What started out as a one-woman show for Sarah Nansubuga's MFA (acting) final thesis at LSU in 2019 has expanded to four characters and "a universally applicable, yet penetratingly personal narrative."
"Let Me Be: Grandma, Maama, and Me," an LSU Theatre Lab production, will open Tuesday at the Studio Theatre in the Music and Dramatic Arts Building at LSU. Nansubuga is directing, with Heyjin Kwon as assistant director.
"The voyage through the show demonstrates how the journey of motherhood is interpreted and misinterpreted through generations, and across nationalities through one simple idea — I did what I had to do," a news release states.
The expanded play was developed through Tebere Arts Foundation’s Playwrighting Residency in Kampala, Uganda.
The story "is rooted deeply in Ugandan folklore and the Buganda culture’s societal norms," the release states. "The show examines the deep and murky waters of motherhood, maternal instinct and the things that fall between the cracks in the way between a mother and a daughter."
In the play, Natasha returns home after an extended stay abroad to move the body of her grandmother. As Natasha confronts a loss that she has been avoiding for over a decade, she finds herself swept away by the forces of the past, the present, the mythical and the fictional. As the tension grows between what is real and what is not, Natasha is forced to reckon with the inescapable links between the grandmother she treasures and the mother she cannot understand. Maama exists at this breaking point, caught between a mother whose love hurt more than it held, and an impressionable daughter with whom she cannot share her heart.
The cast and crew also includes:
- Simone Jackson, Natasha
- Gabrielle Taylor, grandmother
- Jillian Boyles, granddaughter
- Kayla Short, Maama
- Caitlyn Gilliam, stage manager
- Ethan Rogers, set design
- Claire Bertrand, costume design
- Isabelle Louis, property design
- Karli Herbert, sound design
- Lauren Dickerson, lighting design
- Irina Kruchinina, choreographer
- Emmanuela Wade, sound board operator
Curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, April 20, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 21. Tickets are $12 and available at https://www.lsu.edu/cmda/theatre/index.php and at the box office in the MDA building.