Mfoniso Udofia's 'Creation Stories' Stages a Dream Undone

Mfoniso Udofia's new play "Creation Stories and All the Important Importants" is now playing at LCT3, Lincoln Center Theater's program for new work.

The play follows an overachiever who has mapped out her entire life — and then hits a roadblock. That collision between a fully planned future and an unforeseen obstacle drives the drama.

Critics describe the piece as haunted and surreally comic, a tonal blend that places it in the tradition of contemporary American playwriting where grief and humor share the stage. Udofia, whose work has established a reputation for ambitious, character-driven drama, here turns to the moment when self-designed certainty collapses.

The premise is pointedly contemporary: a protagonist who believes she has accounted for everything discovers she has not. What follows, according to the production's framing, is the evaporation of a dream — the title itself signals that creation stories, the myths people tell about their own beginnings and destinations, can fail.

LCT3 continues to serve as a launching platform for new plays by emerging and established voices, and Udofia's latest work joins that roster. The venue has a track record of staging formally adventurous drama, and "Creation Stories and All the Important Importants," with its surreal comic register and spectral undercurrent, fits that mold.

For audiences, the play offers a portrait of ambition confronted by the unplanned — and the question of what remains when the map no longer matches the territory.