Das Gelobte Land (The promised land)

When Achen, an ambitious young woman from Uganda, sees the invitation to a seminar for women from the continent of Africa at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, she thinks this is her long-awaited chance to make a fresh start. She wants to leave the poverty of her country and her grief for the loss of her family who were killed in the war behind her. For her, the United States is the «promised land».

The first person she meets in the USA is Kat, a white American woman. As a highly motivated intern working for the institute’s health programme, she longs for nothing more than to become an aid worker in Achen’s homeland. However, on the morning when she has arranged to take the Ugandan member of the seminar back to the airport, she has disappeared.  

As an illegal immigrant, Achen will take care of the old and the sick, live with friends, even live on the streets, but never give up. After fifteen difficult years she has finally made it: she is happily married, the mother of two children and lives a secure life. Her naturalisation is purely a formality, when she has a fateful re-encounter with Kat.

In her gripping drama, Asiimwe Deborah Kawe tells of the chasm that exists between people with and without passports. She is an internationally acclaimed writer, theatremaker and Co-Artistic Director of the Kampala International Theatre Festival (KITF). «The Promised Land» was written during a residency lasting several months as part of the WELT/BÜHNE programme, the Residenztheater’s platform for contemporary international playwriting.

The young Hungarian director Jakab Tarnóczi, a resident director at the prestigious Katona József Theater in Budapest, has made a name for himself with his densely atmospheric productions  and now stands on the threshold of an international career.