In Asiimwe’s critique of the foreign aid industry, a village reckons with the murder of a young girl who sold free aid with a powerful, corrupt politician. The story unravels as the storytellers come to face their own complicity. Layering traditional and contemporary music, dance, chant, and images and material of aid, this production playfully interrogates in/dependence and the gaze at a suffering Other.
Cooking Oil was performed at the National Theatre of Uganda in October 2010 with a Ugandan cast. The conversation grew to include members of this cast, and a team of acclaimed actors and musicians from Rwanda. This East African ensemble performed a staged reading at Centre x Centre Festival in Rwanda, August 2011 and a staging workshop at In Movement, Kampala, UG August 2012. Cooking Oil was performed and held public dialogues in Los Angeles in of June 2013.
