Friday Oct 2nd - Opening in Butare

Early morning in Butare - Jack & Layne seem to rise with the sun.  They return from exploration walks just as the rest of us crawl out of our mosquito nets and emerge blinking into the sunlit courtyard of the Motel Mont Huye in search of coffee.

Breakfast is coffee and fresh-baked white bread.  A plain omelette costs 400 francs (about 50cents), and goes down well with chunks of fresh avocado purchased from the women we find in town walking along the street with avocados in baskets balanced on their heads (also 50 cents).

The film crew once again, like they did yesterday, leaves for the theatre before all of the actors.  Gord is pulling double-duty, but today we convince him to take the morning off while John and Tyler cover the preparations at the theatre.  He has a big job to do in the show, and it will be a long day.  Our crew is pulling long days - yesterday at the theatre, today again at the theatre.

The actors are called for noon, and most walk to the University.  There is a wide-spreading tree with the most fragrant smell just outside the theatre, and we gather below it for notes from Ross, taken during our last Toronto show.

The film crew follows our every move - these guys are tireless.

After notes, we are taken into the space for a walk-through, and down into the basement to our dressing room.  In the basement, in a large open space, we rehearse sections from the play with Ross, for notes and adjustments. The Technicians continue to focus lights and build cues upstairs.  The lighting board is not recording cues, and until the Belgian technicians return from their lunch break, all is chaos.  They fix it just before as the actors arrive on stage for a run/cue-to-cue. 

We barrel through the play from cue to cue, with unfamiliar chairs, dealing with the metal trap and its uneven edges.  The curtains are closed and the audience is on stage with the actors on three sides.  Ross/Rick/Guillaume carried 70 chairs from the University library to the theatre in the blistering sun of noon-time.  Behind the actors is the high brick wall back of the building.  It feels like a prison. 

At 4:30 pm we begin a run with the festival's artistic director, Odile "Kiki" Gakire Katesein attendance, with Rebecca building cues as we work, and only get through Act One.  The actors are released for dinner, and the tech crew stays building cues.  We decamp tout de suite to the Ibis Hotel for dinner - I offer to order food for Ross & Rick & Rebecca so that when they arrive, their dinner is waiting for them.  We offer to bring samosas for our stage manager Guillaume, who is being a hero and staying at the space to get the job done for tonite.

Wolf down food.  Whip to the theatre.  Some walk, some taxi. Lili Francks, Jack Nicholsen, & I take a taxi, a long white van filled to capacity with people. For 100 francs, we ride among Rwandans to the University gates, and walk up the long driveway to the Auditorium.

We arrive for our 7:30 pm call on the run from the restaurant and do songs in the dressing room. Fights on stage.  We share a bathroom in the dressing room - there is no toilet seat.  I am learning to squat in mid-air and to ignore the fact that everyone else can hear me.  Moods vascillate from stoic to hysterical.  The film crew is with us as we wait in the basement.  I am terrified but the feeling of togetherness is palpable.  Eventually we make our way upstairs to wait in the theatre.

At 8:30 pm there are only 6 people in the house.  We wait.  By 9:10 pm we have about 40 people and we begin.

I remember the intensity of this performance, the clarity of my fellow performers - articulation is bumped up but more than that, there is a sense of the need to communicate.  We do not know if the audience understands - there is scattered & sporadic laughter from some of the Festival attendees, and silence from the rest of the house. 

One whole side leaves at intermission and we come back to empty seats on stage left, a sea of empty seats.  The performers push on, dauntless, clear, keenly focussed on doing their best for these people, here, this night.  Amy Rutherford's partner, Stephane, sits by the door to explain/deny entry (& invite back for tomorrow's show) for latecomers who are still arriving even after the late start.

The talkback afterwards, in costume.  All through the evening I have looked at my colleagues and friends and thought - FELT - only one phrase ripple through my mind, "Oh! Brave!"  As they speak about the importance of what they do, and how they do it, why they do it, I am glad to be in such good (and thoughtful, dedicated) company. 

Volcano's fixer, Laurette Kabanyana, translates into Kinyarwandan, & Guillaume translates into French. There is remarkable feedback from some audience members, silence from others.  Even with the synopsis in Kinyarwandan & French, did they understand? What do they think?

• Hearing from Gloria about how the play helps her to reconcile what happened to her family during the Genocide is a big moment. 
• Pamela Acaye, a poet and documentarian from Uganda, says that she identifies with each character's story, pointing to each of us in turn.  She comes to Amy and says she does not identify with or understand Julia Todd - and this is a conversation she needs to have with herself.  I will never forget this gentle turn of phrase which insists on personal responsibility in the face of the unknown. 
• Lilliane - a fellow performer whom we will also come to know during our time here - speaks of the universality of this story, it is a shared story, a human story.  Genocide. 

I leave wondering if we will hear from Rwandans before we leave as to how the feel about this play, about us.

We need this for the film, and we need it for ourselves as artists.  When will we get it? Will we get it? Is it selfish to ask?  Possibly.

Gloria has procured a massive bus from the University, a gift from the President of Rwanda, and we pile onto it to return to the Hotel to decompress with beer and talks with our new friends from the Festival.  It is already 12:30 am.

I feel inadequate expressing the magnitude of this evening.  It is one of the biggest - beyond all previous experience - days of my life.  It requires beer and music on Rick Banville's porch at the Mont Huye, songs from our new friends and from Jack & Rick & Sammy (a Rwandan musician we will also come to know and love).  It is a magical evening which ends at 4:30 am after we wake our neighbors, who gently ask us to cease and desist.

We discover, late into the evening, that tomorrow we have two shows - a matinee has been added.  There has been little publicity and we don't know if anyone will be there for the matinee.  This group is up for it - what are we here for if not to perform? We will be there - we will see what happens.

Post by Tara