Where Are Uganda S Salingers And Harpers
Danny Kajura’s Simple Minds. Where are our Lee Harpers or J.D Salingers?
A fortnight ago I was honored to attend the Pantomime of the Kampala Amateur Dramatics society’s Treasure Island at the National Theatre. To purport that Robert Louis Stevenson would ever envision his riveting classic mould into an impeccable spectacle of the proverbial British humor in Uganda’s National theatre would be unfathomable ; more so with Writer Chris Carruthers seamless inclusion of new characters and omission of others without particularly punctuating the musicality of the British Pantomime . It was a night of quips and laughs and one well spent with one Colleen Bailey – a free lance writer and a film student from Alabama.
Unlike me who was attending a pantomime for the very first time , Colleen had attended in hundreds and stirred in dozens of them with a casting and directing role ; in fact as I speak now she is penning down the last act of an Opera ‘Through the Years of My Modern Alabama’ loosely based on Lee Harper and J.D Salinger’s characters in ‘To Kill the Mocking bird’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’ respectively and when I asked her about her choice of adaptations , she simply replied , ‘Even an American with an IQ of less than two would be able to identify with the most stimulating and imaginative proselytized piece I have in mind.’ I was marveled by her response and rather than drag on with my interrogations , I buckled my mental faculties back to reflections of a ‘quasi reader’ I judged myself to be . Matter of fact , I had read these works before but hadn’t perceived them to be as subtle as Achebe’s succinct ‘Things fall apart’ Or, our very own Okot Pi’Bitek’s satirical tirades in the ‘Song of Lawino and Okol.’ Perhaps I am too dumb to excite a reader’s digest and to that effect, an encore inevitably had to be a close call. If any of the readers out there have
A fortnight ago I was honored to attend the Pantomime of the Kampala Amateur Dramatics society’s Treasure Island at the National Theatre. To purport that Robert Louis Stevenson would ever envision his riveting classic mould into an impeccable spectacle of the proverbial British humor in Uganda’s National theatre would be unfathomable ; more so with Writer Chris Carruthers seamless inclusion of new characters and omission of others without particularly punctuating the musicality of the British Pantomime . It was a night of quips and laughs and one well spent with one Colleen Bailey – a free lance writer and a film student from Alabama.
Unlike me who was attending a pantomime for the very first time , Colleen had attended in hundreds and stirred in dozens of them with a casting and directing role ; in fact as I speak now she is penning down the last act of an Opera ‘Through the Years of My Modern Alabama’ loosely based on Lee Harper and J.D Salinger’s characters in ‘To Kill the Mocking bird’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’ respectively and when I asked her about her choice of adaptations , she simply replied , ‘Even an American with an IQ of less than two would be able to identify with the most stimulating and imaginative proselytized piece I have in mind.’ I was marveled by her response and rather than drag on with my interrogations , I buckled my mental faculties back to reflections of a ‘quasi reader’ I judged myself to be . Matter of fact , I had read these works before but hadn’t perceived them to be as subtle as Achebe’s succinct ‘Things fall apart’ Or, our very own Okot Pi’Bitek’s satirical tirades in the ‘Song of Lawino and Okol.’ Perhaps I am too dumb to excite a reader’s digest and to that effect, an encore inevitably had to be a close call. If any of the readers out there have