TERO BURU A New Play Celebrating Scottish Artist Beldina Odenyo Comes to Glasgow

Tero Buru is a new play by the late, great Beldina Odenyo which has been posthumously interpreted by Beldina's sister, Leah McAleer and Beldina's friend and collaborator Julia Taudevin. 

 

These preview performances of Tero Buru mark the release of a body of new work created to honour and celebrate the life and legacy of much-missed Scottish-Kenyan artist Beldina Odenyo. Beldina's friends and collaborators have joined together with her sister Leah to bring Tero Buru, Beldina's debut play, to an audience.  

 

“Death is a calling from your ancestors through the membrane between the living and the dead.” 

 

Beldina Odenyo, aka Heir of the Cursed, died in November 2021 and left an unstaged play, Tero Buru, named after a funeral ritual practised by the Luo people of East Africa. In this play four women are summoned back to the African continent as strangers, eventually becoming sisters with one common thread: the blood of priestesses. 

 

The four women navigate their loss of a loved one by guiding the soul onto the next state following a ritual their grandmothers knew but which they themselves have lost the language for. Through dance, song, poetry and dramatic monologue they make up their own ritual and tap into the ancient knowledge in their blood to bury what has died. 

 

Tero Buro will be performed at Platform, Easterhouse, Glasgow on 15 & 16 November by a stellar multi-disciplinary cast of performance artists, actors and musicians. Tero Buru will feature new and original music composed by Beldina. This will be the first time that recordings of Beldina's voice will be brought to life, in this visually striking and intimate production. 

 

Full cast: Award- winning writer, poet and performer Hannah Lavery - Lament for Sheku Bayoh, (National Theatre of Scotland, EIF and Lyceum Theatre), Finding Seaglass (NTS and Almost Tangible for Radio 4), and current Edinburgh Makar; Kimberley Mandindo, audiobook, screen and stage actor who has just finished touring with Mercury Award winning band Young Fathers whose most recent film work includes Sebastian (Bêtes Sauvages, barry crerar, Lemming Film, and Helsinki Filmi) and Annika for TV (Black Camel Pictures),. They are joined by Jamie Marie Leary, a theatre and screen actor who work includes Cyprus Avenue, Aganeeza Scrooge, Nae Expectations (Tron Theatre), Anna Karenina (Royal Lyceum), River City (STV) and Chinyanta Kabaso, a dance choreographer, performance artist, teacher and content creator with a large following on social media, who was crowned Miss Africa Great-Britain in 2020.   

 

Beldina's own voice leads the production in a sound design created by Joe Rattray with the recordings Beldina left specifically for the production of this play and extracts from Heir of the Cursed's forthcoming album. Sound healer and multi-instrumentalist Edugie Clare Robertson brings her own unique sound and many instruments from a range of African musical traditions. She is joined in the band by Marie-Gabrielle Koumenda a French-Cameroonian musician, composer and singer-songwriter performing under the artist's name Djana Gabrielle. 

 

Designer Sabrina Henry brings textile, red earth and literal fire to the stage and in dialogue with Lighting Designer Emma Jones, the worlds of the living, the long dead and the recent dead are created in a production that is both comforting and challenging.  

 

This play is the first in a series of artistic performances and events over 2024 to 2026 which will include the launch of Beldina's album Heir of the Cursed.  

Beldina was a ‘Starter Artist' with National Theatre of Scotland in 2018 during which time she researched death rituals, keening and funeral songs. Tero Buru grew out of this initial project. 

Leah McAleer said, “Amidst the devastation of her loss, we are tasked with gathering and preserving her legacy.  Beldina's work represents the comfort which can be found in connection and her lifelong dedication to the power of words and music to speak universal truths and offer solace to others in song and storytelling. We hope to invoke and honour her spirit and build a monumental event to express our love for our sister.” 

Julia Taudevin, director, said, “Shortly before she died Beldina asked me to help her bring Tero Buru to an audience. It is a privilege to honour that request and in doing so to remember with joy how funny, witty and uncompromising Beldina was as a person and an artist. She was a towering talent who still has so much that is wise, challenging and amusing to say about what it means to be a alive in the world today, even though she herself is no longer with us. I am delighted that audiences will get the opportunity to engage with Beldina's wisdom, her humour, her beauty and her pain through the fictional world she has created in Tero Buru.” 

 

Beldina was a vocalist, guitarist, poet and writer creating work between the fields of music and theatre. She explored the differences and kinship between her dual Kenyan and Scottish heritage through words, music and visual art. 

 

She worked with National Theatre of Scotland on several projects. She was composer and musician for the acclaimed Lament for Sheku Bayoh, Hannah Lavery's artistic response to the death of Sheku Bayoh in Scottish police custody, co-produced by National Theatre of Scotland, Edinburgh International Festival and Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh. In Dear Europe she performed Leonie Rae Gasson's Death Becomes Us which featured a community chorus of women and non-binary European migrants and in 2021, she collaborated again with Hannah Lavery, in a new live performance Blood, Salt, Spring, presented by National Theatre of Scotland in partnership with Push the Boat Out Festival. 

 

She was an acclaimed singer songwriter. She performed under the name Heir of the Cursed, and was part of the all-female songwriting collective Hen Hoose. 

 

Leah McAleer is Beldina Odenyo's sister and heir to her music and writings. Alongside her work as a GP, she is exploring the healing powers of art through the curation and completion of Beldina's artistic legacy, gathering a team of Scotland's finest creatives to share this exceptional body of work with audiences. 

 

Julia Taudevin is an award-winning writer, director and performer. Theatre projects include Dario Fo Award Winner Blow Off, epic beach performance Move and directing multi-award-winning Beats and Heads Up by Kieran Hurley with whom she runs theatre company Disaster Plan. She is currently under commission to Stellar Quines and has a number of television dramas and her first feature in development.

 

Full creative team: a play by Beldina Odenyo, interpreted by Leah McAleer, Directed by Julia Taudevin, Designer - Sabrina Henry, Lighting Designer – Emma Jones, Music Composer - Beldina Odenyo, Musical Director - Joseph Rattray, Choreographer - Salma Faraji - Executive Producer - Kieran Hurley 

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