Since 1994, art has been an essential means for Rwandan people to take back ownership of their history. How does your work, particularly Hewa Rwanda, contribute to that?

Art played a central role in Rwanda after the genocide. We made use of everything—including theatre, dance, and poetry—to rediscover our lost humanity and remake the connection between the living and the dead. The forms that it takes have evolved over time. When we created Rwanda 94, just four years after the genocide, the show was fulfilling the same goal as the works we create today. At that time, it was still necessary to identify it as a genocide, because the nature of what happened was being debated by international courts and organizations. We had to present the context, tell the story, and make people’s testimonies heard for the first time using the power of theatre, which benefits from the length of the performance and a setting that’s conducive to understanding. Today, in Hewa Rwanda, I’m seeking to reaffirm the role of memory in the process of collective healing. This work goes beyond simply bearing witness: it’s a form of communion with the departed, a space where the missing can still speak, smile, and exist. I try to restore the faces and voices of those who have been erased by violence and forgetting. Hewa Rwanda does more than pay tribute to them—it’s a way of affirming that they’re still present in our memory and our daily lives.

You often speak about the difficulty of translating such a tragedy, which is “beyond reach,” into words. How do you express what is inexpressible?

The unspeakable is something you feel more than anything else—an experience that goes beyond words. After the genocide, I was overwhelmed by a profound shock. How do you express such suffering? I think that theatre, with its ceremonial aspect, enables an alchemy of body, language, and spirit. With a genocide such as this, you also have to pay careful attention to your choice of words. It’s an ideological crime that begins with verbal violence, with stories and propaganda. The artist must go beyond simply bearing witness to create a representation of what happened. If you’re not careful, you risk unintentionally reproducing the story that justified the violence. Fortunately, literature and theatre allow you to return again and again to a word or gesture and give form to the inexpressible.

The show also draws in part on Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld to evoke the personal lives of the killers. What is there to take from their mindset?

Understanding the other side is essential. By showing the humanity of the executioners, I’m trying to understand the mechanisms that made the unthinkable possible. Machete Season allowed me to go beyond stereotypes. The killers are not monsters, they’re men, fathers, sons. If we only see them as abstract figures, we ignore a fundamental lesson: genocide is not destined to happen, it’s a human construct. Realizing that is crucial to not reducing the killers and victims to disembodied symbols of cruelty or suffering. In Hewa Rwanda, I try to reproduce the complexity of human beings, in order to consider the mechanisms that lead to such acts.

Your father, Cyprien Rugamba, is a renowned Rwandan poet and a man of the theatre whose legacy permeates your writing. The show is also coloured by his vision of Islam and the Koran as a Christian. Why is that?

After my father’s death, I found a copy of the Koran in his library, which was an eye-opener for me. Besides his artistic practice, he was a historian and linguist, and although he was a Christian at the end of his life, he was interested in the Koran. He didn’t try to conform to one form of religious practice but instead drew on the spiritual depth that each religion has to offer. His quest inspired me, and I’ve followed a similar path. After the genocide, many Rwandans lost faith in the trappings of religion, because after such terrible misfortune, the question of God is a complicated one. If he does exist, what meaning does he give to everything that happened? What justice can there be? These metaphysical questions are a central theme of Hewa Rwanda and guided my artistic approach.

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