Bringing the news on stage

23:32 by tsup ug
Famous rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs says art is the way of life – it interprets moods, situations and on the other time prophecies.
The Foursum Foundation, a quartet of actors Edwin Mukalazi, Mpaata Williams Otako, Felix Bwanika and Simon Kivumbi must have had this in their mind when the introduced Uganda’s first ever Newspaper Theatre.
Newspaper Theatre is comprised of improvising of stories in all Ugandan newspapers to bring them to the public readers in an artistic form with physical and improvisational theatre techniques of acting.
The shows involve a link man, and one female actress, these are usually guests.
The link man usually reads out the story that is going to be acted next, from an actual newspaper and interprets it in his comic understanding before the other actors take over.
This being the second show, the group is backing on the services of Pablo Kimuli as the link man and funny girl Carol Kunihira of NTV’s Tricksters, Katemba Mu Kooti and currently Deceptions.
When they premiered the production on January 31st, the grouped wowed with their comic and dramatic twists to news stories like Golola’s win against Tugume, the Eclipse, UPE and PLE and the unforgettable skit of Mandela in heaven.
Even the hard political news was interesting to look at, and now with a series of events like Amama Mbabazi saga, another Golola win, Lukwago drama and the Malaysian lost plane, they promise to take their audience on a rollercoaster of current affairs.
One of the group members, Otako says that the reason they came up with the newspaper theatre was to escape the common dish of comedy served nowadays mostly comprising of sex and tribal jokes.
Newspaper Theatre is a quarterly event that shows at the National Theatre after every three months.
“Presenting news that has been published in three months gives us an edge on content,” says Bwanika noting that for a show of two hours the well can never run dry.  
But to spice up things, the group is planning on doing an improvised skit from the favorite news story of someone in the audience.
The show takes place on today at the National Theatre, 7pm. Tickets go for Ushs20,000/=.

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