Ubumuntu Festival of Humanity

Co-exhibitors:

Director: Ruwanthie de Chicker

Actor: Akalanka Prabhashwars

Actor: Nadie Kammallaweera

Artist/Animator: Ian Gouldstone

Sound Artists/Composers: John Avery & Ron Wright

Lights Operator: Megan Lang

Production Coordinator (Festival): Innocent Munyashuri

The 2019 Ubumuntu Arts Festival soared above all its predecessors, challenging us with profound questions: “What if the walls you build for others today become your own downfall tomorrow?” and “What if the walls we live in are built on illusions?”

The performances delved into the role of each person in dismantling human barriers, both seen and unseen—barriers of ethnicity, language, religion, social status, and the “wall within”—the one in our minds.

David and Ru presented their new production, Mother Wall, at the Ubumuntu Festival of Humanity in Kigali, Rwanda. The play was a collaboration with the actors Nadie Kammallaweera and Akalanka Prabharshawa from Stages, the visual artist Ian Gouldstone and the composer Ranil Goonawardena. The project was developed with support from Piumi Wijesundara and Nipuni Sharadha.

The production charts the obsolescence of a great fortification, the decay of the ideology that provoked its manifestation and the disillusionment of its defenders. Mother Wall follows last year’s production, Thought Curfew, as the second part of a visual and performing art trilogy allegorically considering constructs of division and fear.

The project has been produced by Empathy & Risk and realised with support from the Global Challenge Research Fund and Sheffield Hallam University’s Art and Design Research Centre.