Kigali, March 19

Yesterdaynight at 19.10 local time we arrived at Kigali Airport. We - Annemarie Prins, Fer Smidt and Nan van Houte – came here to restage the performance Breaking the Silence for Rwanda. Within three weeks the Rwandese people will commemorate the genocide of 1994, those horrible 3 months , starting on April 7,  in which the so-called Hutu Power managed to get the Hutu’s kill (and almost extinct) the local Tutsi’s. Breaking the Silence, dealing with Cambodia’s genocide, will be part of the program

As some of you may know Breaking the Silence, written and directed by Annemarie Prins,  has been conceived in 2009, based on a serial of interviews with survivors of the Pol Pot regime. Four actresses, survivors  themselves, play seven scenes dealing with the effects of the genocide on the daily life of the Cambodians now – both the victims and the former Khmer Rouge. Three guys of the next generation – a musician, singer and a dancer – escort them on stage. After two succesfull tours on a mobile stage through the Cambodian provinces and a radio-play Breaking the Silence now enters a new phase. Thanks to Radio la Benevolencija HTF – a Dutch NGO in the Great Lake District, harnassing people against hate speech. When their director, George Weiss watched a dvd of our performance, he recognised many similarities in the aftermath of two genocides, twenty years apart, on two different continent with very different triggers. In the discussion that followed we identified the common feeling underlining this:  the feeling of being singled out as a doomed country. Our conclusion: it would be great to bring Breaking the Silence to Rwanda and make them meet.

So here we are. Thanks to our sponsors, Prince Claus Fund, Soros Foundation, Dutch Embassy, Goethe Institut and the generous donations of our friends. Months of intense communciation between our Cambodian producer Amrita Performing Arts from Pnom Penh, the offices of Radio La Benevolencija both in Amsterdam and Kigali  start to materialize. Today was our audition day. Eight Rwandese actors had been identified and invited. We saw a broad variety of young talented and less talented actors and singers and could make a wonderfull pick. Wesly and Gratien (everybody here has a French or English name and a Kinyarwandean one) both very skilled and charming actors, will enforce the Cambodian cast and be our ‘mediators’, commenting from the stage in order to make the play accessible for a Rwandese audience without sub- or surtitling. First day has been a succesfull one. Good actors, that’s what one needs. 

NvH