Fuel Presents THE DARK by Nick Makoha

Fuel open Tron Theatre's main house season this Spring with The Dark (15 & 16 Feb), the harrowing and uplifting autobiographical story of poet Nick Makoha's migration with his mother at the age of four to escape a country divided by dictatorship and consumed by conflict.

'Night is not the only darkness. Nick takes a breath as he tries to remember.' Fragments of a forgotten journey flicker in front of his eyes. It is night, November 1978. He is four years old. He is holding his mother's hand as they wait on the escarpment. They are leaving Kampala. Buying safe passage and silence with all they have, they travel by matatu and the conductor asks no questions. Their companions are the missing, lost and displaced. Those who have suffered eight long years under the rule of Idi Amin.

Two performers, Akiya Henry and Michael Balogun play multiple characters in this exploration of memory directed by the award-winning Roy Alexander Weise (Nine Night) and The Dark is a co-commission by Fuel and Ovalhouse as part of their First Bites series.

Fuel Director, Kate McGrath said:
Brilliant artists create a space for a temporary community to come together and seek to understand and to imagine. Fuel's job is to identify those living artists and bring their urgent and brave work to life for people to experience. Our 2019 season, which includes Nick Makoha's The Dark, celebrates our common humanity: how we all connect to the earth and to each other.

Running time: 90 minutes (no interval)