Adong Judith: How I use art to bridge misunderstanding
Adong Judith uses art as a vehicle to drive social change and trains aspiring makers to create art that dares to ask serious questions. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
who tells social-change stories,
touch and move us.
and teach us to empathize.
of disadvantaged groups,
away from social, political theater
by former Ugandan president, Idi Amin.
I am breaking the silence
conversations on taboo issues,
is the rule of thumb.
and challenge our minds to think,
is its often one-sided nature
who see issues differently
sellout or plain stupid.
only in different fields.
"stay in your truth" is misleading.
you believe is wrong
avenues of conversations.
to touch, humanize
to the conversation table
will not magically solve all problems.
to create avenues
many of humanity's problems.
of the Northern Uganda war
and Joseph Kony's LRA rebel group,
political leaders, religious leaders,
and transitional justice leadership
of justice for war crime victims --
in the history of Uganda.
cover them all right now.
to sit at the table
the big injustice they suffered
of the war perpetrators.
acknowledged the victims' pain
behind their flawed approaches.
that has stayed with me
tour of the play,
feeling disappointed,
inappropriate laughter.
was a laughter of embarrassment
of his own embarrassment.
of his past actions.
a more powerfully uniting truth
would be shocked at my ignorance
like lasagna, for instance.
about malakwang,
richer and fuller individuals.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Adong Judith - Playwright, filmmakerAdong Judith uses art as a vehicle to drive social change and trains aspiring makers to create art that dares to ask serious questions.
Why you should listen
Founder and artistic director of Silent Voices Uganda, a nonprofit performing arts company, Adong Judith creates art that provokes meaningful conversation on issues often considered taboo.
Notable among her training programs is the annual Summer Theater Directors Apprenticeship, a two-tier program that combines production and training of ten aspiring theater directors. Originally only for Ugandans, Judith has opened the 2018 and future apprenticeships to aspiring theater directors across the African continent, who she believes share the same challenges in practicum gaps.
In 2018, Judith will be in residence at Illinois State University, where she will direct her 2016 social media buzz-stirring play, Ga-AD!, which explores spirituality and the place of women in Pentecostal churches. Her first social change play, Silent Voices, which she wrote after accidentally encountering the inescapable stories of war crime victims in her hometown of Gulu, developed at Sundance Institute’s Theater Lab, received its world premiere in 2012 at the National Theater of Uganda and was described by the Ugandan media as "the spiritual rebirth of theater since its decline due to political persecution of artists by the Idi Amin regime."
Adong’s plays are taught at Ivy League Universities including Dartmouth College and Princeton University, and she recently signed a contract with Methuen Publishers UK to publish Silent Voices in an anthology of Contemporary African Women Playwrights.
Adong Judith | Speaker | TED.com