Katori Hall is an award-winning playwright from Memphis, Tennessee. Now 37 years old, the playwright has studied at some of the top schools in the country including Columbia University (BA),Harvard University (MFA), and Juilliard School (GrDip). Much of her work focuses on giving life to the untold stories of minorities around the world. She is also member of the Ron Brown Scholar Program, the Dramatists Guild, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. At the moment she is a member of the Residency Five at Signature Theatre Company in New York City.
Play Summary
Our Lady of Kibeho begins with the a young girl at a catholic school in Rwanda getting in trouble because she claims to have been visited by the Virgin Mary. While at first her classmates and most of her supervisors say she is doing it for attention their opinions shift as more girls begin to see apparitions as well. This leads the school to call in a Father from Rome to see if the church can confirm if these girls really are speaking to Mary. As word spreads of the miracles, the girls call the town together to hear a message from Mary where they predict the oncoming Rwandan genocide. This causes much stress in the school and the community which ultimately leads the Father of the school to leave Rwanda, fearing for the future of the only place he has called home. The primary actions of the opening prediction that leads to happiness and joy in the village of Kibeho shift as the plot continues and reveals that Mary came with a very serious warning. As a result of the girl’s premonition the story goes from one of miracles in a small African village to a warning of the horrors yet to come.
Dramaturg’s Note
This play is a one about truth. Through Hall’s use of spectacle she has set the foundation for this play to become one that can leave a different impression on each individual who sees it. Though not every miracle that happens in this play is true the point of her work was less to stick directly to the facts and more to make the audience feel just as confused as to what to believe as those who really lived through these events. What you believe of this show is what your mind chooses to accept of it just like how with faith what an individual personally believes is all based on what is easiest for them to accept.
When Sister Evangelique says “Yes I saw it with my eyes, but my heart? I am spiritually blind, my heart dumb. How could I have been so wrong?” (Hall 88) it shows us just how difficult the truth can be to find. She truly believed what she was doing was right and she fought for what she believed in until her mindset shifted causing her to regret her prior beliefs. Truth can be hard to identify when the lines are blurry and even more so when it is hard to accept. This can be seen when Father Tuyishime says “Tell them the girls made it up” (Hall 90). In this scene he wants to bury the truth because it destroys the reality he has lived in his whole life.
In the times we live in a play about finding the truth from within the blurred lines is more relevant than ever. With the propagation of fake news so easily sharable and available on all forms of social media, along with the current political state of the country it is up to every individual to take responsibility to find their own truths in what is presented to them. With this play you get little answers. All that can really be deduced is that no matter what you believe or not somehow, someway three girls in Rwanda did predict the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. With a plot such as this people are forced to come to their own conclusions, hopefully awakening them from their own trances and getting them to think harder about what the world presents to them.
Theatrical Mirrors
Hotel Rwanda is a movie that mirrors the world of this play. Our play speaks to this mirror because it shows the preface of the events that happen in the film. It participates in the same conversation as the mirror because while the play shows the ethnic tensions that exist in Rwanda before the genocide the movie shows what happens when it all boils over and their premonition comes true. This mirror differs since it shows the world of the future mainly through the eyes of a Hutu man rather than through three Tutsi girls. This movie comments on what has already been discovered since it shows the reality of the girls prediction.
“The World of the Play”
Kibeho is a very small world, it feels very separate from the outside. When Father Flavia first arrives in Kibeho he refers to the journey to the city as “…a bumpy spiral staircase up a very huge hill.” (Hall 80). With this imagery in mind it is not hard to see Kibeho as it’s own separate entity apart from the rest of the world. This leads the world of the play to feel very interior almost as if it has a secret. Even when Father Flavia, an outsider, enters he too becomes drawn in to the tiny world of the village. This play offers moments where the world is built and natural. For the most part, however, much of the play occurs behind closed doors. This being said the play feels as though it is in a confined place as if they cannot escape Kibeho let alone Rwanda and what is to come. Though it is not set on an island the difficulty to get to it makes adds to the isolated feel of the story.
Though this play takes place over a year it feels almost as if no time has passed at all while you watch the play. The play is linear and only through them mentioning the years do you realize that so much time has passed. The geography of the play is in a place that is a comfortable atmosphere due to Rwanda’s higher altitude compared to other places near the equator . Though this play touched on many dark topics the mood of the play is hopeful. When Father Tuyishime says “But you know all the questions and you will spend a lifetime asking them” (Hall 85) to Alphonsine it draws a parallel to how the audience is feeling. Though they are also confused as to why this is happening they are reassured to be hopeful since they do not need all the answers as long as they keep asking questions. The unseen spaces of this play are the village which is eluded to but hardly gone to by the main characters and well as the actual church building. By not having the girls go outside of the school it further creates a separation of the girls from the others. This play features many songs throughout the church and the village. As well as having the girls speak in tongues at times when they are speaking with Mary.
“The Social World of the Play”
The Social World of this play is private. Almost everything other than the girls final premonition takes place within the school. There is hierarchy within the two ethnic groups with a growing tension between the Tutsi and the Hutu. Hierarchy can also be found within the school with different people having more say depending on their status within the church. This can be seen specifically when Father Tuyishime tries to stop Father Falvia from hurting the girls and he responds with “I do not need your permission I have been sent by the pope” (Hall 83). There is a lot of group action within the play mainly demonstrated through the trinity and the adults. The closest thing to an isolated individual we see in this play is Alphonsine since she wishes she had not been singled out by being given this gift. Though Alphonsine is the single central figure she is followed then by the two other girls and then by the rest of the village.
Conflicting triangles can be felt through the ethnic tension within the play. An example of this is when Sister Evangelique says “At least I can rejoice that the Virgin Mary does not favor the Tutsi. She has chosen another Hutu to spread her message. At least I can share in that Victory.” (Hall 88) only to be shocked when Marie-Claire admits she is Tutsi. As in this scene it shows most of the characters are inward and typically only admit secrets to one other character in the show. The outfits of this show are traditional catholic clothes and school uniforms along with traditional African clothes being worn by the other villagers. Many times characters interact through fights they lead to reasoned discussion. power on this planet is held by Mother Mary which is then transferred over to the girls. On the other hand Father Flavia also has a sort if power since he has been sent from the Vatican. The language of this planet is typically to the point and throughout the piece the characters switch from English, French, Italian, and Kinyarwandan.
Practical Application: The Genocide
How did it all start? To answer this question we need to take a look at European involvement in African colonies. After World War II, Belgium became the country in charge of managing Rwanda and through their need to categorize and understand the structure of the country they began to put a very strict emphasis on the differences between the Hutu or the peasants and the Tutsi, the nobles. In this way they began locking the Hutu into a sort of position where it was harder for them to move up in the world and the Tutsi began to look like the enemies for being given favor by the Belgium government. In the 1950s Belgium was told to prepare the country for decolonization and began to shift their backing of the Tutsi to the Hutu majority. As they gained power the Hutu began becoming increasingly violent towards the Tutsi which only got worse as the country gained its independence.
For a brief moment, through a set of negotiations, it looked as though peace could be restored to Rwanda. This all changed however when an unidentified group shot down the presidents plane. With the president dead and tensions high the radio station which promoted hate against the Tutsi gave the order to kill as many as they could. This began 100 days of genocide which would result in a loss of about half of the countries population. The genocide left the country a shell of what it formally was and still to this day it’s citizens are picking up the pieces.
Kibeho Massacre:
In 1995 a significant event happened a year after the initial genocide when the RPA invaded a refugee camp in Kibeho. Estimates say that up to 8,000 Hutu were murdered in a single afternoon even though the camp had many representative from different nations inside to witness the bloodshed. Yet, with a massacre as large as the largest seen in Europe since World War II little has been acknowledged or done about the fact that this event occurred. Even after all these years the events that occurred during the Rwandan Genocide and the Kibeho Massacre have seen very little consequences for the people who caused it.