I wake up to this, my 57th birthday, praising the world that I can spend it at work in such a place. At our warm up in the Dance Studio, everyone sings the Kenyan version of “Happy Birthday” which includes dance and in the end, lifting me up above their heads and carrying me around. No words...
We break into groups to start in earnest ‘doing’, less talk. I am scheduled to meet, however, with our Ugandan writer, Judith Adong and her Kenyan director, Jacob Otieno, to explore where she is in her re-writing, after our first feedback. She wants more feedback, so I decide to “show” rather than “tell”, by creating a ‘map’ of her play, on tiny pieces of paper. I create one idea for how to raise dramatic tension and focus on her protagonist most effectively, being careful to remind her it is just ‘one idea’ and that I’m doing it to demonstrate what I mean by dramatic action and tension, not to give her an answer. I love her engagement and when she presents me with her re-write thusfar, without any conversation, she has already plotted her first three scenes in line with what my suggestion was. We are on the same page. We don’t talk much more; I let her go continue the writing on her own.
By the afternoon, everyone is seriously in the groove, having found ‘their space’ – both literally and figuratively, to work their project. Roberta is attached to the Rwandan play, and is creating a tri-language script – Kinyarwanda to French to English so that we can all be in tune, line by line, with what is happening onstage. Deborah Asiimwe, though Ugandan knows enough Kinyarwanda to partner in this. We have found a way.
Today at our afternoon tea break, Moise, a Rwandan musician with a spectacular singing voice, says in slow English (French being his native tongue): “Now I finally get Sundance. It is not like torturing yourself at midnight when creating something. You take your time. You think, you share, you create with friends. You do not rush. It’s life. You wake up, you begin...”
