After decades of preparing multitudes of playwrights and actors to find the nuance in this art of negotiation, Dr. Mirembe Mercy Ntangaare speaks passionately of the need to have plays ─theatre in general, pulled into the literary limelight. Many will agree that there is a more intentional push to the promotion of prose and poetry, while plays are often regarded as a tag along. And this starts early in the education cycle. For most, the first interaction with scripts or books such as The Lion and Jewel is in Senior Two which Dr. Ntangaare says has hugely disadvantaged the growth of Theatre. We see more writers and poets than playwrights.
Dr. Mirembe Mercy Ntangaare, Scholar, Playwright, Folklorist, and producer of Children’s Theatre did not always know she was going to be a playwright. She loved music. As a member of the choir both in church and at school, she was certain her future was written in the musical solfas. It wasn’t until she enrolled for the Music, Dance, and Drama programme at Makerere University that she learned she couldn’t major in Music as she hadn’t been graded for it in secondary. Her teachers of French and Music had been transferred out of the school prior to her final Exams. A lack of replacements meant she was unable to take the exam.
She recoils at the recollection of the three-day disaster with Father Grimes, the Head of Dance Department at Makerere University when she started there __without music, she was redirected to the Department of Dance. For her, a girl from Western Uganda, who went to an all-girl school and had had limited association with boys, the dance class was jarring; the leotards and modern dance far removed from her modest conservative upbringing. Father Grimes would send her off to the late Professor Rose Mbowa, the Head of the Drama Department, Makerere University. An encounter that would change Dr. Ntangaare’s life path.
Rather than enroll in the Department of Education as initially proposed by Professor Mbowa, Dr. Ntangaare requested to stay on in the Drama class, in her mind it was the closest place to continue her pursuit of music. She didn’t take the fact that Prof. Rose Mbowa agreed to take her on for granted. Initially apprehensive and unsure of this being the right choice for her, as she saw the power of the stage and the transformation of characters from paper to stage, Dr. Ntangaare figured this was what she had been doing since her first Novel ─written in her Senior Three in Bweranyange Girls School. Though the book is falling apart she keeps it still as a reminder to herself of where it all started even as she laughs at its contents now.
Rather than remain at the University and further her career in Academia __an option she had as one of the best 8 students who graduated from the Faculty of Arts in 1984, she opted to take a job with the President’s office as a Proof Reader at the Printer. Despite both her parents being teachers, Dr. Ntangaare was determined she wasn’t going to be one, of that she was sure in her younger days. Before long she was moonlighting at a Church of Uganda job, which to her seemed like the perfect job combining the editorial work she liked with a closeness to the church, a major part of her life. This was short-lived the church proving a harsh employer, keeping their hand tight around the purse, and not offering motivation to keep working there. She applied back to Makerere University. While she was gunning for the teaching position in the Department of Literature, the University handed her one in the Music and Drama Department, beginning the expansion of her world as a playwright. She recalls her first two lectures on 9 March 1995 as quite hard and unnerving. Some of her students were older than her and a number already practicing artists, quite different from the current student population demographics at the Department. Once again Professor Mbowa was a great encouragement providing some books to aid her teaching skills.
She has seen the industry evolve and notes while there is ample room to still sow seeds in the literary world, there is a need to examine the history of Theatre in Uganda and learn from it. While Popular theatre or local language based plays are a popular feature in Uganda’s entertainment industry, plays done in English continue to struggle to pull a crowd. The disparity a residue from colonial times she notes. Despite being called the National Theatre, this piece of real estate established in 1959 was initially preserved for only English and Indian shows. The theatrics revolved around “white plays,” with compositions and directions all done to entertain the colonialists and those deemed worthy of this experience. It took time for the British to train Ugandans in the art of theatre. The latter’s participation in the capacities of composition and directing even much later. Meanwhile, across town in Mengo and Kisenyi, the locals had cracked the theatre code and were staging plays that appealed to their communities. Their popularity was not slowing down.
With the expulsion of Indians under President Idi Amin Dada, the English theatre community was almost annihilated. There weren’t any theatre companies staging shows giving further rise to the popular theatre proponents who soon took over the National theatre. As the demand for this form of entertainment and with the mushrooming of more popular theatre groups, the National Theatre was soon perpetually booked creating the need for new stages. The realization theatre groups didn’t have to be tied down to the National Theatre consequently gave birth to Plays at bars and clubs which were considerably cheaper and more attractive to the Theatre companies. Without having to pay for halls operational costs were drastically cut.
Unfortunately, Makerere University missed out on this. As the one place producing playwrights at the time, The Music, Dance, and Drama Department shied away from taking on the National Theatre. Nor was the University Main Hall utilised as an alternate host for the mushrooming theatre groups nor to meet the growing needs of the Music, Dance, and Drama Department. While she understands the increase in student population at the university necessitated that large halls such as the Main Hall double as lecture halls, this Hall could have been stamped as the Home of Music, Dance, and Drama. Instead, it went from being a place the Drama Department held its practical exams to a lecture hall while the department now has to stage productions in tents under the famous Mango tree in Makerere University.
Unfazed, Dr. Ntangaare has a new baby. MEBO THEATRE DOCUMENTARIES LTD. You can tell she is extremely excited about the prospects of MEBO Theatre and what it’s going to achieve in changing the perception of plays in the country. She explains that MEBO was born out of the observation of the world we are raising our children in. Children are padded between books and entertainment TV and video games or both. Schools are cutting back on extracurricular activities like sports and fun days in favor of academics leaving very little room for expression for children and stifling their imagination. With MEBO Theatre children get to experience plays and documentaries and help bring these to life. They work on their public speaking and expression because in this global village, being able to articulate yourself pushes you to the fore. The children also engage in fun activities like gardening and learning about plants and flowers and even some adventure into the culinary world.
MEBO Theatre undertakes Film Production, Research & Publications, and Tours & Exchanges as well as the Folklore project, where they are working on Ugandan folklore and adapting it into plays. She is also building podcasts around this content so that people for generations to come can find it.
She is also working on Name Research. Uganda is a mix of so many cultures and each community has a unique naming system. Dr. Ntangaare says this is something they have set out to understand and share. She speaks about her name Ntangaare, which she took on after marriage. And it has come along in defining and describing who she is and what her work represents. In certain cultures her name is “amazement” and while in others her name is to “illuminate,” to “shine bright” which is what she has been doing for a greater part of her career holding the light to enhance what she calls the beautiful escape and lessons that lie in plays. Some subtle in their themes and others very telling to drive the points home.
She is also involved in Student Exchanges under her Language of Peace program and while there were big plans for it this year COVID-19 pandemic put a spanner in the works. The children under this programme were scheduled to go on an exchange program in May 2020 with German students. This program she says is geared towards speaking peace through plays. She says like politics theatre is a negotiation, you either negotiate your time on the stage or people will negotiate you off the stage. Language of peace for her is a tool to foster society’s wellbeing, cohesive living, co-existence and peace, and justice. The themes in theatre carry these messages daily and the involvement of children in these projects ensures that they understand the importance of social justice. There is a lot to Dr. Ntangaare, did you know that she wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize or she did? She says the older she grows the more political she realizes the prize is, but she hasn’t given up.
She is reading up on Sophocles to better understand theatre and reading more Managerial and marketing books to better understand how to manage and grow theatre. She is also reading Manchester Happened by Jennifer Makumbi.
She says there is a lot of ground to cover in training and retaining playwrights, in making plays a go-to entertainment and some of this she believes can be done through collaboration with the other literary arms. Under FEMRITE, they are working on adapting sections of Novels and turning them into plays to bring more people on board to buy books but also get actors involved. She also says its important playwrights organize themselves like the poets and writers to ensure they have a strong force to push for a section of the literary arts.
Her published works include I like to play with Clay, The Animals at Home, Sara’s Dream, The Rat Trap and the following plays Dustbin Nations (2000), The Chief of Shumankuzi (The Corrupt Chief of the Village) 2001, Lady Will You Marry Me? The Rat Trap and Other Plays (five of them in the collection-Cats and Hens, The Man His Son and their Donkey (Rhythms of Life), The Rat Trap, The Rooster and the Swift, and The Big Flight) in 2007, Semitego the Famous Hunter (2011), Knights of the Blind (2012), Ssemitego Omuyizzi Kkungwa (2013), Adventures of Stanely White (2015), Kawukumi -The Weevil (2018), Kick Dia-betes Out (2019).
Dustbin Nations, Lady Will You Marry Me? Rhythms of Life and Semitego the Famous Hunter are studied at Makerere University in PAF/ MDD and Literature departments. Ssemitego Omuyizzi Kkungwa is a set book for A-Level Luganda.
Dr. Mirembe Mercy Ntangaare is an Associate Professor of Drama/Theatre, at the Performing Arts and Film Department, Makerere University, Kampala. Board Member at Third Hope Africa and Fourth Heritage Initiative; Member of FEMRITE (Uganda Women Writers Association), UWEAL (Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association), SELF (Sustainable Enterprise Leverage Fund), IDEA (International Drama and Theatre Education Association), and AUGA (Ugandan-German Alumni Association). She’s a DAAD Alumnae and DIES ProGrant Beneficiary 2016.
Her hobbies include cooking, gardening, Travelling, Computer Graphics, and Book Design.