One of the productions that impressed at the just concluded Kampala International Theatre Festival was the Lebanese play titled Barzakh, which looks at the themes of earthly existence and the afterlife.
Barzakh is the place between earth and the afterlife from the moment of death until judgement.
The highly technical multimedia production has video footage, photography, voice-overs, lighting, sound, music and subtitles. It was created by Jad Hakawati and Roaa Bzeih, who are members of the Lebanese Minwal Theatre Company.
Barzakh is about an actress Bzeih, who gets hurt in a car accident. Her heart stops beating for almost 35 minutes, which sees her enter the realm between death and the afterlife. The play only has the character of Bzeih, who acts in Arabic either seated or lying on a hospital bed. She narrates her accident, which happened on her way to a beach in Beirut in Lebanon.
The most captivating scene involves a dialogue between an angel and the devil as Bzeih lies in the operating room. The angel encourages Bzeih to be strong while the devil does not understand why Bzeih wants to come back to life.
In her monologue, Bzeih recounts the light she saw while unconscious in hospital.
“When I was young my mom would tell me to close the windows otherwise Azrael (the angel of death) would come in. She was afraid of him, and I guess she still is…”
Barzakh marks a new era in theatre in which multimedia tools are increasingly incorporated in the show.
“This marks a new way of using multimedia tools in our theatrical productions,” Hakawati said after the play was presented in Kampala.
The third edition of the Kampala International Theatre Festival ran from November 23-27, at Ndere Cultural Centre in Kampala. It also featured productions from Uganda, Zambia, Ethiopia and the US.
The plays featured are The Most Wretched of the Earth by William Chewe Musonda from Zambia, which is about Zambian university graduates who studied in China and resolved to go back home and make changes to improve their country.
However, their experiences back home don’t go as planned with some thriving through nepotism and others languishing because of their stand against corruption.
Mourning Sun by the Ethiopian playwright Antu Yacob tells the story of a bright young girl who suffers after being forced to marry at the age of 14.
The other plays were an adaption of Ugandan Doreen Baingana’s award-winning short story collection titled Tropical Fish; The Story of Carlos Bulosan, which is written and performed by Giovanni Ortega from the US; Two Faces, which is written by Sammy Gideon Wetala; a poetry production titled The Audience Must Say Amen, written and performed by Peter Kagayi, and based on his 2016 poetry collection titled The Headline That Morning; Kawuna…You’re It! which is written and performed by Coutinho Kemiyondo; The Surrogate by Achiro Patricia Olwoch; Blood by Lucy Judith Adong and Black by Aganza Kisaka.