Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini is a Nigerian-British playwright and screenwriter. [1] [2] [3]
Ibini has a BA in English literature and creative writing (2013) from London Metropolitan University, [4] and an MA, with distinction, in playwriting and screen writing from City University, for which she was awarded a scholarship from BAFTA and Warner Bros. [3]
Ibini's first play Muscovado was performed at Theatre503 in 2015; it is set in Barbados in 1808 and Time Out described it as "A small but satisfying drama about the British involvement in the slave trade". [5] [6] [7] The play was one of three winners of the Audience Award of the Alfred Fagon Award for 2015. [8]
Little Miss Burden was performed at The Bunker in 2019, telling the story of three Nigerian sisters, one of whom uses a wheelchair. The Stage's reviewer called it "a gem of a play". [9] [10]
The Unexpected Expert was broadcast by BBC Four in May 2020 as part of its series Unprecedented of plays written during and about COVID-19 lockdown. It shows a disabled influencer being told by a council worker that her support will be cut during lockdown. [11] [12] [13]
Her 2020 Caring, cowritten with Gabriel Bisset-Smith, is "A horror-comedy about a disabled woman who finally finds a good carer — only to discover the carer is a serial killer.", and was among the 14 scripts (from 246 entrants) which were selected for the 2020 Brit List of the year's best unproduced scripts. [14] In 2020 it was reported that shooting was planned for summer 2021. [3]
Her play Sleepova, produced at the Bush Theatre, won her the 2023 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, jointly with Marcelo Dos Santos, [15] and was nominated in the 2024 Laurence Olivier Awards for "Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre". [16]
Ibini describes herself as bionic and Queer, explaining: "I adopted the term 'bionic' when I became a full-time wheelchair user and had metal implanted into my leg after a traumatic fracture, even though the term encompasses my experiences from birth, that I have always needed some form of technology, equipment, or adaptation to live." [17] She has Limb–girdle muscular dystrophy. [17]