Dorcy Rugamba - Hewa Rwanda, Letter to the absent

For the first time in Italy, Dorcy Rugamba—the Rwandan writer, actor, dancer and director—presents Hewa Rwanda – Letter to the Absent, the book published in 2024, translated worldwide, and subsequently turned into a performance. It is a memorial that Dorcy Rugamba entrusts to his children: a first-person testimony of the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994, which has shaped his history as a man and as an artist. On stage, Rugamba himself performs, together with all the colours of the music of the eclectic and talented Senegalese multi-instrumentalist Majnun.

“While Hewa Rwanda, Letter to the Absent, addresses the genocide, questions of mourning, and a family that was nearly annihilated, I primarily wanted it not to be a commemorative text but a hymn to life, so the tone of the text deliberately embraces lightness, humour, poetry, music, and life in all its aspects.”