Playwright, director and actor Ngozi Anyanwu believes there are a lot of parallels between being a theater artist and an MMA fighter. Credit: Bethanie Hines
In “The Monsters,” opening at the Berkeley Rep on March 27, LIL watches her estranged brother BIG from a distance as he throws punches and grapples with his mixed-martial-art opponent. Playwright, director and actor Ngozi Anyanwu found inspiration for her play — a co-production with La Jolla Playhouse — by hanging out with her own brother and his MMA community. In the play, Anyanwu plays LIL and Bay Area actor Sullivan Jones plays BIG.
An alumna of an Old Vic New Voices program, Anyanwu’s play “Good Grief” won Center Theatre Group’s Humanitas Award after its world premiere in 2016, and “The Last of the Love Letters”, about two people examining the end of a relationship, premiered at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2021. Themes in her work include family, identities, and the concept of home.
Anyanwu tells Berkeleyside she came to see MMA, a full-combat contact sport, as a type of love language between its participants.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
The name and description of “The Monsters” could give the impression that it’ll be an action-packed play that will include depictions of violence, cruelty and/or other things that generally have unpleasant or “bad” connotations. Is that a correct assumption to make about this play?
When we named it “The Monsters,” I thought about how society views fighting — specifically MMA fighting, boxing and other related sports — as cruel, but ultimately, it is a sport. In both this play and in real life, martial artists and actors both willingly enter an arena to do their sport. They both enter under specific conditions to battle something out, and there’s a lot of respect within their craft.
“The Monsters” runs from Friday, March 27, through Sunday, May 3, at the Peet’s Theatre at Berkeley Rep.
I find it interesting how, as an audience, we hold connotations about things and bring them into the things we watch. Like how we find fighting to be cruel. We find it brutal. We find it unhappy. We then lose sight of what else we know about sports and life in general — that it requires blood, sweat, tears and discipline.
For the play itself, you can expect athleticism and a sort of violence. But what you can also expect is to be illuminated to the type of discipline, courage and tenacity that it takes for people to be in the MMA fighting community, and to put themselves out there. From hanging out with my brother and his MMA community, I learned that this was their love language. It’s a different kind of love language, but if you’re paying attention, it is a love language.
Sullivan Jones and Ngozi Anyanwu as brother and sister in “The Monsters,” opening at the Berkeley Rep on March. 27, 2026. Credit: Bethany Hines
Is the play a one-to-one depiction of your relationship with your brother, or is the story more loosely inspired by him?
Yeah, my brother was the jumping off point. It’s very much not an autobiography of our relationship at all, but I see the play as a love letter to the people in his sport. It was really about illuminating a lot of the things in his community — which is the fight community and the Black male community.
I really wanted to shine a light on those communities, the stereotypes that people can hold against them, and the reality of who these fighters actually are. There is a lot of love in that community, which I could see when hanging out with my brother and the people at the gym. They were as aggressive with their love as they were with their bodies. There was such a beautiful duality that I saw — that MMA fighting is inherently theatrical.
Even in the name “mixed martial arts,” the word “art” is right there. I found there were a lot of parallels between being a theater artist and an MMA fighter. I tend to write about family and the arts a lot. Through that, I realized that the two fields are no different; they’re just as intense.
What they do requires lots of discipline. What they do takes just as much of the body. They’re also underpaid, but they’re valued. Some of them get glorified, and some of them get to take advantage of that, you know? So for me, I saw a lot of parallels.
The play was developed with the help of Berkeley Rep’s program, The Ground Floor. Could you elaborate on your work and involvement with The Ground Floor?
I shared the play with The Ground Floor while I was still developing the play, so I had not yet finished it when I first applied. By the time that I had my second interview with The Ground Floor to potentially develop “The Monsters,” I had finished the first draft. By then, I had changed my goal from “I need to finish a draft” to “I need to work out and edit some specific pages.”
At this point, The Ground Floor had seen a reading of the play in its infancy, and I was finishing my second draft. I asked if I could get two actors, a local martial arts person and a fight choreographer to help me write more pages and take a look at the play in general. After that, The Ground Floor decided that they wanted to help me further develop the play.
You’re currently based on the East Coast and will be performing at Berkeley Rep from March to May. Is there anything you’re looking forward to discovering or experiencing during your time in Berkeley and the East Bay?
I haven’t really spent much time in Berkeley — just when I was there for The Ground Floor for a week and a half. So, it’ll be nice to actually be there for more than a week.
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