| Year and length: | 2024, 80’ (Italian premiere) |
|---|---|
| By: | Dorcy Rugamba |
| With: | Dorcy Rugamba, Majnun |
| Original music: | Majnun, Akasha |
| Light design: | Christophe Chaupin |
| Stage manager: | Christophe Chaupin alternating with Brice Tellier |
| Dialogue director: | Judy Dennis (USA) |
| Italian translation: | Alessio Bordoni |
| Production: | RAI – Rwanda Arts Initiative (Rwanda), La Charge du Rhinocéros (Belgium) |
| Producer: | Ellen Dennis (USA) |
| Distribution: | La Charge du Rhinocéros (Belgium) |
| Thanks to: | Arts Projects Australia |
Theatre
Dorcy Rugamba - Hewa Rwanda, Letter to the absent
Description
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.”