Thursday, March 21, 2013

Play shut down by Ugandan authorities to premiere in DC production overseen by Nebraska theater professor



NOTE: The Kickstarter funding goal referred to in the video has already been met.

Last November, Uganda's "Ministry of Ethics" stormed the National Theater in Kampala to shut down a production of The River and the Mountain, a play with a gay character, and arrested its producer, David Cecil.
     After hearing about the play's suppression, NU theater professor Sarah Imes Broden produced a performance of the play in Lincoln and will stage an East Coast premiere of the work as a series of readings and talkbacks March 21-24 in Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC which will involve discussion of the gay rights situation in Uganda in light of efforts to pass a "Kill the Gays" bill.
     Joel Atiku Prynce, one of Uganda's highest-profile actors, will reprise his role as Samson, the play's gay protagonist, and Beau Hopkins, the playwright of The River and the Mountain, will join him for the talkbacks.

''He'll arrive here sometime on Tuesday and he'll be taken straight to rehearsal,'' Borden explained March 15. It was a feat that pulled even more players into the conflict. With a tabloid-driven smear campaign targeting Prynce in Uganda, he used his own resources to pay for Interpol to clear him of any wrongdoing.
     Meanwhile, the offices of three congressmen - Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) – worked to expedite Prynce's visa through the Department of Homeland Security.


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