A Song for Auma
- Form
- Theatre and audio
- Year
- 2023 – ongoing
- Roles
- Writer-director
- Shown at
- First reading — SPIELART Festival, Munich, 2023
- Status
- In rewrites — seeking collaborators, particularly professionals in binaural sound design
A Song for Auma (previously A Song for Alice) is a work of fiction, not a biography, and not a faithful account of any real person's life. It takes its title, and its provocation, from Alice Auma, the woman remembered by the world as Alice Lakwena, the Ugandan rebel leader who led the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces. From there, the piece departs.
What interests me isn't the historical record but the impossible knot at its centre: spiritual conviction and political catastrophe occupying the same body at once. Conceived as an immersive temple-concept piece, A Song for Auma invents its own cosmology in conversation with, not in service of, Acholi spiritual frameworks, refusing the "madness" or "manipulation" readings that flatten Lakwena in most outside accounts.
Developed in residence at Villa Waldberta (2023) and presented as a curated reading, Figures of Power, with Netzwerk Münchner Theatertexter*innen (NMT), the piece has since undergone structural revision to sharpen its style and technique for performance. Sound and performance remain what I'm protecting most carefully in development. They're what let invented material hold a real, contemplative weight rather than either sensationalise or claim an authority it doesn't have.
Currently seeking co-production partners and dramaturgical collaborators.
Photographs — Stella Traub
Residency writing
A Song for Alice
A three-part essay series written in residence at Villa Waldberta, under the work's earlier title, and published by SPIELART Festival Munich.
“To find yourself in a new place means, in part, to answer yes to a call.”
— Part one
- Part oneNew Places and Finding GroundOn following a call, and how leaving for new places shapes a text.SPIELART(opens SPIELART in a new tab)
- Part twoNew Spaces and Finding GroundReflections on “The Journey to Paraa”, the fable of Alice Auma’s beginnings as told by her father, Severino.SPIELART(opens SPIELART in a new tab)
- Part threeNew Spaces and Finding GroundSPIELART(opens SPIELART in a new tab)
Cast & creative team
- Text
- Gisemba Ursula
- Direction
- Demjan Duran
- Curation & dramaturgy
- Theresa Seraphin
- Translation of the surtitles
- A SOLDIER’S LAMENT by Charlotte Thießen
- Performers
- Virginia Olivia Obiakor, Janet Kyeyune, Gwen Njibamum