Untold stories of Rwanda
Dumisani Ncube | Friday September 16, 2016 16:19
Last Tuesday the Maitisong Theatre saw theatre ensemble Mama Theatre staging Shuttered Dreams, a play that depicted how the Tutsi minority suffered from military and torture attacks.
Shuttered Dreams was centred on Domitille Juliet Nyamwasa, played by female rapper Tuelo ‘Nippy’ Setume and the ruthless Corporal Faustin Ndasingwa, a Hutu extremist soldier from the Rwandan Armed Forces played by Thomas Mpoeleng.
Nyamwasa, a wife to one of the most wanted Tutsi journalists, Laurent Jackson Nyamwasa, is captured by the Hutu troops while she is on the run. She is then blackmailed, interrogated and tortured by Ndasingwa to reveal where other Tutsi revolutionists are based.
While being interrogated, Nyamwasa is given a task to scrub off the blood spilt on the floor due to the massacres that were taking place at the army base. The Corporal who referred to Tutsi as cockroaches is seen coming every now and then on stage to wash the blood from his big machete.
While cleaning the blood she is continuously beaten up, kicked and given death threats by the Corporal, who is interested in knowing about her husband’s whereabouts. However she is also clueless of where her political journalist husband was.
This goes on until the Corporal sends his troops to search Nyamwasa’s house and kill her children. The troops only bring Nyamwasa’s 10-months-old son who is used as a bait for her to expose other Tutsi activists.
Upon revealing all of them to Ndasingwa, she is freed. As she walks out holding her baby, Ndasingwa slowly removes a rifle from his locker, shoots Nyamwasa and then kills the baby by smashing its head using the back of his rifle.
Despite being a two-person play, the two actors gave some strong stage presence. The professional acting made everything look real, especially when the Corporal kicked Nyamwasa on the head. The set up was amazing as they turned the Maitisong Theatre stage into a military war room, which had radios, guns, machetes and a notice board bearing pictures of Tutsis on the hit list that should be gunned down.
During the play, the Corporal would be seen removing the pictures one-by-one as a demonstration that his troops would have killed that particular person.
The sound and light effects related to the themes and storyline. A notable moment was when Nyamwasa was writing down names of her fellow Tutsi activists to an emotion-filled soundtrack with red lighting beaming a pool of blood on the stage’s floor.
About 800,000 people were slaughtered in just 100 days during the Rwanda genocide. The play shows how people suffered during the period of struggle.