2022年6月， Achiro P. Olwoch 见证了 ——对她来说——是个奇迹. 她玩, 生存, 在林肯中心开幕，作为 犯罪酷儿节. The production was the culmination of a dream that Olwoch fled her home in Uganda to realize, after enduring persecution and suffering bodily injury. “When I say it took blood, sweat, and tears, it’s literal,奥尔沃奇说. The name Achiro means “the resilient one” in her native language, 阿科利, 考虑到她的人生历程, 这是合适的.
Olwoch, 谁是剧作家?, 小说家, 导演, 电视showrunner, 今年是十大电竞游戏综合排名的客座教授, knows all too well what it is to suffer for her art and to persevere. 她是来自乌干达的同性恋者. 奥尔沃奇在内罗毕流亡期间出生, because the brutal military dictator Idi Amin was targeting her father’s tribe. She returned with her family to Uganda as a child and grew up in Kampala, the country’s capital. As a writer, she has risked it all to tell her truth. In Uganda, being a gay artist determined to tell stories with LGBTQ+ themes is to be in peril.
The East African nation has a long history of anti-gay policies. 自2009年以来, the Ugandan government has proposed several bills to codify the nation’s traditional practice of punishing same-sex relationships. 该法案于2014年2月通过, only to be annulled by Uganda’s Constitutional Court a few months later. 今年5月，该法案被签署成为法律. 但根据奥沃奇的说法, the long and winding legislative process was only one dimension of the threat. She says the unwritten law on the street was one of violence against gay people.
Since Ugandan culture frames gay sex as “unnatural” or wrong, Olwoch says that “everybody — if they can’t justify [doing] something evil — they say, ‘our culture says’” as a way to sanction the persecution of gay people.
她玩, 生存，反映和反抗这一现实. “It is a story about a woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock with a homosexual man in a culture that loathes the subject of either,奥尔沃奇说. “This play explores the thin line between culture and modernity in a typical African society. 它还探讨了对这一消息的反应, 所有的角色, and how their reactions emanate from the laws that the society has placed.”
After a reading of the play in November 2016, word of 生存 它的主题引起了愤怒. Olwoch began receiving threatening phone calls and texts. 2017年底的一个晚上, while walking home from a local theatre where she’d been working as a stage manager, 奥沃奇遭到了猛烈的攻击. She says the beating was a result of not heeding warnings to “stop promoting homosexuality” with her play and works.
她遭受了持久的伤害. “整个2018年，我都是水平的. 我动不了. 我不能走路. I couldn’t sit or stand because I developed sciatica,” she explains. In 2020, 奥沃奇又开始工作了, 制作一部以LGBTQ+为主题的短片, 引起了媒体的注意. 这时她收到了更多的警告. 她继续说.
Despite the aggression and the threats that arrived via calls and texts, Olwoch在乌干达一直待到2021年. 她说，一旦美国撤军.S. lifted COVID-19 travel restrictions, she came to Brooklyn, New York.
去年在舞台上看到这一幕时，我热泪盈眶. Seeing two men holding hands, and at some point in the play, they kiss. 这一切在乌干达永远不会发生.
“我持有美国的有效签证.S.我知道在美国.S. 我会很安全. 我最初不是来寻求庇护的, I came to clear my head with the intention of going back home after a while,奥尔沃奇说.
在2022年年中，她加入了 学者面临风险 程序, a nonprofit that protects scholars under threat by arranging temporary research and teaching positions at institutions that have opted into its network. 于是她找到了十大电竞游戏综合排名. 这学期，奥沃奇联合教授 表现女性 高级讲师授课 Shayoni Mitra.
“I love that the students are open to learning, and they are interested in what I have to say,奥尔沃奇说. In October, she gave a playwriting workshop on campus. 今年, the Theatre Department has planned several events with Olwoch, 包括放映她的电影, 阅读她的作品, and a panel discussion on artistic responses to queer persecution globally.
Though Olwoch is grateful for her time at Barnard and for her new life in the U.S., she says it’s difficult to be away from her homeland and her family, especially since her own immigration status is not yet resolved. “我的文件归档了, 但它们尚未获得批准, so that literally means I don’t necessarily belong anywhere. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it almost feels like you’re dangling.”
尽管不确定性正在逼近, she continues finding many outlets for her seemingly endless creativity. (Back in Kampala, she was the head writer/showrunner for one of her country’s top television series.)“现在，我正专注于磨练我的剧本. Also, I’m writing books,奥尔沃奇说, who completed her first novel last year.
对于奥沃赫来说，生产 生存 was a triumph, and she is excited about plans for the staging of the play at the 佩雷尔曼表演艺术中心 明年6月.
“去年在舞台上看到这一幕时，我热泪盈眶. Seeing two men holding hands and, at some point in the play, they kiss. 这一切在乌干达永远不会发生. They would have arrested them and the whole audience. 所以，这几乎是超现实的，”她说. “Until I actually saw it on stage, I still didn’t believe it.”
Illustration by Kuukua Wilson / Photograph by Tom Stoelker
