Image source, Getty ImagesByIan YoungsCulture reporter
- Published32 minutes ago
Comedian, content creator and documentary maker Munya Chawawa became a star in the “golden era” of online video, but says his stage acting debut in Shakespeare is part of a move to “jump ship” from social media.
Recently, he has been immersing himself in footage of the UK’s 1990s illegal rave scene.
It was a time of hedonism and freedom surrounded by political and media panic – and is the setting for a modern take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which Chawawa will appear.
“I’ve obviously done a super-deep dive into rave culture and watched loads of rave footage from all these little free parties where they would find an empty field,” he says.
While some footage exists of those illicit outdoor parties, they came before everyone had phones and cameras – and Chawawa, 33, feels a pang of nostalgia for that age of analogue abandon.
“I absolutely miss an era where we were dancing for ourselves and not for a digital world somewhere,” he says.
Image source, Manuel Harlan
“We’re all phone addicts,” Chawawa continues. “The average person’s picking up their phone 200 times a day. I’m on a bit of a conscious mission at the moment to reduce that.
“And interestingly, the top comments under all the videos I’ve been watching are people who were at those raves saying, ‘I loved being able to dance, maybe get a little high, maybe get too sweaty for too long, and know there was no record of that.'”
Chawawa was in his teens when social media and smartphones took off, and says he “took for granted” the brief time before any and every fun occasion was recorded and posted for posterity.
If he ventures onto a dance floor now, he admits “my two-step has become a lot stiffer” out of anxiety that a wrong move could be filmed and send him viral.
“So yeah, I do definitely pine for those non-digital, in-person experiences, and I envy my parents for having them.”
Image source, Getty Images
This is coming from someone who owes his fame to the digital age, after making his name with comic videos as characters like upper-class drill rapper Unknown P and chef Jonny Oliver.
But Chawawa has since branched out from social media – making two Bafta-nominated TV documentaries, starring on Taskmaster and doing stand-up comedy.
“I’ve been making my short-form satirical videos for almost eight years now, creeping up to a decade,” he says. “I have a certain skill set that I’ve acquired there. It’s skyrocketed me to all the places I wanted to go.
“But I suppose the question at the beginning was always – if these sketches do work and they do catapult me into this new stratosphere of entertainment, where am I trying to land?”
The aim, he says, was to land on “something bigger and onto a new challenge” – such as theatre acting.
Image source, Manuel Harlan
He’s starting by playing Bottom in Shakespeare’s romantic caper A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Chichester Festival Theatre in West Sussex.
In this 90s version, his character is a member of the Young Conservatives and is “a very political Bottom”, he says, while Theseus is a Tory MP who has shut down free raves in the county.
“I take it super seriously and I’m very studious when we’re in the room,” Chawawa explains of his preparations. “I’m taking notes. I’m learning all of these mad Shakespeare terms like couplets and quatrains and anacreontics and stuff that definitely sounds made up but isn’t.
“And I think also it’s the perfect time to maybe… jump ship, I think is the right word.
“Social media platforms and their algorithms have very much angled themselves against the creatives at the moment, I think.”
‘Lost in a sea of content’
He’s not jumping ship from social media completely, but says the online battle for eyeballs has “turned into a little bit of a dogfight, where even good stuff, even really consciously thought-out material, is just instantly swiped to the bottom of people’s pages”.
Chawawa thinks he was lucky to “enjoy the golden era of social media” before it became harder to cut through the noise.
“To be able to experiment, to be able to trial these characters and roll the dice on big ideas was fantastic because you were never getting lost in a sea of content.
“There’s some mad statistic about there being tens of millions of videos uploaded a day now – but at the time it was like, ‘I’m going to try this Jamie Oliver spoof or a Nigella [Lawson] character or the UK’s first posh drill rapper, what do you think?’ And it felt like the whole internet would give you feedback on that creative product.”
He adds: “I love the fact that social media has allowed me to have a career in stand-up, as a documentarian and now as an actor, so I don’t have any sort of resentment to it and how it’s changed.
“But what I will say is I was there as the sun was coming up on social media, and it was very fun.”
Image source, Faysal Hassan
Chawawa fell in love with the theatre when he went to see The Lion King when he was 16 and realised it was like “the best movie you’ve ever seen, but in real life”.
However, returning as an adult, he felt out of place as a black man. “In the shows I was going to, it didn’t feel as though they were too welcoming to me being there, just through the small social cues.”
He had a lightbulb moment after watching For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy by Ryan Calais Cameron, which “I still think is the best play I’ve ever seen”. Chawawa found himself thinking, “I wish every black boy in the world could watch this play.”
So he took a group of teenagers to watch it, which he describes as “the most fulfilling and magical and deeply moving experience”.
Inspired by their reactions, Chawawa set up the Black Boys Theatre Club to take groups every month to plays ranging from Dracula to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – followed by a post-show discussion in Nando’s.
“Every time we go and see a play, it’s not about the boys skipping out of it going, ‘I want to be the next Billy Elliot’,” he says. “It’s more just them realising it’s a safe space for you. It can be your home if you want it to be. You will thrive on stage or as an audience member, but just know that theatre is a part of your multiverse.”
Ticket prices
In 2023, 10% of theatre audiences were from black, Asian or ethnically diverse backgrounds, according to Arts Council England data.
Chawawa praises theatres for opening their doors to the Black Boys Theatre Club and other efforts to attract more diverse audiences, but says lower ticket prices and “a societal shift” will make a bigger difference.
Next month, his club will travel to see him in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and he hopes more young minds will be captivated by the “snow globe of human emotion” that is live theatre.
“Really, truly, where else can I go in real life and watch somebody express all emotions without restraint? Sadness, anger, joy, envy. And I can be metres away, sometimes centimetres away from seeing real human emotion – not through a screen of any size, but in the room,” he says.
“I believe that as more people do try and back off away from screens and digital experiences, theatre will experience a boom.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is at at Chichester Festival Theatre from 18 September to 17 October.