Kumina

A performance in which memory, childhood and poetry struggle to overcome borders.

What anger does an exile carry within? What poem can express the fears and doubts inherent in uprooting? In the twilight of modern times, a man gropes for words. They come in French, Portuguese or Changana. They plunge us into an intimate story torn apart by colonization and revive the language of Pessoa, of Kamau Brathwaite, the great Barbadian poet, and of Virgil, Dante, Camoes...

Playwright and director, Mozambican artist Victor de Oliveira was born in an African colony. The grandson of colonizers and colonized people, he writes and performs this captivating solo show. On a floor covered with sand, between shadow and light, poems and stories are illuminated with singular strength and fragility. The words give rhythm to the suffering and hopes of exiles, questioning relations between the Global North and South. A rare, universal and necessary voice.

Text, performance and direction: Victor de Oliveira.