The Blac Anthem was positioned as a theatre production looking at bringing together performing artistes from different countries, fusing languages and cultures.
The show that started advertising at the beginning of the year promised heart wrenching solo performances of both theatre and poetry majorly by East African artistes.
And last Saturday, Blac Anthem finally took place at Dancing Cup in Bugolobi. Headlined by writers and performers Linda Nabasa, Pamela Keryeko, Rehema Nanfuka, Carolyne Acen, Yvette Niyimufasha and Arthur Banshayeko, the show visited topics of love, heritage, Africa’s past and identity.
Banshayeko from Burundi and the only man on the cast, started the show with a performance of The Zenith of Madness, originally written by Rivardo Niyonizigiye. It is a play about a handicapped young man who narrates the atrocities committed against his family as he witnessed.
His performance was as engaging as it was emotional; at times his voice cracked as he mentioned some of the bad things he had seen – the rape of his sister or his brother’s disappearance.
To stay true to the theme of collaborating through language, he threw in lines of Luganda as he performed. The best use of language, though, was a collaboration between Nabasa and Niyomufasha which was a hybrid of French, English and Kinyarwanda; The Veiled Truth, even when it was heavily French, was written by Nabasa.
“The process of writing was exciting. Yvette understands English but mostly speaks French, so there were times we were just staring at each other,” Nabasa said.
The production was about a girl that gets lost in a museum and becomes part of the installation, then she witnesses guides misrepresenting her family story. The most exciting production, though, was Nanfuka’s My Life in a Colored Box, depicting a 34-year-old woman who confronts different segments of her life and what society thinks is the right way to live.
In her solo performance, Nanfuka approached mindsets of communities that believe a single lady above 30 needs prayers, or those that think being married is making it in life.
Like many of the performances – Keryeko stepping out of the ‘other’ woman’s shadow to be her own self, or Niyomufasha struggling to tell her family story the way she thought right – Nanfuka’s too came with a certain sense of calling society out on unfair stereotypes.
Blac Anthem was produced by Nabasa who said one of the big reasons for doing the show was her belief that theatre should cross borders even in the absence of funders.
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