There are some interviews that feel like work, and then there are conversations that feel like sitting down with old friends who happen to be making something extraordinary. My chat with Tatenda Shamiso and Michael Ahomka-Lindsay about Choir Boy was firmly in the latter camp. The warmth between them was immediate, the kind of creative partnership that makes you believe in the transformative power of great collaboration.
Choir Boy, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Tony-nominated play, is coming to Stratford East this spring, and it’s already making waves. This isn’t just any transfer, it’s the acclaimed Bristol Old Vic production that swept the 2024 Black British Theatre Awards, winning Best Production, Best Director, and Best Male Lead Actor in a Play. Now, with Tatenda co-directing alongside Nancy Medina and Michael reprising his role as David, the production is returning with even more depth, more vulnerability, and more heart.
The moment that changes everything
When I asked what drew them to the play, Michael didn’t hesitate. “There’s a really great scene that I wish I could talk about in interviews, but I can’t because it’s so important,” he said, his voice full of genuine excitement. What he could share was this: the play is full of moments of physical affection between men, moments that feel radical in their tenderness. “When boys become men, how we are able to physically interact with each other, there’s a few beautiful moments in this play where these boys have physical contact with each other in certain ways, which I just feel is really special.”
It’s a simple observation, but it landed with weight. If more men had that when they were boys, Michael suggested, we might have a different world. It’s beautiful to watch on stage, he told me. And I believed him.
Tatenda’s first read was equally powerful. The levity and humour in the dialogue, met with the depth and breadth of the gospel music, created something he hadn’t quite experienced before. “These spirituals, this gospel music is going to guide us on this crazy journey,” he said. But it wasn’t until he met Nancy Medina, the production’s director, that he realised the true potential of what they were building. “The level of tenderness with which she saw the text and saw the characters, I felt like this was going to be an opportunity to explore something that we’re not necessarily trying to do when we import American culture into the UK.”
This wasn’t about doing a cool American play. This was about starting a conversation that needed to happen here, for people who are here.
Returning with hindsight
Michael is stepping back into the role of David after the Bristol Old Vic production in 2023, and the experience of returning to a character is proving to be both a gift and a challenge. “There’s a beauty to having something that is pre-existing that we know we love,” he explained. “We get to start from that place, which is cool, because then you get to go into even more detail.”
But it’s the concept of hindsight that Michael keeps coming back to. The play itself is about looking back on the time of being in school, and now he’s looking back on who he was when he first performed it. “I have even more hindsight about that time when I was a boy to understand what is actually happening on that page that I might not have seen before. But I also have hindsight on who I was when I first did it.”
He paused, and there was something vulnerable in that pause. “This play is so emotive. It makes you just realise things about yourself you didn’t realise. I’m like, oh, okay, that isn’t healed. I thought I was fine. We fixed this back in 2018.”
The honesty was disarming. Here was an actor willing to admit that the work isn’t just about the character, it’s about what the character reveals about yourself.
The right time, the right place
For Tatenda, Choir Boy is arriving at precisely the right moment. Originally Nancy’s associate director, he’s now her co-director, a shift that reflects his own growth as an artist. But there’s something even more personal at play. “The first time that I did this show, I was still earlier in my transition, almost three years earlier in my transition myself,” he shared. “Claiming the title of, like, to label myself as a Black man and to tape on that label in a room of people who I’d not met before and where the show deals so much with masculinity and coming of age and finding yourself, I felt like, oh, we’re talking about this stuff in the abstract and I’m going through it right now.”
Now, his relationship with his own masculinity has evolved, changed, deepened. To be the co-director of a show that examines these questions, to bring work that centres marginalised people in a way that feels truthful and dignified and powerful, “it’s exactly what I want to be doing,” he said.
There was something about the way he spoke about feeling like all of him is welcome in this space that struck me. “It’s sort of rare when you’ve got intersectional levels of marginalisation to feel like all of you is welcome in a space. But I feel like all of me is right for this show, which is such a rare experience.”
Balancing joy and difficulty
The play weaves together themes of spirituality, sexuality, race, identity, and brotherhood through the lens of a prep school choir. It’s heavy stuff. But what makes Choir Boy so special is how it holds joy and difficulty in the same breath.
“I think that we’ve got the real gift that helps us move deftly between all of those modes of being, Tarell’s text,” Tatenda explained. “It is a text that will send you into the depths of your soul. And then two lines later, you’re cracking the funniest joke that you’ve seen on a page in a while.”
Michael jumped in, building on the thought. “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive in the play. There’s light and shade in all of those things. The discussion of sexuality, there are some hard moments. But at the same time, one of the most joyous parts of this play is the way Pharus moves. Pharus moves with this incredible liquid confidence, and his identity is on his sleeve and unapologetically.”
The spirituals, Michael pointed out, are filled with joy. “This is Black American music. So there’s joy in the things that are also being challenged.”
It’s this balance, this refusal to separate joy from struggle, that makes the play feel so complete, so human.
Theatre as medicine
Tatenda mentioned their drama therapist, Samantha Adams, who guided them through the process and will be back with them again. She uses a phrase that’s become something of a mantra for the production: theatre is medicine.
“Even though you’re going to a place of difficulty, you are finding the light really quickly,” Tatenda said. “And also, I think it does have a healing property. Theatre in general, but this play in particular.”
Michael agreed. “The best part, to be honest with you, is just being back with the team. It’s not every day that you have a room like that. I needed it, actually.”
There’s something about the way they spoke about the rehearsal room, the trust, the compassion, the sense that everyone has each other, that made me believe this production is going to be something special. Tatenda described it as a family business. “None of us have lost contact since we first did this show,” he said. Michael laughed. “We’re still friends, no?”
The power of vulnerability
One of the most striking moments in our conversation came when Tatenda reflected on what he’s witnessed in Michael’s approach to the role this time around. “I feel like in the way that you’re approaching this role, something that I see in you now is that you are noticing your vulnerability and the power that it holds for you as a storyteller.”
Michael seemed genuinely moved by the observation. “I guess you realise over time that you don’t have to run from your vulnerabilities. You just have to let them be.”
“And they offer you something as well,” Tatenda added.
“They’re worth something, you know,” Michael said quietly.
It was one of those moments where you could feel the depth of their working relationship, the way they see each other not just as collaborators but as whole people on their own journeys.
What to watch for
I asked Michael what audiences should pay attention to when watching David’s arc. “Pay attention to pressure and external pressure and pressure that we put on ourselves,” he said. “What that makes us do and what that makes us do to other people and how we treat other people and ourselves.”
David is a young boy who doesn’t know what to do a lot of the time. He’s just trying to do the right thing based on everyone telling him what the right thing is. “When the world tells you to be a certain way and you actually try to fulfill that, what happens?”
It’s a question that resonates far beyond the walls of the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys. It’s a question about all of us.
Choir Boy runs at Stratford East from 26 March to 25 April 2026, with press night on 31 March. Tickets start from £10 and are available now at stratfordeast.com.
This is a production that feels like it’s arriving at exactly the right moment, with exactly the right team, telling a story that needs to be heard. If you’re looking for theatre that challenges, heals, and celebrates in equal measure, this is it.