Imagine surviving your own execution. Now imagine surviving it 326 times.
George Seremba has been performing his autobiographical one-man play "Come Good Rain: An Extraordinary Story of Personal Survival" throughout the world since 1992. The Ugandan exile, actor and current International Writers Project visiting playwright at Brown narrated his account of life at the hands of brutal Ugandan dictators Apolo Milton Obote and Idi Amin Dada for the 326th time on Friday.
"We knew that, as a longtime exile, he was in need, and we could be of temporary if modest help," wrote Visiting Professor of Literary Arts Robert Coover, who is in charge of the International Writers Project — which provides Seremba with a living stipend, an office, "a refuge and a bit of quiet writing time" — in an e-mail to The Herald.
The play opened the 40th season of the Department of Africana Studies' Rites and Reason Theatre.
Seremba left approximately 150 audience members spellbound as they squeezed into extra space on risers and the floor.
The production opened with drumming by Malian master percussionist Sidy Maiga, who provided seamless musical transitions from scene to scene throughout the play.
Seremba begins the play by recounting an old Ugandan folk tale of a girl who is left in a forest to die at the hands of an evil stepmother. As Seremba's own story unfolds, the parallels between the young girl's narrative and his own become clear, and her tale serves as a thread that weaves the play's scenes together.
The tale was also Seremba's favorite as a child, he told The Herald. Incorporating the art of folk narration into the play was "in a sense universalizing, but in the particular and the local," he said. The play resonates not only with audience members' humanity but also with their heritage, he added. "Where you have that girl, other people have Cinderella."
Seremba's own tale takes the audience from his childhood to his eventual escape and exile from Uganda in 1980. The play comes to a gripping climax when President Obote, reclaiming power for a second time from Idi Amin, sentences Seremba to death at the hands of his military intelligence. The scene unfolds in terror as Seremba is marched into the forest and shot repeatedly.
During this episode in his life, Seremba felt like the girl in the folk tale, he told The Herald. "I felt like she was hovering over my back like what the Christians call a guardian angel." Seremba added that he was convinced he was dying until he "woke up or came back to life."
Yet, he miraculously crawls his way to safety, is found by a nearby village boy, receives medical attention and manages to flee to Kenya with the help of his uncle before ultimately breaking out of Africa altogether to Canada.
The dialogue is masterfully written, and Seremba captures the horrors of his experiences in strikingly poignant language. Embodying the rage of Ugandan civilians, he cries, "They can't go on killing us yesterday and mounting our daughters tomorrow." To President Obote's military intelligence, he is "a doormat to their thick boots," while "sometimes the back of their guns would have a little talk with (his) ribs."
But it is the playwright and actor himself who carries the play from beginning to conclusion, and it is hard to imagine understanding Seremba's story without having him there to tell it. The play is driven completely by his exceptional ability to relay his emotions to the audience. It is in the gleam and softness in his eyes during the beginning of the first act that one sees young George. In the pure, raw anguish and pain in his twinges and jerks as he is shot repeatedly, one sees the man who survived his ordeal. At one point, he lifts his right shirtsleeve to expose an approximately six- to eight-inch scar left on his arm from one of the gunshot wounds he suffered.
Seremba told The Herald that "pretty much every minute" of his performance is as emotional as the corresponding real events. "That signifies success, probably."
Dul Johnson, an International Writers Project visiting fellow and scholar at the Watson Institute for International Studies, "was quite amazed that he could relive it without actually breaking down," he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
"It's definitely a cathartic experience," Seremba said, adding that he is motivated to speak for fellow Ugandans who never lived to tell their tale. "It becomes an easier thing to do, since I'm alive and well and those people aren't," he said. "I testify for them as well as myself."
Margaret Namulyanga GS, an MFA student in playwriting and a Ugandan, was anxious to see the play performed by the playwright, having seen it performed once by a student at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
Namulyanga saw a "stark difference" between the two shows. "There was fervency from the actor while he narrated the story," she wrote of Seremba's performance in an e-mail to The Herald. "I think it comes from the writer/actor's knowledge of his story; the pain that was inflicted on him, and all the low moments."
Seremba hopes that, by giving his own testimony, he educates audience members on the trials of those "who come from places that are teeming with inhumanity," he said. "Once they know, then it's up to them because you never know where the next fire is going to be."
During a post-performance discussion, a man who identified himself as Gambian said he was troubled by the state of many African nations such as his own and skeptical of any potential for hope or change on the continent. Seremba's response was simple: "The alternative is bleaker because pessimism never wins."
