Creative Team

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Director, Playwright & Producer

ADONG Lucy Judith

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Director, Playwright & Producer

An alumna of Sundance Theater Lab, Royal Court Theatre International Playwrights Residency and Renowned Hollywood Director, Mira Nair’s Maisha Film Lab currently living in her home country Uganda, ADONG is a Theater/Film Creative Director, Writer & Producer, who creates captivating plays and films that provoke and promote dialogue on social issues affecting underprivileged groups.

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She is a 2015 graduate of Temple University MFA Film and Media Arts, under the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship 2012, where she also took classes in MFA Theatre Directing and Playwriting. She also taught classes in International Cinema and Screenwriting. She won the Margaret McNamara Memory Fund Education Grant USA/Canada 2014 and was voted among the WHO IS WHO in American Universities and Colleges 2015.

Adong also holds a B.A (Arts), Subjects-Luo Language, Literature and Drama and a Diploma in Music, Dance and Drama, both of Makerere University’s Department of Performing Arts and Film, where she currently Lectures courses in Creative Writing, Directing and Producing.

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Blood is Adong 4th directing project. June-August 2016, she directed the powerful production of Ga-AD! at the Uganda National Theatre. In 2015, she made her Theatre Directing debut on the powerful Acholi Production of her renowned play, Silent Voices, which toured Gulu, Kitgum, Lira and Kampala. She also directed the Refresher Rehearsals of the English Production of the same play as powerful directed by New York based Director, Dennis Hilton-Reid in 2012. Adong has also directed a powerful 50mins Film, Right Song, Wrong C(h)ord (2016), her MFA Thesis Film that explores Racism in the USA through the love story of a young Ugandan woman and a young Caucasian American man, based on her own experience in the Metropolitan City of Philadelphia, where she lived for three years while pursuing Graduate Film Studies.

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Play titles to her name includes: Silent Voices (Justice for War Crime Victims in Northern Uganda), Just Me, You and THE SILENCE (Gay Rights Struggle in Uganda), Ga-AD (Uganda’s Pentecostal Church Religious Politics), A Time to Celebrate (Child Sacrifice Practices in Uganda), Holy Maria (A 10mins play on Social Media Deception that featured at Zimbabwe International Arts Festival) and Blood ( Modern Day Adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs that featured at 48 Hours in Harlem, a 10mins play writing and production challenge within 48 hours hosted by the OBIE Award-Winning Harlem 9 and the National Black Theatre, New York.

Her plays have been presented in different theatres in New York, London, Toronto and Chicago and/or has been/is being studied at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, New York University and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hills, where she has also been invited as a Visiting Artist.

 

“… This is an important piece that deserves to be heard and we are pleased to be providing an opportunity for audiences to connect with its message”, Kevin Spacey, Oscar Award-Winning actor and Artistic Director of the Old Vic Theatre in London, on Adong’s play Just Me, You and THE SILENCE that he hosted to a 1, 000+ gala audience in November 2012.

 

Adong is also a Published Writer by MacMillan and Fountain Publishers and has worked as a Professional Acholi-English/English-Acholi Translator and Interpreter for many Organizations and Companies including the Commonwealth Secretariat Election Observers (2006), The International Criminal Courts and United Nations Children Education Funds (UNICF) among others.

 

Before going to Graduate Film School in the USA, Adong worked on a number of Film, Television and Radio Drama Projects in Uganda, Kenya and South Sudan among which includes among others: as Screenwriter, Lost Dreams (Land Mines Awareness Film by Great Lakes Film Production Ltd/Handicap International, Uganda, 2011), Creator and Writer, The Nurse Mildred Radio Drama (a 24-Episodes Radio Drama Series on Family Planning and HIV by John Hopkins University Health Department 2011), Staff Screenwriter, The Agency (M-NET Hour Long Original Television Drama Series Set in Nairobi, Kenya 2009) and Creator and Writer, River Yei Junction (a 13-Episodes Radio Drama Series on Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law by Resource Centre for Civil Leadership in Yei, South Sudan 2008).

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Co-Producer & Production Manager

AKELLO Gloria

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Akello started her Theatre Production career as the Production Assistant for Silent Voice 2012 Production and due to her excellent managerial skills became the Production Manager for Dwon Ma Peke (Silent Voices Acholi Production 2015) from which Achiro P. Olwoch noticed her managerial skills and offered her the same position on the production of the documentary film, My prison Diary by Achiro Media Productions 2015.

 

She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Adult and Community Education from Makerere University where she was the Deputy in charge of academics at her college. She was the president of the Education for sustainable Development (ESD) club-A United Nations initiated project. She was also part of the youth selected to present at the United Nations Launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). Akello has made several other presentations on Sustainability and Environmental Protection which she is very passionate about.  She is the co-founder of the Ayaa Lehua Girls’ Scholarship Program; a scholarship for girls from disadvantaged families in Northern Uganda and volunteers as a translator for different causes.

 

Akello, who is also an aspiring Writer and Poet, loves to make sure that things run smoothly so as the Production Manager of Silent Voices Uganda, she is in her element. 

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Play Synopsis

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A lucky facebook accident sends Ann-Marie, wife to Pastor John Ssemana on an unforgettable adventure with her husband’s mistress, Princess Alicious.

 

Does motherhood take away womanliness? “Holy Maria” explores how men seem to look at their wives as the mother of their children not partners with whom to explore each other’s sexual fantasies and how women’s problems

are, sometimes women.

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Play Inspiration and Journey

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In 2013, the Short + Sweet Theatre Festival Zimbabwe made a call for 10 minutes plays that explore how social media has affected our lives.

Playwright Adong responded to the call with this hilarious comedy, “Holy Maria”, which was selected and participated in the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) and directed by renowned Zimbabwean Director, Gamu Patience Tawengwa, who Ms. Adong had dreamed of collaborating with for years.

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Holy Maria has been developed to a 30 minutes play that is now set to have its Uganda Premiere at the National Theatre of Uganda back-to-back with “Blood”, another 30 minutes play showing January 27th, 28th and 29th 2017.

Holy Maria

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