Artistes struggle to reclaim National Theatre

Established in 1959 by an Act of Parliament, Uganda National Cultural Centre (UNCC) best known as National Theatre is struggling to keep its flag high.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was the epitome of Uganda’s creativity in arts. So, one would wonder, what happened?
Last week, two shows that included a circus and the dance week festival were booked for the same auditorium, both slated to start at 7pm.
The result was two audiences stranded as the show organizers sorted the mess. The circus started at 7-9pm and the later in the night, the festival would take the stage.
Many abandoned the latter show since it was getting late already.
What followed were artistes going to their modern-day “shrink” aka social media, to complain about the poor condition of the place and the way management is handling business.
With the hashtag #SaveUNCC, artistes want a management that will care about art, help the theatre reclaim its former glory as well as enable the government to earn from the arts.
Renowned playwright, actor and founder of Theater Factory Phillip Luswata says the theatre has lost it since the people managing the place barely understand art or what is good for it.
TWO-MAN BATTLE
However, Francis Ojede, the Executive Director at UNCC says Luswata is only making up these things because his Theatre Factory office has been closed over rent arrears.
“We’ve been so lenient with them but we decided that enough was enough and closed them down,” Ojede says.
However, Luswata says he had left the said office a long time ago and had discussed with the management to turn the former Theatre Factory offices into a training centre for new artistes that come to the UNCC.
Pamela Kerakyo, an actress that has performed at the UNCC since 1993 and also a constant cast of the different Obsessions shows, notes that things started going really downhill around 2009. “We came to stage a show and it stressed us, we couldn’t get the space for our rehearsals and at the end of it all, the show was bad.”
Like many other artistes, she believes the reason theatre is failing is because management prioritizes money over art.
“These people rented out the Green Room to Uganda Tourism Board; what is a theatre without a green room?” she says. The green room is the lounge where actors rest between stage appearances. Before the green room at National Theatre was rented out, it was already serving wedding planners more than artistes, as a meeting venue.
Filmmaker George Stanley Nsamba faults the theatre management of knowing little about art that they even don’t believe in its potential.
He says during an arts forum last year, one of the UNCC board members informed them that they had come up with a plan to start a SACCO for artistes to invest in farming since art does not pay.
“As an artiste, I found that insulting,” he said, noting that of late, the management has opted to turn UNCC into a ‘National Wedding Meeting Centre’.
In response, Ojede said hosting wedding meetings is one way of promoting culture.
“Aren’t weddings part of culture? I have no regret in that because as UNCC, we have a role to uphold arts and culture.”
About the theatre
The theater hosts many shows throughout the year, but because they lack consistency, it is hard knowing the active days besides Thursday when Fun Factory hosts the comedy shows.
According to artistes such as Julius Lugaya of Theater Factory and also organizer of the Dance Week Festival, in the glory days of the centre, there was always a lot to look out for from the theatre; for instance, he notes that the Monday Jam Sessions would attract acts including Jamal, Chameleone, Bebe Cool and Bobi Wine. Today, not many artistes want to be associated with the session.
The theater has now gained a reputation as the place where people come to hook up with White partners.
But the problems are bigger; for instance, even when the stage was constructed to be lit up by at least 40 200-Watts lights, less than ten of these are working. Others have since blown and some are missing.
The plywood that makes up part of the stage has been encroached on by ants that can distract a scene especially if they come out during a production.
“There was a time I was attacked by ants in a scene where I was supposed to act dead,” reminisces one actor.
Double Booking
Lugaaya says the theatre’s challenges with the artistes start with double booking, when two or more shows are slated to happen at the same time or day.
Writivism Festival, Kampala Amateur Dramatics Society (KADS) , World Music Day and of late the annual Dance Week Festival have been double booked with other shows.
According to Ojede, the situation during Dance Week was not a case of double booking but rather shows following each other in the same space.
Kerakyo says this kind of attitude is the reason why artistes want the management out.
“When an artiste has booked the auditorium, he/she is not booking a time slot, but the whole day. That way, they can come rehearse, get a feel of the stage and totally get to own it.”
Double booking has had its toll on the theatre; it has been alleged that Kampala International Theater Festival will be moving to Ndere Centre. KADS, who have always had more than six shows at the theatre every year have resorted to having productions in restaurants and alternative spaces.
Muchomo Festival and Amakula International Film Festival have since moved to the Uganda Museum.
Way forward
Ojede says they are pressing government to increase the UNCC budget to ensure that renovations are made; he says they want the theatre to get into production again to start supplying TVs with content.
A petition has since been signed and handed to the Gender Permanent Secretary seeking for a new board and management that will listen and involve artistes.
However, others like Waheedah Mwegale, a filmmaker say dialogue with the current management should not be ruled out.

Oscar Senyonga’s Ugandan art story told

Over a year back, artists almost lost their minds when the president called the arts useless, regardless of the noise that was made on social media, radios or TV, no one from the president’s office came up to address the situation.
Yet, during the just concluded presidential elections, many artists were used to woo voter to the different camps involved.
And they were issues like these that dancer Oscar Senyonga was emphasizing in his Dance Week Festival performance titled Tremble.
Clad in a dark tan trouser and a light blue shirt and a pair of sports shoes, the dreadlocked Senyonga, also a member of Mambya Dance Company starts the performance on the ground, his backdrop is a white house and he’s seemingly enjoying to swim in the sand that is in front of it.
Most of the moves he was doing seemed to come easy off his body, throwing his legs in the air and at times dipping he head in the sand, standing up making gestures like he was enjoying the praise he was receiving.
The opening soundtrack was African folk music mostly played in isolation, for instance, most of the times they only included a solo instrument, a flute, xylophone or thumb piano.

Like an artist, the piece shows at the beginning of the journey, especially when people’s talents have just been discovered, the world is proud of you and they indeed want to show you off; “They will let you dance, draw or even act because it pleases them to tell people your part of such activities.”
He notes that this part of the performance was a representation of his beginnings back in 2006, the reason it was more subtle and laidback was because when he was starting, it was all easy since everyone around him had no problem with him being a dancer.
But as he’s story and the dance progress, the energy changes, we see him become more aggressive sometimes he even had his feet stuck in the sand and he would struggle to retrieve it.
The part of the performance was a sign of the change in attitude, for instance at the beginning of an art journey, children get support when they grow up and try to persue the passion for a living, they get criticized, insulted and the doubters double.
This time the moves were aggressive and his facial expressions were mostly in pain, as if he was struggling not only for space but recognition and a right to co-exist, there was incidents where he would kick the sand s if it was  waste only to end up treasuring it later.
“Sand was used as a collage because it’s that one ingredient that is used to build many of the fancy structures we have in this country, yet the people that extract it are at the bottom of all circles,” he said.
He connected the sand notation to that of the arts, saying that people use music, dance or visual arts for recreation and communication purposes, yet they turn around and trash artists as worthless.
The performance was timely especially with a fact that the Saturday Dance Week performances had to be delayed an hour and half later after the theater management double booked with a circus show and later advising the festival organisers to do their ‘thing’ in the gardens.
“Even a fact that we were double booked proves that art is considered useless even by the people that get their paycheck directly from the arts,” he said.
Much as the moves were out of this world, the message was worth every minute and there was no better way to finish it off than a sound bite talking about art shaping the society yet being passed off as useless.
It wasn’t surprising Oscar got the audience on its feet.

Fabrice breaks dance boundaries at Festival openning

He got on a plane from France to open Uganda’s premiere dance festival aptly known as the Dance Week Festival.
Many didn’t turn up to see how graceful his moves would be, but to look and snare at festival organizers’ for always opting for foreign acts to open such shows instead of choosing them.
However in more than a way, Fabrice Lambert proved why someone spent on that air ticket – his one and half performance, became a class for many of the dancers that were around.
He is a rather non-conventional dancer that has embraced the evolving world allowing it to influence his art, process of creation and execution.
Thus, unlike many dancers that have always concentrated on the dance moves, coordination and at times their smartness, Lambert was shamelessly tearing all this apart – for instance, his first performance had him naked technically naked but only disguised in a body tight that covered his body and face but left nothing to imagination.
Dancing from one side of the National Theater entrance to the other, he made sure that his performance leaves a mark – at one point you could have him slither on the ground and at other times he would imitate a monkey.
It was a more sober performance compared to the 2015 spontaneous sessions that saw hip hop dance styles merge with those of dancehall or reggae and they were more accessible and digestible – one didn’t have to be a scientist to get what dancers were trying to say; that is if they had anything to say anyway.
Lambert’s opener was different though, creating illusions in people’s minds and most of them leaving with a task of interpretation.
His first performance was inspired by a snake in its skin saying that much as it doesn’t wear anything, people have never perceived it as naked, in fact, it was one of the major reasons the routine was done from outside, so as to interface with nature.
But the second performance he titled Gravity was the most captivating one, from the way his team manipulated the lights and intended water logged stage and a white screen backdrop – the light would hit the water on stage and then reflect on the white background creating water ripples images.
It was quite a scientific approach to the art as the dancer always kept in synch with the light and thus managing to manipulate it to reflect that his body was turning into things like a flying man, an athlete or a melting ice bag – referred to it as dancing with the surrounding.
He notes that with that performance, his work started with him creating a good relationship with the different kinds of energies, the outcome of the dialogue between the energies is what we saw through the reflections on his white background; “the dialogue between light and the shadow represent the power to fly or do other things.”
Julius Lugaya, the festival director noted that dance is still a relevant art form and that’s why they’ve curated Dance Week for thirteen years now. But even when they are doing their best, the challenges still exist; “Dance doesn’t have an audience.”
For instance, the free of charge opening act had a good attendance, but when people were asked to pay and see the rest of the performances in the auditorium, many chose to leave or simply stay around and drink.
And the theater’s incompetent management doesn’t help things at all, in the past, they’ve had to shift different dance events to smaller places because there has been a double booking, for instance during this edition of Dance Week, a circus show was booked to happen in the auditorium at 7:30pm on both Saturday and Sunday, the same days had though been previously booked by Dance Week organizers.
As a result, many Dance Week fans that showed up earlier for shows ended up leaving after waiting for so long.
The festival ended on Sunday and was graced by other prominent dancers like IDU, Uganda’s representatives at Kenya’s televised dance show Sakata Mashariki, Dance Theater from Makerere, Faisal Damba and Papy Kikuni Victor from DRC among others.
Credits
Photo by Samson Baranga

Sheebah, Nwagi benefit from Tubonga Nawe drama

In October 2015, an all-star cast of artistes Bebe Cool, Chameleone, Radio and Weasel and Rema among others came together and recorded a song endorsing the NRM candidate and current president Yoweri Museveni as the best choice for the 2016 elections.
Of course the public would react, calling them money minded, greedy and the last coming with a resolution that they were going to boycott the artistes.
Much as the idea to boycott the artistes was scoffed at, those involved on the project, now popularly known by different names like Special Twelve or the Yellow Twelve, have not had it easy for the past few months.
For instance, even when he had all reasons to give, it’s openly thought that Bebe Cool had his East African Carnival scrapped this Easter season because he had predicted doom. But it’s not just him, his collegues on the Tubonga Nawe anthem like Radio and Weasel or Haruna Mubiru have had to endure concert flops in the diaspora.
Bebe has still been a subject of social media attacks and at the beginning of this month, things went from his wall and tagging to reality when fans hurled insults at him and his Gagamel team when they showed up for the Uganda Cranes and Burkina Faso game at Nambole.
But amidst the tension, some artistes are actually making a killing – With many of the Tubonga Nawe crew in hibernation; it has given group artistes a chance to be the playing mouse now that the cats are into hiding.
Winnie Nwagi has been highly looked as that one artiste that has benefited from Iryn Namubiru’s scarcity. During the tension that has seen people call Namubiru and Juliana Kanyomozi names for praising the incumbent, Nwagi has managed to slowly encroach on their market with three remarkable songs, Kibulamu, Science alongside King Saha and the runaway hit Musawo.

Besides winning a couple of awards at the beginning of the year, the songstress has curtain raised on a number of shows and has enjoyed quite a number of appearances on media.
From the same camp like Nwagi, Irene Ntale is having a good run too, just over the weekend, she got the audience at the Friday Night Lights Basketball tourney dancing and eating out of her palms which was a contrast of Mun*G,  whose shine was stolen a little reveler two weeks back. 
But it is Sheebah Karungi that must be having the time of her life, in a period of three months, the crazy girl has managed to get more than four songs trending.
She kicked off the year with Ndiwanjawulo, Wantama followed them up with Nsekula alongside Fefe Busi and last week she released her long awaited single and video Nkwatako which has received lots of rave reviews even when it was released in the same week like Bebe Cool’s African Girl.
Amidst the boycott other artistes have managed to clean their social media image which has seen them improve in the number of followers, for instance, the survey done by TechJaja.com, an IT website, Bobi Wine currently has one of the fast growing celebrity pages and by February, when their research was published, his numbers had shot up by 1167, Ntale though also was performing even way better with 1578 likes.
One Arnold Zziwa noted that before the whole political drama, he cared less about what Bobi Wine posted but now, he follows and even shares his posts; “You would realise that even his space in the news is changing, these days he makes it to page two in dailies,” he says.
Since he came out to release songs like Situka, Bobi Wine’s fame has surged, he held a sold out Easter Monday show at Busabala and he’s in plans to dare Nambole stadium for his annual show.
He has been interviewed by BBC, CCTV and has also been on the cover of the Independent Magazine alongside heading the safe water campaign for children in Karamoja that culminated into the Viva Con Agua We Love YoUganda Festival, a campaign that Bebe Cool was a face of previously.
Some have though dedicated Bobi Wine’s good performance to a fact that he has of recent hired the services of Ann Whitehead, a communication specialist to improve his image both online and in the traditional media.
Of course with many of the Tubonga Nawe artistes not releasing music, they have given Ugandans a chance to move on without them, and much of this is visible on local music sites where the likes of Nwagi, Sheebah and Maro dominate their charts; on www.howwe.biz, the most popular audio plays are from Nwagi, Sheebah, Pallaso and yes, Bad Black among others.
HiPipo’s chart leaders are not that different besides a fact that the songs are, for example Sheebah appears in the top ten with Nsekula as opposed to Nkwatako with other artistes being Navio for his Ganda influenced Njogereza, Bobi Wine for Dembe.
However, even when the cards are still against them, many seem to be dusting off, for instance Chameleone has since released his single Double Trouble and much as it is struggling at the moment, it is thought it will pick up, Namubiru has redeemed herself with two releases in two weeks, one being a collaboration with Maro, Bebe Cool’s African Girl video premiered on MTV Base last week and Rema alongside Aziz Azion have too released their long awaited Oli Wakabi.
Will these songs work even with an impending swearing in?
As one artiste puts it, it will all come down to what Bebe Cool posts at that time.

Lantern Meet’s Poetry Will Warm Us puts the love and art on the spot

Even when our votes are rigged
And we are sinking like a stone,
Our Poetry will warm us….
Well the line is a personal improvising to rhyme with the closing poem from the Lantern Meet of Poets show that took place over the weekend at the National Theater.
Dubbed Poetry will Warm Us, it was a show that broke many of the rules – well not in a ridiculous way but it was that do where the beauty of art took center stage as opposed to delving into all the things affecting the society; bad governance, social evil and all those other things.
On the contrary though, the Lantern Meet of Poets put up a show that was looking at addressing love but above all, the importance of art in our daily lives and thus the title, Poetry Will Warm Us.
In the working title, poetry was used to represent the different arts; music, visual arts, poetry, spoken word or theater that people usually fall back to when they are facing difficulties in life.
The show that kicked off at about 7:30pm, slightly later than the announced time but it was no crisis. Like all their shows, they always choose to start with a monologue that tends to set the mood for entire recital, the past editions have all been done by intellect comedian Daniel Omara.
His monologue explored a number of issues ranging from the raging poverty that everyone is blaming on the government, the stolen election, Besigye’s arrest – the fascination with his driver who is never arrested even after driving him to a riot, Tubonga Nawe artistes boycott and most exciting one about the new kid on the block, Winnie Nwangi.
But it was the recital that actually took the day; the set was designed as a park – seats, plantations, imaginary water and an art piece in the background.
Directed by Solomon Manzi, the show was curated to reflect the three stages of a relationship starting from the dating to breakup or marriage for the others.
Here they recited poems like Yellow Fever, Maria Rosa and Kanyanje among others – most of them were hinged around finding love or convincing that special girl to take you for who you are.
Much of the poetry of the night had been written by Ann Linda Namuddu, Manzi, Francis Asiimwe and Jason Ntaro among others.
To make things less clattered on the stage, they chose to dress all the male cast in black and the females in white, according to Esther Namuli the Costume Designer for the production, the colors were a representative of the divide in ideas men and women usually have about relationships but neither of them was dark or evil.
“It was also a way of getting the audience’s attention instantly.”

Unlike the past shows where much of the recital and stage design was abstract, this particular show was rather direct and easy to understand, Aki Abaho, the Producer, noted that it was simply a show about love; “we went through our poetry achives and realized we had a lot of material about love, yet we’ve only done one show about love and that’s how this recital was born.”
She notes that they wanted to get people from the political tension they have had to accommodate for the past few months and thus they had to deliver such an accessible production.
The show was put together in three weeks though the selection had happened way earlier, since many of the performers are not professional actor and in this case most of them having professional lives elsewhere, rehearsals according to Manzi were limited.

Initially he says the show wanted to look at politics, love and art differently, but seeing that they would be many, they choose to focus on love and just pitch other topics around it.
Poetry will Warm us comes as the last piece, written by Manzi and performed by Latifah Mutesi, it comes after the heartbreaks, the cheating, irreconcilable differences and bitter fights, it was stressing a fact that even when we annoy the hell out of each other, we still go silent and listen to that song, watch that film our listen to that recital for healing.

Am Happy with my Login replacement - Robin Kisti

And we are back, this edition of the Review focuses on the bubbly Robin Kisti, she talks to us about Lifestyle TV, why she left Login and of course her next move. We are not spoiling it for you so just click here to read your copy online or go here to download a pdf copy. Hope you enjoy reading.

Inaugural Short film festival set for next week

Most of the times, success of a film industry is measured by how many features or full length films have been produced.

In places like Uganda where only a few are released, they will be quick to judge the industry non-existent.

However, in the backdrop of any feature film like Bala Bala Sese, Boda Boda Theives or Wako that are released, there are more than ten short films that are released online, or in smaller gatherings that the greater population of Ugandans never get to know of.

And this is why the Kampala Short Film Festival that will debut next Tuesday will be a big deal; the do will celebrate the best Ugandan short films that were released in 2015.

According to Moses Serugo the organizer of the festival, it’s meant to celebrate short films since they usually never get a chance at theatres, cinemas and neither do they make any money for the people behind them.

The selected films are diverse as far as subjects and style is concerned, some like Silent Depression tackle issues to do with loneliness created by social media and technology advancement, others like Wanda look at early sex problems while others like Jinxed bring on drama with a girl whose night becomes hell as she meets one misfortune after another.

The festival will take place at the National Theater on 5 April and admission is absolutely free of charge.

Other films showing include award winning In Reality, Trash Cash, Mirror, Drawn Together and A Dog Story among others.