Closing in Kigali

The final minutes of the final show in Rwanda

Saturday Oct 10

1) I spend the day in bed. Cipro, arnica, charcoal, ibuprofen and gatorade. I am feeling much better than last night, but certainly not well yet. I do have time to catch up on some blogging though. The internet connection at the Milles Collines is slow, and keeps going down, so the photo backlog is large. I do have some new shots posted, though (see below).

We will be closing in Rwanda tonight. I hope to be recovered more by then.

2) The final show. I am feeling almost normal again (thank god). I arrive at Heaven to find it occupied by a predominantly white crowd, and my heart sinks a little. But it is still early. By showtime (which is an hour later than advertised), we are at about half and half between ex-pats and Rwandans.

The show goes very well - as they all have here. The actors have found something very deep during this tour, and it is translated into their performances. It's sad that our last audience isn't a little less Euro - this is a by-product of too little PR, our American-owned location, and the first night of the big Beer Fest (daunting competition - like Soccer games in Butare!) - but many of the Rwandans who come to see it stay afterwards to talk to us, one on one. We decided to change the format from a formal talkback, to informal discussions, and the result was overwhelming. One on one, the Rwandans who wanted to talk felt much freer to enter into deeper, more personal conversations with us. As, in fact, would I in a similar situation.

And without exception, they speak about about how important it was for them to see this play. It actually seems to have been a more powerful experience than I had imagined it would be for people here. I listened to about half a dozen incredibly articulate, and very moved people describe to me the worth of the experience they had just had. The key, it seems, was how complicated the play is. These Rwandans were almost relieved to encounter a work of art that DIDN'T reduce or simplify just how complicated genocide is, how ubiquitous pain, anger, hatred and love is - among victim and perpetrator alike - a play that didn't solve anything, but instead somehow asserted what it is to be human, and in chaos. This - seemingly counterintuitively for someone like me - seems to be what the Rwandans I spoke with last night called a way forward towards forgiveness. Because the situation here is impossible, the tentacles of the genocide are everywhere, and yet people are moving forward in a way that is, I believe, unprecedented in history. And the message of this play, if there can be said to be such a thing, supports this: that there is no simple way to account for what happened, that there is no answer, and that complexity is what must be grappled with. No one is simply good, or simply bad. Even as I write this, I see how inadequate my own words are in comparison to what I listened to last night, but perhaps you get the idea - the welcome they gave the play was without reservation. The impact was palpable - perhaps for the first time to us in this very polite, and reserved country. Our Rwandan audience found this work essential.

Which makes me feel very torn. I didn't expect that Goodness would have such value here, would find such approbation. That's not even the right word - I can't actually put it into words. The play hit something true, and in this context, hearing the words of the people I spoke with, seeing in their faces that they meant what they said, shaking their hands, feeling their emotion, in THIS context, the worth of a piece of theatre seems exponentially more than it has ever seemed to me before.

And so, it makes me mourn that more people didn't see it. This was also said to me over and over again - it's a shame that more Rwandans didn't know about this play, didn't come to see it. "Why wasn't there better publicity?". Even if there had been, there was another barrier. As one man said last night, he thought at first: "Oh God, not another play about genocide". But then he was astounded by Goodness.

So - we came with something more valuable than we knew, and we leave with having shared it with too few.

Michael Redhill has offered to give the play rights-free to Rwanda for translation into Kinyarwanda. I think this idea is a beautiful one, as does Kiki (the head of the festival) and many of the theatre artists I have spoken with here. And so I will pursue finding a translator with Kiki and Michael. One man said to me he wanted us to play in schools all across Rwanda. I said this is simply impossible - I cannot raise that much money. But i said there might be a Kinyarwandan translation that could travel with Rwandan actors. He lit up. This is something like Jen Capraru is already doing here with Colleen Wagner's The Monument, so there is precedent.

Anyway - my emotions are mixed because it went so well. What is my duty now? Do i return to Rwanda? I have been asked to. So i ask myself - why do I do theatre? And I suspect it is to satisfy myself as an artist, first and foremost. Often, theatre and development can go hand in hand, but sometimes, they don't. So I have to decide if I will pursue the funding to return, to perhaps try to facilitate the conversion of Goodness into a Kinyrwandan production. It would be a big commitment. And I also ask myself, does such a production need me?

As my good friend Michael Greyeyes has said, when confronting a big decision, sometimes the best course is this: wait. Time will tell.

Opening in Kigali

The Man in the Bar scene in the restaurant in Kigali

Friday, Oct. 9

1) I awake feeling less than good. I think it might be a hangover from the US Embassy reception, and subsequent dinner, but the bad feeling moves down into my stomach soon after breakfast at the Milles Collines. The crew is loading into Heaven today for tonight's opening. I catch up on my blogging, lying in bed. I will need to recover enough to get there for sound levels and LX focus.

Here's hoping...

2) The stomach doesn't seem to be getting better. I spend the rest of the morning in bed, then go to the "theatre" for the afternoon. The "theatre" is Heaven, a restaurant that we are turning into our performance space. It is stunningly beautiful. We will be performing outside on a large covered terrace, set at treetop level. We orient the show so that the audience will face us, and, as our backdrop, they will look out onto Kigali, and the hills of Rwanda. Gord would later say that he found this particular backdrop intense while he was performing. This is why i wanted to orient the show this way: could there be a more meaningful backdrop to this particular play?

The tech is going relatively well. Our two Belgians and Judo, the TD from Butare, are here now with gear. One of our dimmer packs doesn't work, but before we get too worried about this, Judo arrives with another dimmer pack. SO - we will have dimmable lights.

I hang around to position chairs so that Rebecca can focus her lights in the right places. I go through sound levels with Guillaume, then crawl back to the hotel, and fall into bed again.

Gastrointestinal problems in Africa. What one doesn't want.

3) I sleep much of the afternoon, then go to Heaven. It's 8:15pm when we arrive. Outside are parked a row of SUVs. This will be a very different crowd than the one we played to in Butare.

Dinner service at the restaurant is slow finishing. Our curtain time is advertised as 8:30, but we know it will be more like 9:30. As diners finish eating, their tables are struck, and rows of chairs are set out. The place is packed to overflowing. There is - as we'd suspected - a large ex-pat audience. I'd guess that just over half the audience is white. But this is also the biggest audience we've faced, so there are many Rwandans there, too.

4) I do the introductory chat in English - Laurette says this audience doesn't need translation. And then we do the show - Volcano's Kigali premiere. Or rather, the actors do the show. I sit in a little room off to the side, listening, sometimes lying on the floor, drinking gatorade and popping charcoal pills.

It goes well. There are some new things to contend with. Because we hung the lights in daylight, Rebecca couldn't set LX levels. So she designs the show on the fly. This woman is a genius. Her lighting looks tremendous. There is occasional traffic noise - the sound of a diesel Land Cruiser starting up, cars passing. Men walk into the courtyard beside the restaurant to talk on their cell phones, not realizing the sound carries onto the stage. I pop out of my wee sick room about three times to ask for quiet. The talkers are very apologetic. There are occasional loud bangs as something hard is dropped on the roof over the patio (a bird dropping something? a tree releasing a nut?). But - all of this seems inconsequential. The audience is focused and responsive. This crowd speaks English fluently, and I get the feeling they are understanding everything.

At the play's end, the applause starts slowly, then builds. This is the response i like - it signals there's been an effect. Some people rise to their feet. The actors get about six bows.

It went well.

5) I emerge for the talkback, with the actors. It is fascinating. The most interesting comments come from the Rwandans who stay. It is clear that they really received the play. One woman - Carole, an actress i met at the US Embassy the night before - speaks of how impossible simplicity is when dealing with genocide: you can't bring back the dead, you can't jail everyone who took part, you can't satisfy the wants of everyone, you can't have answers. She thought the play beautifully captured this complicated reality. Another man who was not in Rwanda during the genocide spoke about his desire to own the pain that his country went through, to make it part of himself. He was fascinated by the way pain worked in the play - and particularly that the Michael Redhill character could travel from pain to pain - from his divorce to the murder of his mother's people in Poland - from a pain he knew, to one that had occurred before his birth. This hit a chord with the young man, who found himself identifying completely with Michael Redhill.

Heaven and America

We vist the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide

Inside the offices of the CNLG

The front gate of our venue in Kigali - Heaven - a wonderful restaurant owned by Americans Josh and Alissa Ruxin

Rehearsal on the terrace of Heaven. Goodness becomes an outdoor theatre experience, for the first time in its performance history.

Rushing from rehearsal to a coffee meeting - I hop on a motorcycle taxi. It's about 60 cents CDN to get from Heaven to the Bourbon Cafe.

Coffee with Gloria Macambo and Pam Acaye. Above, Gloria, the Ugandan-raised Rwandan tries on a Canadian theatre director's Berlin-bought sunglasses in Kigali.

A sumptuous party for us at the US Ambassador's residence. Above, Rwandan co-founder of the Centre for Arts and Culture in Butare, Alice Rwamasirabo, American Carol Tambor, founder of the Best of Edinburgh Award, and one of our benefactors, and US Deputy Chief of Mission, Anne Casper.

Pam Acaye writes at the US Ambasador's residence

Dinner at Heaven. A lovely end to an enormous day.

Thursday, Oct 8

1) We are up early to go meet with Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the head of the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide. This is a meeting set up by Lili Matabishi, who is donating her services as a publicist in Kigali for us. Lili has printed and distributed flyers for us, visited universities, and has contacted embassies. Lili thinks it important that the right Rwandans see Goodness - especially young Rwandans. We are both worried that the crowd we will attract in Kigali may be largely an ex-pat crowd. So Lili is hoping that Jean de Dieu will be taken with the project, and may suggest it to some of his many contacts. Jean de Dieu is a lovely man - himself a survivor, and picked to head up this organization at its founding in 2007. He tells us of their work, we tell him of ours. He promises to do what he can, and says he looks forward to seeing our play. He seems to me to be a very good man.

2) Rehearsal at Heaven. We go through the show in an "acting optional" run, to finesse spacing. I am treated to a range of accents - English, Scottish, and various American drawls. At one point, Gord seems to be possessed by Gary Busey. It is not pretty. Jack does the whole run with his camera - photographing his scene partners. The gremlins have come out, but damn, it's fun.

3) Coffee at the Bourbon Cafe with Pamela Acaye and Gloria Macambo.

4) Off we go to the American Ambassador's house for the reception in our honour. WHAT a party! The yanks are gracious and welcoming and articulate. The Deputy Chief of Mission, Anne Casper, is our host (the Ambassador himself is out of the country). There are delegates from the South African embassy, the German embassy, USAID, the Centres for Disease Control. There are a great many US Embassy staff. There are a great many Rwandan government officials and artists - the Head of the Rwanda Film Festival, a young documentary maker and his subject (a survivor), actors, directors, writers. Jean de Dieu is there, from the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide. It is a high-calibre crowd in a sumptuously appointed estate, with magnificent catering. Canada is represented by a single, very young junior staffer, Karolina Guay. She has only been in Rwanda for a couple of weeks. She looks barely over 25. She is lovely, but I can't help but think that she is a visible metaphor for Canada's commitment to its Artists abroad.

The speeches begin. The guest of honour - Kiki - is unable to attend, as she is in meetings in Butare concerning funding for her festival. In her place is Alice Rwamasirabo. Alice has just returned from Japan, where her husband served as Rwandan ambassador. She was a co-founder of the Centre for Arts and Culture in Butare, where the festival is hosted. She and her husband were responsible for sending Kiki to L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, years ago. She now works for the Culture and Conflict Management Centre. Anne Casper leads off with a wonderful speech about the place of art in international relations. It is heartfelt, articulate, and intelligent. Alice speaks of the role of art in Rwanda. She is grace itself - a shimmering speaker. Compelling, articulate, poetic in her support of Kiki, and the role of art in her country, and the world. I go up (a hard act to follow), and further the theme of how crucial artistic exchange is, since the conversation that peoples can have through art is unique, and is not touched upon by any other sphere, be it politics, finance, development, or journalism. May thanks are given and received. I present Gloria Macambo with a copy of Goodness signed by all of us, and she shrieks in surprise at being so publicly honoured. She gets the warmest hand of the night.

Carol Tambor - whose name graces the "Best of Edinburgh" prize that Goodness won in 2006, speaks last. She and her husband, Kent Lawson, have arranged this reception in conjunction with the US Embassy. Carol and Kent have helped fund our tour, and have flown all the way from New York to Kigali to be at our opening here tomorrow. Carol is also a lovely speaker - a woman whose passion for theatre has shaped her life.

It is an amazing night.

5) We all go the Heaven to eat. The food is superb. So is the conversation.

Au Revoir to Butare

Pamela Acaye and Gloria Magambo bid us farewell. We will catchup with them both again in Kigali.

The drive takes about 3 hours. We pass glorious sights en route, including this market.

Banville snoozes.

Rand and Houët-Brisebois snooze.

Hughes and Francks snooze

Wednesday, Oct 7

Our last morning in Butare, and the drive back to Kigali, where we stop by our venue - Heaven. This is a restaurant in Kigali owned by an American couple, Josh and Alissa Ruxin (http://www.heavenrwanda.com/). We decide how we will orient the show in this large, outdoor patio. We choose to use the view of Kigali and the surrounding hills as out backdrop. It is stunning.

On God, Genocide, and Funding...

The National University of Rwanda Campus

Dr. Silas Lwakabamba, Rector of the University

Tuesday, Oct 6

A busy day. Each day in Rwanda is beginning to feel like an entire week.

1) We have a meeting with the Rector of the University (this is the "president"): Silas Lwakabamba. He has summoned the artists at the festival so he can meet with us, and thank us for coming. This is a good sign, as the University's financial support for the Festival was in doubt. Silas lets us know that we are welcome as Canadians, since it was a Canadian who built this University in 1963. None of us knew that, and, given how beautiful the University is, it makes us proud. Speeches are made, including one by me, thanking the University for its involvement. Our documentary camera captures it all.

2) I walk back from the meeting with an American theatre artist who shocks me by saying that the genocide is always spoken of as "bad bad bad", but she sees the good in it. None of this progress would have happened without the genocide, she asserts. We wouldn't be here without it. No one would have heard of Rwanda. She is a Christian, and has invested a great deal of her energy and spirit in Rwanda - making theatre, and adopting children from here. But I ask her - just to make sure i am understanding her -"Do you think that all this progress is worth one million lives?". She says yes, certainly. These people died for the good of their country. When I dispute that there may be more to it than that, that so much murder is perhaps not a good thing, and shouldn't be construed as such, she asks me, "Is there someone in your life you haven't forgiven?". I leave her at that point. A woman with answers, rather than questions ("I understand how someone would want to kill. Sometimes i want to kill my husband"). I am frightened by such an utter lack of doubt, by such a simplistic equation (things are good after the genocide, therefore the genocide is good). It will haunt me for a long time, this certainty. It is the most dangerous thing I have seen on this trip. When I tell my newfound African friends about this, they are shocked. One asks, "Was there a big African Mama there to to give her a beating?" Layne Coleman raises the point - "Yes, and just look how well genocides do for peoples generally, throughout history."

Kiki and niece.

Ross and Kiki's niece (as photographed by Kiki's daughter!)

Kiki's daughter, Aurore

3) Lunch with Kiki. Kiki invited me to her house to have a chat about the festival's financial woes. She has been feeling tremendous guilt about us being here, without a clear picture of whether or not her own funding will come through. The meeting this morning with the Rector is a good sign, though, and Kiki now thinks it may all come together. I meet her daughter, Aurore, and her niece. Kiki's sister is in the States on a scholarship for a year, so Kiki has become the defacto mom. These children are WONDERFUL!

4) At sunset, we visit an evangelical church, to which we have been invited to listen in on a choir rehearsal. The music is gorgeous. The church is very simple, very poor, and entirely beautiful, filled, as we come to it, with music and faith. The power goes out several times during the practice, and the organist switches seamlessly over to a large drum whenever we are plunged into darkness. The singing doesn't stop. The beauty of this experience is a stark contrast to the earlier Christian, mentioned above. I don't think these parishioners look on the genocide as a good thing. But they are entirely welcoming, and the lead singer has the voice of an angel.

www.iribachoir.fr.gd/Ikaze-murisanga--s-Welcome.htm

5) We see the Monument, by Colleen Wagner, in Kinyarwanda. This is another Canadian play at the festival, directed by Jennifer Capraru, who has formed a theatre company here in Rwanda, called ISOKO (www.isoko-rwanda.org/). The audience - mostly university students - is entirely captured by the play. They laugh, they breathe with the two main performers (Jaqueline Umubyeyi and Jean Paul Uwayezu). I learn that the audience here is vocal when there is no language barrier, and i regret that we cannot give them our play with such directness. Colleen has traveled from Canada to see this production, and we meet for the first time, her and i, after hearing about each other for years, in Butare, Rwanda. Moreover, our new pal, the Ugandan poet, playwright and activist Pamela Acaye, is someone that Colleen had been hoping to track down in Kampala, after hearing that Pam was exactly the person to act as a guide for a project that Colleen is doing in Northern Uganda - interviewing women. They will travel there together in a week's time.

Small world.

Murambi Part Two

The main building at Murambi.

The Murambi Memorial Centre

This woman was the keeper of the keys at the centre. She would unlock all the doors to the rooms housing the bodies as we approached.

Laurette, Tara and Lili walk together back towards the main building.

Monday Oct. 5, later the same day...

1) After the drive from Butare through hills and villages, past people out walking on the roads, pushing bicycles laden with goods, walking with backpacks, and baskets and bundles of sticks balanced on heads, we arrive at the village of Murambi, and the genocide memorial site.

We climb out of our packed van, and mill around in front of a large building. High elevation. Stunning scenery. A place where 50,000 people were murdered.

We meet our guide, Francois, and he tells us the story of the place. We then walk through rooms full of corpses preserved in lime. Room after room after room. One room was entirely children. I remember one baby in particular. Chubby legs. The smell. Emaciated, sculptural corpses, all white, due to the lime. Little pellets scattered on the bodies to keep the smell somewhat in check. Many rooms, but still only a small fraction of the tens of thousands murdered here. It is almost too much to bear.

And outside, children playing and laughing in the nearby farms.

It's hard to know whether to post photos of the corpses. Francois encouraged us to take pictures - he wants the world to take note. This is perhaps the most manageable image of the very few i took. It was difficult to point a camera at these bodies.

Some boys who followed us around the site, and wanted us to give them "Bics". I had a spare pen i gave to one. The others had to make do with 100 franc coins. There were many children playing close by.

This trip is enormous. I am hearing now from the Rwandans we are working with about their own family histories. Gloria, the festival organizer, walked to Uganda with her grandmother during the genocide as a ten year old. Laurette, our translator, moved back from Burundi weeks after the genocide ended and, as an eleven year old, discovered corpses in buildings, on the streets. Eleven years old, surrounded by corpses.

And yet the country is beautiful and vibrant and full of people with spirit and energy - like Gloria and Laurette. I may be imagining it, but there is a feeling of damage, of deadness, buried somewhere alongside the forward momentum. The inescapable awareness of what has happened, coupled with the collective striding forward, the undeniable energy, beauty in the people. It is extraordinary, and contradictory, and entirely outside my experience.

The guide at the genocide memorial, Francois, had lost his entire family here. Many thousands of corpses had been exhumed from the mass graves the murderers threw them in, but, given their condition, Francois could not identify any of his own family. Is THIS skull his mother's? His child's? Is that the body of a loved one? He doesn't know. He never will. He said this is a hard job, yet it also gives him some peace to be working here. The place is remote and unkempt - they have so little money for upkeep. It is raw, and, as such, is a step closer to the reality of genocide than even Auschwitz - the only other place i've been that has a similar feeling.

Because there are so many bodies here. With bits of hair, and clothing, twisted in death, and mutilated by machetes and bullets. One doesn't need much imagination to know what happened here. You can smell the death.

Francois said to us that we must all tell those we are closest with about this place.

And so. Murambi. One of the most beautiful places i've been. An unfinished technical school to which Tutsis were lured with the promise of shelter, so as better to kill them. 50,000 murdered - killed by paratroopers with guns, by militias, and then - for those who ran - by ordinary citizens with machetes and hoes and axes. A site occupied by French troops (Operation Turquoise) as the Hutu extremists began their escape from the RPF. The French came at the end of June, 1994. The genocide ran through April. This is a site where French troops played volleyball beside the mass graves. Did the soldiers know? France asserts they were preventing further violence. Rwanda asserts that France actively armed the Hutus, and then provided the killers safe passage out of the country. Francois's condemnation of France's complicity with the murderers is complete. He, for one, has reached his conclusion. So has Rwanda - the teaching of French has been removed from the school curriculum, and Rwanda has severed all ties with France.

A room with clothing taken from the exhumed corpses. Most of the corpses have been reinterred elsewhere on the site, with proper burial rites.

Laurette walks by herself near the memorial site. Soon after i took this picture, she would tell Lili and I her own family's story. Her grandparents were from very close to Murambi. They left Rwanda after the killings in 1959. She and her mother were born in Burundi, and moved back weeks after the 1994 genocide. This was her first visit to this site.

2) While still at Murambi, I get a phone call from As it Happens, the CBC radio program. They want to interview me later today. Oddly, it is while talking to the producer in Toronto that I begin to cry.

3) Back on Butare that evening, i am interviewed by Carol Off. The show is broadcast the next day, Tuesday, Oct 6. To listen to what i said, go to http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/asithappens/20091006-aih-3.wmv. My bit begins about 5 minutes in.

Murambi Part One

Monday, Oct 5.

A day off. We travel to Murambi, a genocide memorial in the Southern Province, about a 35 minute drive from Butare. The drive is spectacular. Here are some images - from before we visit the site:

In the minivan, as we set off.

On the road to Murambi

John Westhauser and i exchange image capture before we leave for Murambi.

The roads in Rwanda are covered with people walking. The road to Murambi is no exception. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa.

Laurette in the van before we leave Butare.

Supercalafragilistic Tara Hughes.

A wee Rwandan pig living its wee Rwandan pig life.

A woman walking on the road to Murambi

A glimpse of the countryside of southern Rwanda