‘Will you favour me with your eyes, your ears and your voice?” asks John Rwothomack, the writer and performer of this intense, atmospheric monologue as we enter the auditorium. It initially sounds whimsical and mannered as he invites us to play a child’s game while in character as a squeaky-voiced boy. But his questions become commands and take on chilling overtones as he begins his story about Okumu, a Ugandan boy abducted and forced to become a soldier and executioner.
We are told to repeat the words of the commander that is training Okumu and then instructed to chant the acronym for the quasi-religious guerrilla rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, established in the 1980s by Joseph Kony, who declared himself the spokesperson for God. It is as if we are not just watching Okumu’s story unfold in the round but also being recruited alongside him.
