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The company
Eight actors. Seventeen seasons.
Opus is an ensemble company: the same actors play every role in the season, so you watch them grow from play to play.
Artistic director
Nkoyo Effiong-Asuquo
Founder, director and, this season, writer of Nine Days of Harmattan.
Nkoyo trained as a teacher in Calabar before running a touring company out of the back of a bus for six years. She founded Opus in 2009 to give Cross River writers a stage of their own, and has directed thirty four of its sixty one premieres.
She still answers the box office phone on Tuesdays.
The ensemble
Season 2026/27.
Example names and photos for this demo.
Edidiong Archibong
Ensemble since 2015
Ekpenyong Eyo
Ensemble since 2009
Uduak Etim
Ensemble since 2012
Mfon Udo
Ensemble since 2021
Offiong Henshaw
Ensemble since 2010
Victor Ani
Ensemble since 2018
Ima Okon
Ensemble since 2016
Enobong Akpan
Ensemble since 2023
History
From eleven seats to 248.
2009
Founded by Nkoyo Effiong-Asuquo and six actors in a former cinema on Marian Road. First season: three plays, one generator, eleven audience members on opening night.
2013
The ensemble moves to year round contracts. Opus becomes one of the few theatres in the country to pay actors a monthly salary.
2017
The schools programme starts with one matinee a week. It now reaches more than nine thousand pupils a year.
2022
The playhouse is rebuilt: a steeper rake, air conditioning and a silent generator under the car park.
2026
The sixty first new play, The Salt Road, opens the seventeenth season.
Behind the scenes
The building at work.
Tap any photograph to see it larger. Use the arrow keys to move between them.
New writing
Send us your play.
We read every script from writers in Nigeria. Twice a year we pick six for a week of workshops with the ensemble, and one of them usually makes the next season.
Send a full draft
Any length, in English or Pidgin. A PDF by email is fine.
We read in three months
Every writer gets a short written response, not a form letter.
Workshop week
Six writers, paid ₦150,000 each for the week, with the ensemble and a director.
Supporters
Friends of Opus.
Friends book first, get two free programmes a season and come to the dress rehearsal of every play. From ₦30,000 a year.
Become a friend