Sense and Nonsense

By Kalungi Kabuye Where does art stop and reality start? That line has always been vague in local playwright Alex Mukulu's plays, but it seems to disappear completely in his latest, The Ancestors of Sense and Nonsense, showing at the National Theater through March.. In the midst of the one of the hottest election campaigns this country has ever seen, Mukulu makes a political statement of his own, coming perilously close to almost telling Ugandans which way to vote. The mouthfullness of the title notwithstanding, and several soliloquies that might pass right over your head, Mukulu paints a picture of a society and a nation that is in urgent need of a miracle cure. The setting is a mental asylum of sorts, where all the inmates are suffering from one sort of trauma or another, all caused by the violent history of Uganda. As Corporal Primose says at one point, "... we are all traumatised, living in a traumatised society, and breathing traumatised air. Everything here is traumatised." Primose, ably played by Jimmex Semanda, is a keeper of the asylum, a sort of nurse, who knows all the inmates problems, and how to placate them once their trauma threatens to overwhelm them. Through a series of flashbacks, with impressive special effects, Mukulu takes us through what brought about the trauma of the inmates, and which can be taken as partly a chronicle of Uganda's troubles. There is Nakato (Lyn Lydia Kyofuna), who was raped by Milton Obote's soldiers because she supported DP and not UPC. Nankani (Frank Mbaziira) is traumatised because as a teacher he witnessed the massacre of his students. Ndombolo (Isaac Senyondo) lost all his land, and Omutaka (Charles Kajubi) does not want to hear that Kabaka Muteesa died, and becomes very violent if he is told so. Meanwhile the country's past leaders are represented by effigies propped up on what seems to be windows. There is Muteesa, Obote, Idi Amin, Yusuf Lule, Godfrey Binaisa, and Okello Lutwa. All this serves as a prologue to what Mukulu wants to say. He himself makes a late entry, in the character of Dr. Russ, doctor to all the patients. He is the only one who understands the problems they have, and who has the remedies. Poorly paid, working in dire conditions, he nevertheless strives on, driven by his sense of duty. Along the way Mukulu takes a swipe at the 'nkuba kyeyos', Uganda's immigrant workers abroad, in the form of Russ's sister Matilda (Sarah Male), who wants to take him to an easier life in London. To him these are weak people who cannot cope and flee to greener pastures. There are hundreds of innuendoes in this play, and the less alert viewer might miss out on some of the more subtle ones. But most of them are obvious, as in what kind of driver the inmates want to drive them to hospital and, strangely enough, to the courts. There is also the traumatised professor (Dan Ssettaba) who has to be told that not any piece of paper can be the Constitution. In one of the most powerful scenes in the play, the inmates forgive, one by one, the former presidents for their failings or for the harm they brought the country. At the end of the day, Mukulu claims he is not making any choices, but wants Ugandans to face up to their fears, and reconcile with the country's violent past. "We cannot continue living in the past," he told the press after Saturday's performance. "While not forgetting where we come from, we must face up to our fears, and make decisions with a mind that is free from the trauma of the past. We cannot remain prisoners of the past." There is an interesting scene at the very end involving a lantern, and that directly hits on the forthcoming presidential elections. It would be interesting if any of the Presidential candidates attended a performance, and what their reaction would be like. So, is this a bona fide play, or is it Alex Mukulu's attempt to add his two bits to the presidential campaigns? It takes a worthwhile and interesting two-and-half hours to find out. Ends