‘These environments pit people against each other’: Playwright Ife Olujobi on being the only Black person at work

In a new play at New York’s Public Theater, a Nigerian American writer uses surrealist drama to explore how white-dominant workplaces can alienate people of color.

Albert Camus, the French novelist and playwright, wrote that “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” In the surrealist play Jordans, Nigerian American playwright Ife Olujobi uses fiction to underscore the painful truths of what it’s like to be marginalized in the workplace. The play features Jordan, an ambitious Black female assistant working at an event company that’s primarily white. When another Jordan, a Black male manager, gets hired to improve the company’s “image and culture,” Jordan and Jordan find themselves locked in a struggle for professional and personal survival.