Walking home after dinner tonght, the moon was three quarters full, and so I didn’t need my ‘torch’ to light my path. My own shadow was striking against the white sand, and the ocean waves caught the moonlight. Magic. fter dinner we watched a brief video by our Ethiopian fellow, Andnet, and then several actors (including our own Roberta Levitow) read the first scene of his play in English, which Roberta had translated from its original Amharic along with the author. It was lovely. Wayne MacGregor and his partner Antoine joined us for dinner as well.
I had spent the day in Lamutown, along with our fellow, Allumbe Hellen and Christopher. We were there to meet with the Director of Education and a group of about a dozen young artists – dancers, musicians, singers, poets, actors – who we’d asked to be identified by the district commissioner to participate in our July 27 performance sharing outside the Old Fort in the Main Square. The kids were lovely, and we spoke with them in a combination of English and Swahili (Hellen is a beautiful Swahili speaker). By the way, my own Swahili classes are coming along just fine! Roberta, Christopher and I meet with Bernard each night before dinner and he’s prepared a lesson. I can say: “Tomorrow I will wash the Donkey”, among other useful phrases. I even ordered a piece of cake in Swahili to day in a café in town. I think the waiter was impressed.
There are some tensions at the Lab, which is not unusual for three days prior to final presentations. The Ugandan project has changed lead actors a few times – once against our own advice but, in the end we allow the playwrights to make their own decisions, even if we strongly feel another way. We are on a vast learning curve, for sure. We so don’t wish to impose a system on this fragile culture, and yet there are times where we do feel that our experience in new play development really should trump! As we move onto our final week, it’s hard not to let ideas percolate about what could work better ‘next time’, and new structures that might more keenly match to the needs of this diverse group of artists.
Ibanda Grace has been sick for a few days. We called the doctor in from Lamu and he said that she had a slight case of pneumonia and an ulcer. Within 48 hours with some medicine, she is already better and re-joined us for lunch and dinner tonight. We miss her spirit at ‘warm up’s because much of the time, she is our leader. Today, however, Sitawa did a gorgeous opening exercise which was neither vocal nor physical. She asked each person to remember the moment they received their Sundance invitation and to recall the excitement and anticipation those few months back, and then to re-invest in that original impulse. We then wandered around the studio and re-introduced ourselves to each and every person, looking each person in their eyes and sharing our full name. It was sort of a ‘genius’ exercise and I was very grateful to her for creating it.
There are two days left of rehearsal before we share our final presentations. Even though we stress the non-competitive and relaxed open atmosphere, people undoubtedly get stressed. Truly, having this ‘goal’ to show work is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t supercede the work itself. We shall see.
