Marriage tales dramatised
L-R: Esther Tebandeke, Samuel Tebandeke, Deborah Kashugi and Tony Muwangala in a scene in the play. PHOTO BY MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI
What you need to know:
Through the play Marriage Chronicles, many a life of married couples is reflected on stage
It is night time in the bedroom of a couple aspiring to join the middle class, John, 45, is reading the back sports page of yesterday’s newspaper as he reclines in bed. Maggie, his wife, 43, enters the bedroom and walks over the bed as she glances at John.
She picks up a copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen from a pile of novels on the bedside table, which include Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, and Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L.James.
She sits on the bed and then gets under the covers. She opens the first page of the novel to read. Before long, she starts to giggle. John looks at her questioningly.
Those were the first scenes in the play dubbed Marriage Chronicles by Samuel Tebandeke, under the New Play Wrights Network that is organised by Theatre Factory.
Last Friday evening, they performed the play, which marked the third edition of the initiative at the National Theatre where they left the guests in applause over the skillfulness and mastery of how they exhibited the play. The actors had mastered the script and perfected the pieces.
The two-man performance by Esther Tebandeke and Tonny Muwangala would be termed as a great step for Uganda’s poetry due to its professionalism. They exhibited the play that concentrated mainly on relationships, marriage and change of behaviours from partners when they find out that one of them is cheating.
The 50-minute play was filled with humour and sarcasm with a useful facilitation to guests so that they would make mental reading and turn the pages in their own reality.
Deborah Kashugi, the director of the play, says they wanted to deliver their message through souls. That is why they opted to reading the play than turning it into another delivery art form like a movie, which would have killed the dynamism of the message.
ABOUT THE NEW PLAYWRIGHTS NETWORK
The project is an initiative by Theatre Factory created to deliver messages through listening, with special appeals of fantasy, various characters and offer a better sound and visual experience. It aims at entertaining audiences by engaging them mentally and psychologically through social messages.
