Silent Voices Uganda

Ga-AD!

Play Synopsis

“Ga-AD!” is a bold and bawdy take on Pentecostal evangelism and the so-called prosperity gospel and the place of women in this prosperity.

Faith is dead.

At least as far as she knows, Faith, a loyal servant of God, has departed the world of the living and entered into the After-Life.

The casualty of a gruesome road accident in the heart of chaotic Kampala-Jinja Highway, Faith’s spirit leaves its battered body, but her memories of Life linger, raw and painful.

Is this Heaven or is it Hell?

To get the answers she still craves, Faith must not only understand where she has come to; she must also understand where she has come from.

From her new vantage, Faith must look back at her Life on earth and struggle to understand it – the dubious morality, the unnecessary pain and suffering, and her part in it. Could she have done differently or better? Or, was she just the victim of a very bad joke, called Life? Faith begins an exploration of Ministry on earth, beginning with the cruel, money-grabbing sex-craze Apostle Jeremiah who has used his church to prey on followers like Faith.

Can Faith restore balance to a world corrupted by men? Of megalomaniac pastors, their desperate trophy wives, manipulative side dishes, randy brethren, naive sisters-in-Christ, Ga-AD is a poignant play-poetry hybrid that does not offer easy solutions. But it shakes the roots of our beliefs and does not shirk the questions of human existence.

“Ga-AD!” is our 2016 Theatre Production Apprenticeship. This means that it is the play that we used to train apprentices in our on-the-job hands-on training.

Play Inspiration and Journey

Ga-AD! was inspired by a poem that Ugandan poet and founding director of the Babishai Niwe Poetry Award, NAMBOZO Beverley Nsengiyunva shared on facebook in 2013. Ugandan Playwright Adong Lucy Judith saw the poem on facebook while in graduate film school at Temple University in Philadephia, USA and was moved by it. Adong reached out to Beverley with an idea to write a play inspired by the poem. Beverley was open to the collaboration and shared with Adong a collection of poems she wrote based on research in Kampala Pentecostal Churches. After reading these inspiring poems, Adong decided she didn’t want to lose the richness of the poems, hence the idea for an Experimental Play-Poetry Hybrid Theatre, an hybrid audiences have continued to enjoy immensely wherever the play has been showcased.