henry VI for the RSC in 2001 – the first time the company had cast a black actor as an English king. He said, “This might be a good time to come back to London.” It was my last promise to him. Five years to the day, I went to audition for Hotspur in the director Michael Boyd’s cycle of history plays. But Michael asked me to read Henry VI’s “molehill” speech from Part 3. Rather than panic, I experienced total calm – I knew I would play that role.

Asked by Theatre News on his motivation, Iwuji replied, “The characters I play. Acting for me is a vocation; it is a calling and not just a job. It’s what I do, it’s what I love. I am an actor. I am an actor even when I’m not acting; every new role invigorates me and challenges me. There is a lot of self-sacrifice involved in this art but there is also a huge pay-off when you get the audience’s reaction and your own personal sense of achievement as a working actor. I remember when I was performing Hamlet in NYC and my dad came to see the show, I thanked him and he stood up to take a bow. That was a beautiful moment where I felt fulfilled and the pain was balanced with pleasure.”

Chuk IwujiPhotograph: Joan Marcus/2016 Joan Marcus

 

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