(Original post date: Sunday, 08 December 2013 21:47 Written by LINDSEY KUKUNDA)
The more I attend theatrical and dramatic shows, the more I learn that theatre, fun as it may be to cater to the less serious, is actually a reflection of our society today.
When I woke up last Friday morning and learnt that Nelson Mandela had finally passed on (what…we were all thinking about it!) the strangest thing came to mind; the musical I had attended the night before at Theatre La Bonita titled Black or White, a three-hour special performance of Michael Jackson’s famous hits by the Ugandan palette, courtesy of AMK Productions.
I thought of Mandela because this was a man whose capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation baffles me to this day. And AMK made me think of this Ugandan style.
When they performed Heal the World, screens on either side of the stage ran images of locally famous enemies hanging out. Bobi Wine, Chameleone and Bebe Cool were together, smiling. Erias Lukwago and Jennifer Musisi were leaning together at a table, swords put away. Besigye and Museveni were still friends!
Even though the audience was laughing, I really wished for the good old days when these people weren’t quite venomous towards each other. This was further established when they performed a dance routine to the very political song They Don’t Really Care About Us.
The screens almost broke down with all the evidence of human rights abuses in Uganda. Walk-to-work riots, tear gas, and poverty enhanced by corruption, to keep it short. The show wasn’t all political though – mostly, entertainment was the correct order of things!
They performed African songs inspired by Michael Jackson. Of course, P-Square’s Personally had to be done, and well-done it was. Afterwards, the emcee Lexus asked the audience if they could get on their feet and pretend to be in a discotheque for ten minutes. I almost broke all my dancing bones.
AMK’s choreography was also ‘on-point’. They spiced the dance routine up by having a lady, instead of a man, dressed in the whole Michael Jackson leather get-up, and asking the gang around her, ‘Who’s bad?’ The gang kept replying ‘You’re bad. You’re black. You’re Bad Black!’
Source: observer / LINDSEY KUKUNDA / MJ-Upbeat.com
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