The Company of Urwintore
Photo courtesy of the company

Join us for an evening with director Dorcy Rugamba and members of the Urwintore theatre company. In The Investigation, a cast of Rwandan actors per forms Peter Weiss’s compelling reconstruction of the Frankfurt war crimes tri als concerning the role of German citizens in the atrocities of Auschwitz.

Performed in Kinyarwanda (with English subtitles) by Urwintore and directed by Dorcy Rugamba, Weiss’s 1965 play about the German Holocaust takes on universal power as it becomes a conceit for the horrifying genocide that destroyed Rwanda in 1994. Presented with the support of Peak Performances @Montclair State University (www.peakperfs.org). Full production at MSU’s Alexander Kasser Theater February 5-8, 2009.

Dorcy Rugamba
Photo courtesy of the artist

Dorcy Rugamba is an author, actor, and director, as well as a dancer trained in traditional Intore dance. Rugamba left Rwanda on April 21, 1994, one week after his family was killed during the Batutsi genocide. Settling in Brussels, he studied at Belgium’s Conservatoire Royal du Musique de Liege and in 1999 co-authored Rwanda 94, first performed at the Festival d’Avignon by the Belgian company Groupov. Other works include the play Bloody Niggars! and Marembo, an account of his family’s last days in Rwanda.

Urwintore was founded by Dorcy Rugamba in 2001 as a workshop for creation and research in the performing arts. Urwintore’s production of The Investigation was developed in 2005 and has been performed in Butare and Kigali, Rwanda, and at the Festival Emulation, Liège; the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris; and at the Culture Center of Ans, Belgium. The company members are all survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

6:30 p.m., Monday, February 2, 2009

Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!