Abana b’amazi
(The Children of Amazi)
Small Citizens
Bujumbura | Brüssel | Goma | Kigali | Nairobi
Categories
Abana b’amazi
(The Children of Amazi)
Small Citizens
Bujumbura | Brüssel | Goma | Kigali | Nairobi
Categories
Where the Great Lakes once were, there is now drought. Lakes, rivers, streams – everything dried out overnight. Even the water tank on stage. What happened? ‘Abana b’amazi’ (The Children of Amazi) is an adventure-packed play for young audiences that has been developed through cross-border collaboration between East African theater practitioners. It deals with the vital resource water and the circumstances and consequences of its disappearance in a humorous and gripping story about the power of sticking together. Using interactive performance, songs and a range of theatrical languages, the performers from Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo present a global story about water, whose secret lies in Africa. Can this story still end well?
Photo: ©Hubert Amiel
About the Artist(s)
The project Small Citizens is a transnational collaboration between theatre practitioners from the African Great Lakes region. It was developed as a joint initiative by the Ishyo Arts Centre in Kigali and the Théâtre du Papyrus in Brussels, and is committed to establishing an international theater network in East Africa to reimagine and deliver theater for young audiences across national and linguistic borders. The collectively devised stage play ‘Abana b’amazi’ (The Children of Amazi) is based on an idea by the Burundian theater artist and activist Rivardo Niyónīzígiye.