War, or armed conflict, is an expression of human greed and power lust. Estimates suggest that in Africa, between 15...
War, or armed conflict, is an expression of human greed and power lust. Estimates suggest that in Africa, between 15 and 50 of these are happening at any given time. And it’s not just grown-ups that take up arms, it’s child soldiers too. It happens next door and exacerbates the theft of life from the living and the alive.
While a lot has been written about the subtle and the gross blood product of war, few explore its dark side like Far Gone. It’s a one-man performance written and performed by Ugandan-born writer and actor John Rwothomack. His one-man show was born from a moment that could have ended differently, the day an eight-year-old boy in northern Uganda nearly became a child soldier.
“I was almost kidnapped by the LRA,” he said.
The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, is a rebel group that operates in central and East Africa.
“That day has never left me. I wanted to make sense of it, to take ownership of it, and to tell the story on my terms.”
Not another white saviour narrative
UK-based Rwothomack channels that memory into Far Gone. The story follows a young boy’s forced descent into violence and his desperate fight for freedom.
“I didn’t want another white saviour narrative,” Rwothomack said.
Kony 2012, a short film produced in the United States, intended to drive the arrest of Ugandan cult leader and war criminal Joseph Kony publicly and to put pressure on global law enforcement to do so.
“That campaign enraged me because it took our pain and turned it into a spectacle. I wanted to tell it truthfully, through the eyes of a Ugandan who lived it.”
Far Gone is not meant to be an easy watch, said Rwothomack. There are no breaks for him, nor for the audience, in the production. He plays every character – a challenging range – from the central character, Okumu, to his older brother, Okello, the bloodthirsty Commandant, and Sprinkler, a broken child soldier.
“Each one has a different rhythm, a different energy,” he said. “When I was developing them, I studied animal movement to find their essence. Okumu moves like a frightened bird, the Commandant like a lion.”
The performance, he said, demands both physical endurance and emotional honesty.
“I wanted audiences to feel complicit,” he said. “The Commandant talks directly to them, gets them to repeat his words, to follow orders. Suddenly, they’re part of it. That’s the point, to show how easily we all can be drawn in.”
‘No place for people like me’
It’s African storytelling, by Africans. The show is directed by Nigerian thespian Mojisola Kareem.
“The lights, the sound, the movement, it all breathes Africa,” said Rwothomack, who added that beyond his personal drive to tell the story of Far Gone, it was also a move out of necessity.
“When I finished drama school, I realised there wasn’t space for people like me,” he said. “I’d go to auditions, but my accent, my background, it all felt like a barrier. So I made my own space.”
“I see myself now not as a black actor waiting for work, but as an artist representing voices that shaped me,” he said. “Far Gone gave me that, the courage to stop waiting for permission to speak.”
The show first spoke to audiences in Sheffield, UK, in 2018 and has since toured around the world. When he performed in the Ugandan capital Kampala, it struck a nerve.
“That night, people came up to me afterwards and told me they’d lost family, friends, that they saw themselves in Okumu,” he said. “That meant everything.”
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Theatre remains a form of protest, the actor said.
“It’s a sacred space where silence can be broken and history reclaimed. When audiences leave Far Gone, I don’t want them to just clap and go home. I want them to think. To act. To talk about what they’ve seen. That’s what art should do.”
“To bring it to South Africa feels special,” Rwothomack said. “There’s a shared history of resilience, of survival, of reclaiming our own voices. I think South African audiences will understand that instinctively.”
Far Gone makes its South African debut, with performances at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town from 11 to 15 November and at Joburg Theatre from 19 to 22 November.
