At the beginning of May, Timeless Arts premiered their 2024 theatre production, The Phantom of the Opera, at the Kampala Serena’s Victoria Conference Hall.
Like other events such as fashion, concerts, and product launches, they are grand, with mega-red carpets, always bringing out the best of Kampala’s social kings.
According to Karen Hasahya, one of the producers of The Phantom of the Opera, the main reason for putting on such shows at the Kampala Serena is to invite an audience that may not come to the conventional theatre as we know it.
Besides that, since it is a theatre for mental health, there is a lot of fundraising, and most of the time, the people that can pay usually go to Kampala Serena.
And the show was indeed worth the hype; the red carpet was grand, and did ATS, the production house, outdo themselves? Yes.
The stage was a marvel thanks to the two decks, one with the orchestra playing above the actual stage where much of the drama was taking place. The well-lit stages, mainly depending on the LED screens, offered much of the spectacle that theatre has been known for.
However, within the spectacle, there were bigger problems that spoke to Uganda’s state of the arts. At the moment, many Ugandans dare to dream of spectacle, especially when they are producing theatre.
Yet, when it comes to spectacle, right from the red carpet to the flair of lounges where socialites can take photos, they can storm social media with, the purist art spaces we have don’t offer the service.
Yet if artists dare to live in their house, the National Theatre, they have to compromise almost everything that is supposed to make them thrilling.
The Phantom of the Opera was one of these cases, a beautifully put-together show whose foreplay on the red carpet was worth the thrill yet struggled with technical glitches when the show rolled.
See, theatre is complex and demanding; putting on a show in a place such as Kampala Serena means that the team needs to pad the wall and treat the flow differently to ensure everyone present hears what’s going on.
With The Phantom of the Opera, there was an orchestra involved, which made the work even harder. It was almost impossible to put speakers at the end of the auditorium since they could confuse the orchestra, which was pitted at the top of the stage (because, well, sound travels differently).
Because of such complexities, some parts of show were hard to hear, considering this is a fully-blown opera show with more music than dialogue The microphones went off a number of times, but the sound was mainly affected by Kampala Serena’s poor acoustics.
Well, the place at times sounded boomy, with the orchestra at times being the only thing we could hear in the way it was intended.
It brought about the question of what it takes to have spaces and auditoriums do what they were designed for, or design places for this particular purpose.
And it is beyond the sound; Serena and many places we force to host theatre shows rarely support the artist technically and mentally. For instance, many of them are rarely available for prior rehearsals and technical rehearsals.
By the time people usually stage shows in such places, they are usually seeing the stage for the first time, and yet we somehow expect perfection as an audience.
Of course, things were better, but not entirely at the National Theatre. There were things the producers could hardly manage, for instance, when the production became too big for the space.
But that was just part of the conundrum; the theatre booked shows in the main auditorium before The Phantom of the Opera could premiere there.
One was a music show on Wednesday and the weekly Fun Factory comedy shows.
Thus, the team from Timeless Arts started putting the set together on Friday morning and got it ready four hours to the show. The lighting and sound drills were done two hours before the show, and some of the props were not ready by the time of the premiere.
The first show at the National Theatre, according to Michael Wawuyo, was a technical rehearsal, but it was only on Saturday that the cast interfaced with the complete set for the first time.
The show closed on Sunday after staging for a month. Wawuyo, the set designer, said it was challenging to tear down the set every Tuesday to make room for other productions in the auditorium.
The Phantom of the Opera produced by Timeless Arts was directed by Pamela Keryeko with Joy Victoria Geria as Christine and Byamugisha Gilbert as the Phantom. The show premiered at Kampala Serena Hotel before moving to the National Theatre.
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