On the 18 and 19 of April at the Uganda National Theatre, this story comes to life. Tickets are available for fifty thousand shillings for VIP seating, thirty thousand for ordinary seating, and twenty thousand for students and children. They can be purchased at the National Theatre, at New Life Church Kireka, or online through KariTickets. Follow Ngoma Za’Africa Creatives on all social platforms for more information and to connect with anyone involved in the production who can help you secure your seat.
There is something we are not paying attention to. Not because it is hidden, not because it has been taken from us, but because we are moving too fast to see it anymore. Everything today is speed. Fast content that disappears the moment it is consumed. Fast decisions made without the weight of reflection. Fast lives lived in a perpetual state of urgency that no one ever questions because questioning would require slowing down, and slowing down feels like falling behind. And somewhere in that relentless rush, buried beneath the notifications and the scrolling and the endless pressure to keep up with a world that never stops moving, we are losing something essential. We are losing the ability to sit still and listen. We are losing the space where wisdom is passed not in bullet points but in stories. We are losing the fireplace.
In a powerful and deeply personal conversation on The MuFrame Podcast, Gilbert Byamugisha steps forward not just as an actor preparing for a role but as a young man wrestling with what it means to embody wisdom in a generation that has forgotten how to receive it. In *Ku Kyooto*, the production that brings this ancient storytelling ritual back to the stage, Gilbert takes on the role of Father. It is a part that carries weight, responsibility, and memory, and he does not approach it lightly. He knows that Father is not just a character in a play. He is a symbol of something we are in danger of losing entirely.
“The father represents the need to slow down,” Gilbert says, and the words land with a gravity that feels almost startling in a conversation otherwise filled with warmth and laughter. “To just slow down and look back.” That single line contains the entire thesis of what Ku Kyooto is trying to accomplish. This is not about nostalgia for a past that can never be recovered. It is not about romanticizing a time before technology or pretending that progress is the enemy. It is about awareness. It is about recognizing that in our haste to move forward, we have stopped looking back, and when you stop looking back, you slowly forget who you are. You forget where you come from. You forget the stories that made you, the values that shaped you, the wisdom that was handed down not through lectures but through presence, through gathering, through the simple act of sitting together and letting the words of an elder settle into the spaces between the flames.
We live in a world that rewards speed. Everything is instant now. You want information, it is there in a search result before you have even finished typing the question. You want entertainment, it is endless and algorithmically tailored to keep you watching, scrolling, consuming. You want validation, it is one post away, measured in likes and shares and comments that disappear into the ether as quickly as they arrived. But what happens when everything becomes fast? You stop reflecting because reflection requires stillness. You stop questioning because questions slow down the scroll. You stop remembering because memory is an act of preservation, and preservation feels irrelevant when the next thing is always more urgent than the last thing. And that is the danger Gilbert is pointing toward. That is the loss that sits at the heart of his concern. Because when you stop looking back, when you sever yourself from the lineage of stories and wisdom that came before you, you become unmoored. You float through a present that has no anchor in the past, and you drift toward a future that has no foundation.
At the centre of Ku Kyooto is a simple but powerful idea: the fireplace. Not just as a physical location but as a practice, a ritual, a way of being together. It is the space where people gathered not because they were summoned by a notification but because they knew that was where the stories lived. It is where wisdom was passed down not in formal lessons but in the cadence of a grandfather’s voice, in the pause between a father’s words, in the silence that allowed meaning to settle before the next thought arrived. Today, that space looks different. Phones have replaced conversation. Screens have replaced presence. Noise has replaced meaning. And while Gilbert is careful not to suggest that we can or should physically return to a literal fireplace, the question he poses is far more urgent than nostalgia. Have we replaced what that space gave us? Have we found new ways to gather and listen and receive, or have we simply allowed the speed of modern life to convince us that we no longer need those things?
Gilbert does not see performance as a hobby. He never has. Even as a child, dancing on stage with older performers, mimicking the movements and absorbing the energy of theatre without fully understanding what it meant, there was something pulling him toward a deeper understanding of what this craft could do. He remembers being thirteen years old, young and unformed but already sensing that the art he loved could be more than entertainment. He was part of a community project that challenged young creatives to identify issues in their own neighbourhoods and respond through their gifts. For Gilbert, that meant returning to the village during school breaks and working with the children there, nurturing whatever talent he could find. It was in that season that he encountered a young girl, just fourteen years old, who was being forced into marriage by her own father. She was an incredible performer, gifted in ways that even his untrained eye could recognize, but her future was being decided for her without her consent. Gilbert could not approach the elders directly. He was a child. He had no status, no authority, no platform. But he had art. And so he wrote a small skit and performed it under the village tree, a gathering space that served as that community’s own version of the fireplace. The skit spoke about the protection of young girls. It did not accuse. It did not confront. It simply showed. And the elders listened.
“We may not be able to approach the elders directly and say, hey, this is wrong,” Gilbert reflects now. “But we could do a skit about it and they would hear us.” That is the power of theatre. It says what cannot be said in ordinary conversation. It reaches where direct speech cannot go. It bypasses defensiveness and opens hearts in ways that argument never could. And that realization, that moment of understanding that performance carries weight and responsibility and the potential for real transformation, has never left him. It shaped the artist he became. It shapes the Father he is now trying to embody.
But this path is not easy, and Gilbert is honest about the costs. Behind the passion and the purpose and the deep sense of calling, there are sacrifices that most audiences never see. Financial instability is a constant companion. The need to split yourself between your craft and your survival is exhausting. Gilbert runs an events business. He bakes cakes. He operates a small cafeteria near the UCU law school campus. He does all of this not because he wants to be a businessman but because he has to be, because the ecosystem for artists in Uganda does not yet support the kind of full-time creative life that he dreams of and that he believes should be possible. He imagines a future where artists can be artists every day, where shows run consistently at the National Theatre and ticket sales actually sustain the people who make the work, where the craft is not something you squeeze into the margins of a life built around other obligations. Until that future arrives, the tension remains. One part of him survives. The other part creates. And he prays that the gap between the two will narrow.
One of the most powerful and vulnerable moments in the conversation comes when Gilbert speaks about his own relationship to fatherhood. His biological father is not present in his life. The man he is supposed to embody on stage, the well of wisdom and patience and grounded presence that defines the character of Father in *Ku Kyooto*, is not a figure he grew up observing in his own home. And yet here he is, tasked with becoming that very thing. So how do you embody something you have not fully experienced? How do you build a character from fragments when the whole picture has never been available to you?
Gilbert’s answer is a study in intentionality. He observes. He listens. He has become more present and more intentional in his interactions with the men that God has placed in his life, the father figures who have stepped into the gaps and offered guidance and wisdom without being asked. He watches how they respond to conversations with young people. He notices how they carry themselves, how they pause before speaking, how they allow silence to exist without rushing to fill it. He studies their rhythms and their restraint. And slowly, painstakingly, he builds the character from these fragments of truth. It is not just performance. It is pursuit. It is the act of reaching for something you know you need, something you may not have received in the way you hoped, but something you are determined to understand and to offer to others through the work you do on stage. There is a quiet heroism in that approach, a refusal to let absence define what is possible.
Gilbert admits something that many creatives struggle with but few articulate so clearly. He is naturally fast. Energetic. Expressive. Quick to speak and quick to move and quick to fill the spaces between thoughts with sound and action. But Father is not fast. Father takes his time. He thinks before he speaks. He allows silence to exist and trusts that meaning will emerge from it without being forced. And that contrast, that gap between Gilbert’s natural disposition and the character he must become, is where the real challenge lies. To play Father, he has to unlearn speed. He has to sit in stillness. He has to trust that less can be more, that a pause can carry more weight than a paragraph, that wisdom is not measured in how quickly you respond but in how deeply you have listened. In a world that rewards speed and punishes slowness, this is one of the hardest things to do. And yet it is exactly what the role demands.
When asked directly whether we are losing our connection to elders and cultural heritage, Gilbert does not hesitate. “One thousand percent and beyond,” he says, and there is no exaggeration in his voice. We are losing connection. Not because we do not care but because we are distracted. Technology is not the enemy, but the way we use it has become one. We are overexposed to content and underexposed to presence. We are overstimulated by noise and undernourished by silence. We are overwhelmed by information and underwhelmed by wisdom. And in that chaos, the things that matter most start to feel distant. The deep conversations that once happened naturally between parents and children now feel like interruptions to the scroll. The values that were once transmitted through story and example now compete with a thousand other voices that have no stake in who we become. Gilbert describes a performance he watched recently, a monologue delivered entirely in Luganda, that cracked the audience up while also cutting straight to the truth about how children are being raised and how respect is being lost. It was funny. It was sharp. And it was devastating in its accuracy. The laughter was recognition. The silence that followed was reckoning.
Does theatre still matter in a world like this? It is a fair question, and one that Gilbert answers with conviction. Theatre matters more than ever. Because it is real. You are not watching through a screen that can be paused or minimized or swapped out for something else. You are sitting with other human beings in a shared space, breathing the same air, witnessing something that is happening right now and will never happen exactly the same way again. You are present in a way that digital content never demands you to be. “It hits differently,” Gilbert says, and that difference is everything. Theatre forces you to slow down whether you want to or not. It asks you to sit still and receive. It draws you into a world and refuses to let you scroll past it. And in that forced stillness, something ancient and necessary can finally reach you. *Ku Kyooto* brings themes that are deep and rich and culturally urgent, and every individual who enters that room will be drawn into a space of not just enjoyment but learning. Learning about who they are. Learning about where they come from. Learning about the gold that sits buried beneath the surface of their own identity, waiting to be uncovered.
At its core, Ku Kyooto is not just a performance. It is a reminder. A reminder to pause. To reflect. To reconnect. To remember that who you are is not something you need to search for online or borrow from a culture that was never yours. It is something rooted in your history, your people, your stories. “There is gold in who we really are,” Gilbert says, and the production is an invitation to come and see it for yourself. To step away from the noise and the speed and the endless demands on your attention. To sit in a room with others and let the words of a father wash over you. To feel the weight of wisdom that has been carried across generations and is now being offered to you, if only you will slow down enough to receive it.
We are not lacking stories. We are lacking stillness. And maybe that is why something like Ku Kyooto matters so much right now. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stop. And listen.
