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Play Inspiration and Journey

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Developed as part of 48 Hours in Harlem (2014), an annual project created and run by Harlem 9 in collaboration with the National Black Theater, New York, Blood is Adong’s contemporary impression of Lorraine Hansberry’s play Les Blancs.

48 Hours in Harlem brings together contemporary 6 Black Playwrights, 6 Black Directors and 18 Black actors/actresses randomly teaming them up into groups of 5 (playwright, director and 3 actors) with the one challenge to each team member to play his/her role to write a 10 minutes play adaptation of a randomly selected classical feature length play, rehearse and stage a full production of the play in 48 Hours starting on a Friday 9pm and ending on a Sunday 9pm. And there are rules!

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Ms. Adong randomly chose Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry most known for her play A Raisin in the Sun. In Les Blancs, set in a fictional African City, Lorraine Hansberry tackles the struggle of a black intellectual, Tshembe, who has been living in Europe and returns to Africa for the funeral of his father, founder of a resistance movement against colonial rule and Tshembe must decide whether to get involved in the insurgency.

Blood tackles the struggle of black people to survive White Supremacy both in the USA and Africa while exposing White American hypocrisy through the journey of a White American Savior journalist forced to confront his own part in America’s racism when he comes down to an African City to investigate the murder of a young gay black boy.

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One of the shocking things for the playwright was the discovery of how little she and black people on the African continent know about the racism still suffered by African-Americans in the USA. Slavery and racism always seemed presented as a historical event long forgotten. This is made worst by the fact that American history is not taught in Uganda and most African countries.

Blood is a 10 minutes play that aspires to share a slice of the African-American racism plight with Ugandan/East African and international audiences through the space provided by Kampala International Theatre Festival 2016.

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“Blood” has been developed to a 30 minutes play that aspires to share a slice of the African-American racism plight with Ugandan/East African and international audiences in its Uganda Premiere at the National Theatre of Uganda back-to-back with “Holy Maria”