Bola Agbaje

Bola Agbaje FRSL (born 1981) is a British playwright of Nigerian descent Quotes Gone Too Far is a film about two brothers from two different continents, Yemi who grew up in Peckham and his brother Ikudayisi who grew up in Nigeria. Ikudayisi comes to London to live with Yemi and and the film follows them as they go to Peckham to go buy Okra for their mum. It’s a coming of age story as Yemi tries to figure out who he is and what he stands for. You could say that it’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles meets Coming to America but in Peckham. It was a learning curve because writing for a play is very dialogue based, you rely heavily on the fact that the characters talk a lot and tell you everything. Whereas on screen it’s about trying to tell a story visually, trying to keep the essence of the play, but also trying to create something brand new. There are so many people who haven’t seen the play so if I tried to recreate the play it would have been dated. So it was just learning the balance of this being a new medium and creating something new. The play has a dark tone to it because of when I wrote it, whereas the film is a comedy which is deliberate. I wanted to do something different. I’m a social writer rather than a lock yourself in a room kind of person, I grew up in a big family so I’m used to being around people. So in terms of being involved, I was on set every day because I wanted to see it come alive, I wanted to be a part of that journey. I’ve worked with Destiny on other projects and what we do is feed of of each others energy. So if I have written something I would get her advice and ask her what she thinks and we work like that rather than me sayin’ ‘here is the script now you go and do what you want with it’. I hope it does. It’s a small film with a very small budget. So far with all the festival screenings we have done we have gotten good feedback. It is one of those films that once you see it, and if you enjoy it, you will tell somebody else about it. I’m not one of those writers that cares about being critically acclaimed and no one knows you, I would like it to be a successful film and I’d like for people to get something from it. It’s young people because it’s something they can relate to and there aren’t that many films for young people, about young people. It’s for everybody because a lot of the time people look at black films and say, ‘that’s just for black people so I can’t relate’. I find it quite annoying when people say they can’t relate to a black person or to an African because they are not. Whereas we watch films with white people all the time and relate, because we relate to the emotional journey of those characters. Playwright & Screenwriter Bola Agbaje Discusses Screen Debut, Gone Too Far;By TAMIKA MITCHELL on 3rd October 2014 External links Category:Living people Category:Authors from England Category:Women from the United Kingdom