Odile Gakire Katese’s grandmother was killed with a machete and thrown into a latrine. The writer and activist shares this information so matter-of-factly it takes a moment to process what she has said. The point of her mentioning it is not to relive the horror of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, something she treats as an inescapable fact, but to lament a relationship with a woman she never knew.
This is the blueprint for The Book of Life, a sweet-tempered testament to the power of story, in which the performer, known as Kiki, is joined by the fabulous Ingoma Nshya: the Women Drummers of Rwanda in her own version of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She does not dwell on the million people who were killed in 100 days of slaughter; that seems to be a grief she has processed at an earlier time.
She does mention her family’s exile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and her eventual return to Rwanda, the country of her parents, but this is a show about honesty rather than revenge. She observes that when talking of the atrocities, her fellow citizens use “we” when they mean “I”, a linguistic shift of responsibility akin to the war criminals who protest their innocence even in the face of evidence. “I killed them,” is so much harder than “we killed them”.
In Ross Manson’s production, a collaboration between Canada’s Volcano and her own Woman Cultural Centre, she describes her work asking people to write letters to the dead. She has her own letter to her grandmother and reads out others she has collected. Writing is a simple act, but she sees in it the first step towards acceptance – whether that be accepting your father was a murderer or that you will remain forever ignorant about whole swathes of your family.
This sounds bleak, but the tone is forgiving. Weaving in and out of the show is an animal fable, illustrated with cut-out projections by Sean Frey and Kristine White, charting a metaphorical journey from darkness into light. It is a lightness exemplified by the drummers, singing in joyful harmony, a symbol of resilience and hope.
At Church Hill theatre, Edinburgh, until 16 August.
