The opening night and after

Breaking the Silence the Rwandan version or: ‘you’re not alone’  has got its blessings! Some 600 people visited the two first performances and have approved its right to be. The representative of director Carole Karemera, who couldn't be there during opening night, told us Ishyo Arts Centre had never seen such crowds in its 240 seats theatre. A few hours before the opening at 6pm, (due to the commemoration period our performances start early, so people are home early) we got a call that Rwandan television prepared to live broadcast our opening night. After they had cancelled their plans to broadcast the performance due to other obligations in this week of commemoration, we decided to let go all possible protests and only made sure they would plug the sound directly in our system.

So George has been witnessing the opening night walking to and from the OB van, while I was sitting next to La Benevolencija´s intern Elie who was handling the surtitles without really knowing the show. We have adapted the strong improvisational mood that is around us.

The theatre was packed with a Rwandan audience, including one of Benevolencija’s grassroot groups. Both somewhat similar to our performances in Cambodia, with children sitting in the front  and some murmuring in the back from people who explained what was happening on stage to those who could not see. Meanwhile one could feel the focussed attention of everybody. Each silence on stage was answered by a total silence in the audience.  And afterwards everyone stayed for the question and answer. Here we could feel the real difference. A difference one could easily mistake as a cultural difference. We have by now learned to understand this as a difference caused by the opposite governmental policy after genocide. While Cambodian government, till now, is frustrating the open debate on genocide and its juridical aftermath, Kagame has been provoking every citizen to speak up during the gacaca’s. He has found it necessary to dictate strict rules to the debate – like to forbid to speak about Tutsi’s and Hutu’s and to make jokes about the genocide – but ‘breaking the silence’ is not our main objective in Rwanda. The audience did speak up and  proved to be very interested in the history of the Cambodians – and how it does and does not mirror their own experiences.

On the day of our second performance Frans Makken, the Dutch Ambassador in Kigali, offered the whole cast and crew a lunch at his residency. With his warm welcome and bright vision he managed to make anyone feel special and triggered the most extensive exchange of ideas about the policies and realities in both countries we’ve had up till then. Everybody participated: Rwandans, Cambodians, Dutch. The same evening he visited the performance, together with a vast part of his staff. Also the Rwandan Minister of Health was part of the audience.