Is Uganda’s theatre dead?

As we approach World Theatre Day on March 27, playwrights and theatre lovers are gearing up to celebrate this year’s theme, Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The major celebrations will take place in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, one of the world’s theatre capitals, from March 27 -30.

Ugandan thespians will be watching the celebrations in Brazil keenly. For us, it is the first time in the celebration history that a Ugandan is at the helm. It is the first time the day is celebrated while a Ugandan presides over the International Theatre Institute (ITI), the body that organises the celebrations.

ITI president Jessica Kahwa is a much-revered drama educator, a theatre-for-development enthusiast and a perfectionist of traditional forms. For now, let us celebrate theatre in Uganda.

And the first question to be raised is: Is it worth celebrating? Next week, there will not be a big wave in our theatre waters, only ripples. The National Theatre is set to host several performances.

Rope, by Lloyd Lutalo and directed by the eclectic Kaaya Kagimu, will continue its run at the same theatre. Elsewhere, it will remain business as usual.

From the picture painted by the lacklustre events surrounding the day, theatre in Uganda seems dead. Opinions, whether theatre is dead or alive, are divided.

There is a wave sweeping across the upper echelons of the theatre. A particular class of theatre enthusiasts, mainly the corporate audience, believes theatre is still thriving. This group, often drawn to British and American musicals and Shakespearean productions, ensures a strong turnout whenever such plays are staged.

Take, for example, Aganza Kisaka’s She Loves Me (2024) under Yenze Theatre Conservatoire. It was a bold and modern exploration of love and identity that attracted top leadership of the Kampala Capital City Authority, the Uganda Registration Services Bureau, big-name corporations, and top legal minds in the audience.

That audience also had the most polished youth you could find on the streets of the leafy side of Kampala. Likewise, when Karen Hasahya Kimuli staged The Merchant of Venice at the Kampala Serena Hotel and the National Theatre in 2023, the audience was a collection of Kampala’s sophistication and eliticism. It attracted young and old. For a young playwright witnessing such events, theatre cannot possibly be dead. It is alive and kicking, as long as audiences keep engaging.

Mr Maraczek’s employees singing for the customer as they thanked him for shopping from them during the She Loves Me play staged at the National Theatre in Kampala recently

Kisaka captures the mood and enthusiasm when she says: “Theatre isn’t dying, but it’s rather trying to reform and with the reform, we need an audience because the actors need an audience to act to”.

Beyond the corporate world, there is a growing movement fostering new audiences — schools.

With a new school curriculum in which what was formerly referred to as “extra-curricular” joins the mainstream, schools have gone all out to teach drama.

They are not just staging and taking trips to the National Theatre to watch examinable plays. They are creating their own, directing and staging them.

Take the example of Taibah International School which adapted Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart last year, on the back of its Sarafina musical the year before. Principal Oscar Ssemweya-Musoke says the students were fully involved at all levels of creating the production, from scriptwriting, characterisation, choreography, music production, costuming and directing. After school, those students continue going to theatre, but to productions that appeal to them and relate to their past theatrical experiences.

Changing times

They may be swayed towards KADS (Kampala Amateur Dramatics Society), which annually produces at least one pantomime and also gives its patrons a dinner theatre experience. The group has also had a long run of Broadway productions at the National Theatre. Tickets often sell out, with minimal publicity.

The KADS story is as interesting as that of Uganda. In the pre-independence era, it was known as KATS (Kampala Amateur Theatricals Society). The troupe was a reserve for the expatriate community in Kampala, both on stage and in the audience. In later years, it opened up and became representative of the local makeup, with many native Ugandans joining its ranks.

“Have you heard about the various training offered by Yenze Theatre and Tebere Arts Foundation?” Isma Semujju, a theatre sound engineer and actor (She Loves Me) asks rhetorically. Semujju says there are many young people like Keith Mugenyi whose Mugongo Theatre Company is taking a new approach to theatre.

Abbey Mukiibi of Afri Talent ordering Veronica Nakayo, who acts as his wife in the play, Basajja Bakka, out of his house.

“The group stages what they call reckless plays, which is a mixture of controversial full-length dramas and situational comedy skits,” he says.

The groups, like many others, have also stepped away from traditional theatre halls and stage plays in open spaces and online platforms.

However, while the A-listers are enthusiastic about the trend theatre is taking up, there is another group that has been left wailing.

The golden era of Afri Talent (led by Abbey Mukiibi, Mariam Ndagire and John Segawa), Bakayimbira Dramactors (led by Charles Ssenkubuge, Aloysius Matovu Joy and Andrew Benon Kibuuka), Diamonds Ensemble (led by Kato Lubwama and Ashraf Ssemwogerere), as well as John Katende’s The Ebonies seems to be on a decline, to put it mildly.

These groups, once dominant in the 1990s and early 2000s with their rib-cracking farces and melodramas, have struggled to survive due to rising production costs, lack of funding and competition from film and digital content.

Many theatres have shut down, mostly giving way to Pentecostal churches and leaving artistes to find alternative ways to showcase their work.

The 1990s and early 2000s were the new golden age (after the 1970s) for this drama.

Infusing new blood In Afri Talent, Abbey Mukiibi is grooming a young crop of actors.

“As a group, we are in a stage of transition. We, the older ones, want to hand over the reins to the younger generation,” he says.

To reach that dream, the group is reviving many of its hit plays, with younger casts. There is a lot of promise. His colleague, Mariam Ndagire, hardly appears in the group’s plays. However, she is running the Friday Night Lights at Bat Valley Theatre. It is a monthly showcase of new playwrights.

Ndagire has also recently collaborated with two other female playwrights, who are right in the middle of their youth. She tours secondary schools, talking about drama and sharing a copy of her play, Essozi, with students.

Many of these “downtown” drama stars have also traded the stage for the silver screen and feature in many soap operas on local TV channels.

To celebrate World Theatre Day (or rather days), the International Theatre Institute asks all and sundry to go to a theatre and watch a play. The biggest offering for theatre lovers this season is Rope at the National Theatre.

That the play centres around the abduction of a young working woman, her dotting father’s efforts to rescue her and his doubts about the son-in-law’s involvement, gives the play a wider interpretation in Uganda today. It becomes both a political and social play.

It is a play that makes you take a deep breath, which you should also take for the state of Ugandan theatre today.