Susan Sarandon hosts play at City Tech
School Presents ‘Forged in Fire’ — A Play by Ugandan Child Soldier-Turned-Artist
Starting on May 2, City Tech’s Theatreworks and Entertainment Technology Department presents “Forged in Fire,” at the Voorhees Theatre at 186 Jay St. in Downtown Brooklyn. The play is co-written and performed by Okello Kelo Sam, Ugandan child soldier-turned-performing artist, and tells a tragic tale with humor, song, dance and the adungu, a handmade harp with tribal origins in northern Uganda. Film star and activist Susan Sarandon, will host the New York premiere.
“Forged in Fire” is an original work based on the playwright’s brother Godfrey who was abducted as a child by soldiers of the brutal and still-at-large warlord Joseph Kony. Godfrey was forced to fight, and ultimately died, in Uganda’s civil war. Years earlier Okello, too, was abducted as a child and forced to fight in a rebel uprising. Serving as raconteur, Okello employs humor, song and dance to weave a narrative collage of his brother’s nearly parallel tale.
Okello was abducted into a rebel army at age 16. He escaped, earned a college degree in performing arts, married, had a child and started Hope North—an accredited secondary school in Northern Uganda with a reputed arts program. Okello also became a musician and dancer, joining the Ndere Troupe in Kampala. In 2006 he landed an instructing-performing role in the “The Last King Of Scotland.” Okello taught Forest Whitaker how to perform an Acholi warrior dance for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of Idi Amin in the film.
