Hamlet in Huye!

On Thursday one of the HRH staff announced that on Saturday there would be a performance of Hamlet at the University of Rwanda, Huye campus.  As you may know, I love to act on stage, and not too many years ago I played a number of roles in a production of Hamlet at the Columbus Civic Theater.  (I played the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the Player King, the priest, and a courtier.)  So it should be no surprise that I was interested in going.  Then I saw WHO was producing the play:   http://globetoglobe.shakespearesglobe.com/ .  Anne and I were excited.  I sent a text to several, local friends who I thought might be interested as well, telling them that we planned to leave at 9:00 am.  The performance was scheduled to start at 14:00, but we wanted time to a) leave later than planned, b) eat lunch at a restaurant in Huye which might involve an hour and a half wait for food, c) extra time to possibly get lost while looking for the venue, d) the possible need to buy tickets in advance, possibly involving looking for a cash machine.

Patrick, the one friend who responded to my text, arrived at 10 minutes to 9:00.  We didn't actually leave until 10:15.  By then we had added Sarah to our group.  Sarah is the young lady (18 years old) who lives in our “garden house” with her mother, two younger brothers and their house-keeper/baby-sitter.  She had never seen a performance of Hamlet, or any play by Shakespeare, or any live theater whatsoever.  She had, however, read some of Shakespeare’s other plays, and was interested in seeing Hamlet performed.

Huye is a ninety minute drive from Muhanga.  Along the way, we passed the Ethnographic Museum of Rwanda, which had recently had its outer wall painted.  Each panel of the wall had a different design painted on it.  Anne decided that she would love to see similar designs painted on the inside walls of our home, so we had to have a picture of each panel.  I was driving, so I pulled off to the shoulder of the road and was instructed to drive forward about a car’s length, then stop in front of each of twenty-five or thirty panels while Anne took a picture with her phone, and Patrick took a photo with his.  Forward; stop; click, snap; “OK”. Forward; stop; click, snap, etc.

By noon we arrived at Huye, where our first destination was a Chinese restaurant whose praises Anne had heard from several people.  We stopped to ask directions, and arrived within a few minutes.  The owners, who are, in fact, Chinese, were nearly the only people in the restaurant (lunch time in Rwanda seems to start closer to 13:00 than noon, and this was Saturday, when many people are at weddings most of the day.)  Anne chatted them up using the smattering of Chinese that she had learned while living in Hong Kong some decades ago, and they were delighted, as was Anne.  Anne ordered for all four of us, and the food began arriving with surprising quickness!  (Although I did have time to walk across the street to Bank of Kigali, whose ATM yielded up a stack of bills.)   In proper Chinese style, they brought out one dish at a time.  All of us took some from each dish as it arrived, and ate it over rice, Anne and I with chopsticks, our two Rwandan companions with forks.  By the third dish, though, Sarah started using chop sticks too, and seemed to master them well!  The food was delicious: well worth the 27,000 RWF (including tip, about $39) I paid.   Also, there were lots of leftovers, which were put into foil take-out containers with paper lids.  As we still had plenty of time, we drove down the road to Inzozi Nziza (“Sweet Dream”), the excellent ice cream shop in Huye.  Their soft-serve machine was down.  The ice cream they served us from their freezer had a lot of tiny ice crystals in it, but the flavor was fine, and the price was reasonable. 

While at the ice-cream shop, we found a very nice flyer for Hamlet which named the hall where it was to be performed.  We also met a student of the university, who pointed us in the right direction.   I located the hall on Google Maps on my phone, and we headed out.  While Google Maps had located the hall, it seemed not to be quite sure where our car was.  We went past the entrance, then turned around at a petrol station, took the wrong fork in the road, asked directions a few times, and finally stumbled upon a parking lot behind the theater where we found a nice shady spot. 

We had arrived at 13:15 and were among the first people in.  Tickets were actually FREE!  In fact, they didn't bother at all with tickets, and we just walked in and chose our seats.  The show began late because of problems with electricity.  A few scenes in, the power went out again, and they paused the play.  Then, they decided that the power was not likely to come back reliably, so they had the audience wait in their seats while the minimal stage, props, instruments, and costumes were carried outside by the cast and crew.  Twenty minutes later, the play began from where they had left off, but with the audience sitting on stairs and terraces and railings outside, and the performers on the area in front of the building’s entrance. 

Surprisingly, the acoustics were actually better outside than they had been inside!  The performance was top-notch, so, even though I had to hold a parasol for the four of us while sitting on concrete steps, we were quite absorbed in the play.  The set was composed of a back-drop from which the costumes and instruments were suspended, a “down stage” curtain which was strung on a line between two poles, two wooden planks, and about ten metal trunks, some of which were square, some twice as long as wide.  These were moved about and rearranged by cast members between scenes, while other cast members played and sang music.  The transitions were quick and delightful. 

The play ended at 17:00, and we had to hurry to the car.  Wendy, a colleague of Anne’s who lives in Kigali, joined us for the ride home.  They sun set as Anne drove, and it was getting quite dark as we entered Muhanga.  We arrived safely home, where we heated and ate left-over Chinese food, then went off to bed.  As there were no more buses to Kigali, Wendy stayed the night in one of our extra bedrooms.  Altogether, it was a wonderful day.