BWW Blog: MOURNING SUN in Uganda

It's early November in New York. Adrian Baidoo has recently finished a national tour, and now begins the journey of resettling in the city. While balancing arrangements for holiday travel and an audition schedule he receives a call. He checks his phone, the caller ID says "Ari Laura Kreith," a director with whom he worked when he first moved to New York. He picks up the phone. She informs him that a play she directed, Antu Yacob's Mourning Sun, has been invited to the Kampala International Theatre Festival in Uganda. However, there was a scheduling conflict with a performer leaving a major role vacant and she needs an immediate substitute. There is one catch. Rehearsals start immediately and the flight is in two weeks. Adrian, having never seen the script, and taking stock of what might amount to a Sisyphean task, declines. Later that day he calls his parents in Chicago. His mother picks up the phone. Adrian informs her that a "director wants me to perform in Uganda this month." and that "I said 'No.'" She responds, "'...What are you talking about?'" Two weeks later Adrian begins the 24 hour trek to Kampala. They arrive at the state of the art Ndere Arts Centre, where the production's sets were already constructed by a determined crew. After a swift two day's tech, Mourning Sun has its international premier.

Mourning Sun first opened with praise at the West End Theatre in November 2015. This play begins in Ethiopia with three young teenagers, Abdi Biftu, and Biftu's sister. Despite the feelings held between Abdi and Biftu, Biftu is forced into an arranged marriage with an older man. Soon after this wedding, the devastated Abdi is spirited away by his aunt in New York to restart his life abroad. While Abdi attempts to assimilate in American culture, Biftu endures a trial of her own as she is diagnosed with fistula. Fistula is a condition caused by internal trauma due to prolonged labor. The condition is prevalent in young women who have endured labor at too young an age for their body's development. Side effects can include, among other things, loss of control over bowels, and infertility. However, in Biftu's Ethiopia, the demoralizing physical effects of the condition are outweighed by a cultural stigma which results in her banishment from the community.

Four years after his departure, Abdi returns to Ethiopia. He, with the aid of Biftu's sister, discovers Biftu and brings her to New York. They marry. They marry, in part to secure Biftu's American status, and in part to secure an ideal romance they lost. They live together in Harlem, each desperate to not fail the other through giving voice to their trauma. They live together refusing to admit to the harm of the past, as doing so would be to concede the victory of harm over their life's story. However, Abdi is still coming to terms with his cultural identity which he has been tentatively assimilating to over the previous four years, and Biftu is still searching to form agency of her own happiness, being arranged first in marriage and now in culture. She, with no intent of malice, abandons her and Abdi's home and finds herself in an affair with a neighbor, a former sex addict in search of his own redemption. He helps her come to terms with her status of living with fistula. She returns to Abdi with new confidence. Abdi tells Biftu that she is not responsible for her fistula, opening the doors for her own self forgiveness. In return Biftu informs Abdi that he can identify with Ethiopia without having to take ownership of all the harm it has caused the both of them. The future of their relationship is left ambiguous but, their individual moral statuses are, here, resolved.

The mechanism of the play is a universal theme: whether one transcends the past through defying its existence or recognizing its effects. This is fueled by a topical catalyst: immigrant cultural identity and the fistula epidemic and stigmatization in Africa. In both cases the play was very well received in Uganda. After the performance, actors who participated in the Queens run, remark that jokes that were missed in the New York run, are landing. Or, even the mere mention of the pedestrian points of Ethiopian culture, previously rendered unheeded, were responded to. Such casual fluency in day to day culture is founded partly in the playwright's history as an immigrant. Yacob moved to America at a young age from Ethiopia and has continued to tether herself to the inherent cultural identity that results in holding ownership of both spaces. It should be mentioned that Ugandan and Ethiopian cultures are distinct, however, especially in relation to a previous performance in America, they are closer in proximity both geographically and by identity.

While at the festival the performers have the opportunity to attend other productions. Adrian enters the "Conference Room" space and witnesses an inspired one person performance, Tropical Fish, by Rehema Nanfuka based on text by Doreen Baingana. After the play he meets with the performer and asks her about her training. "Oh, I'm a chicken farmer," she responds. To his awe she has no formal training in performance and begins to ask him for advice on her performance. Adrian notices a desire for structured performance training throughout the festival, though, he simultaneously witnesses the virtues in the unvarnished presentations. The other virtue prescribed upon American artists by the Ugandan performers, is the social mantle offered by freedom of speech. While the Kampala International Theatre Festival has relatively open communication, the Ugandan government has tabooed certain topics including, among others, homosexuality. For the Ugandan's, the American willingness, and indeed sense of responsibility to exploit the extent of this right, is one of American art's great virtues.

While depictions of African cultures as relentlessly warring are reductive, in comparison to his American life, the cultural experience is more overtly volatile both socially and politically. On reflection back in America, Adrian took stock of his time abroad. What is within his reach to positively affect the lives in Uganda, and greater Africa, from his American vantage point. He recalls an instance of asking an audience member "What do you want more from from America?" They responded that "It's hard here to fight for justice when all depictions of your culture are decrepit. We need positive depictions of Africans and those of African heritage. To see people who look like you, who come from where you come from, achieve and do good in the world is important." At that moment it became clear that the international impact of American culture can not go overestimated. Furthermore, it should always be considered that the high expectations that cultures have for themselves should be mirrored in performance. That isn't to say an uncritical or severe lens must be used, but a larger framework and presenting characters within the scope of humanity. Video of the experience can be found here.

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