“WHEN YOUTH SAID NO! WRITING AND READING YOUTH’S INITIATIVES IN HEALING AND RECONCILIATION IN THE DRAMAS OF AUSTIN BUKENYA -THE BRIDE (1984) AND ALEX MUKULU 30 YEARS OF BANANAS (1993)”

Abstract

This paper is a critical reading of Austin Bukenya’s and Alex Mukulu‘s dramatic representations of conflict, healing and

reconciliation. The paper, in this regard, explores dramatic strategies that these two playwrights from Uganda deploy to

problematize these notions as experienced in post-colonial Africa. But of great interest are the significant roles which,

these playwrights deliberately, assign the youth in the project of initiating transformation which eventually leads to

healing and reconciliation within their dramatic imaginaries. The paper proceeds to highlight the ways that the youth

in these dramatic texts engage with, and challenge cultures and versions of history that privilege sites of performing

conflicts and how they in return subvert and invert such sites, converting them into spaces of performing new rituals of

expiation, healing and reconciliation. This paper consciously reads these plays as contribution to the projects of healing

and reconciliation in post colonial Africa, since drama is not just an imitation of reality but in many ways acts as catalyst

for change; or what one of the foremost practitioners and theorist of intervention theatre tradition, Augusto Boal, refers

to as rehearsal for revolution.