African Performance 2011: Shattered by Bode Asiyanbi

Nigerian Bode Asiyanbi has been announced as the winner of the 2011 BBC African Performance playwriting competition.

It is the second time he has won the accolade - he was selected as the winner in 2005.

"Words are hopelessly inadequate to express how I'm feeling"

This year's winning play is entitled Shattered and it addresses the subject of rape.

It exposes in a powerful way the silence that often surrounds this crime, when victims are often reluctant to come forward and disclose what has happened to them - especially when the perpetrator is a friend of the family.

This year's judge, Ugandan American actor and writer Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine said, "Shattered, for me, was the most layered story technically speaking and the most suspenseful.

"Each page introduced something that really made you want to know what happens next.

"It dealt with a theme that is being wrestled with not just on the African continent but globally, and it did it in a way that wasn't preaching or condescending, it did it in a way that shed light and heart on what is a complex issue."

On receiving the news, Bode Asiyanbi was jubilant, "I'm going to scream this whole bank down" he said after being telephoned at his workplace.

He had previously entered five times before winning in 2005, then he kept getting the urge to write and so entered a further two times.

"It's not an easy thing to do" he said, "and to be lucky a second time, words are hopelessly inadequate to express how I'm feeling."

Choosing the winners

In this companion programme the judge of this year's competition, Ugandan/American actor and writer Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, maps out this year's African Performance season, by telling us which plays he has chosen as the winners.

He talks about the standard of entries to this year's competition and gives an insight into what it was that appealed to him about the winning plays.

We also break the news to the winning writer that his play has finished first in our 2011 competition.