Asiimwe Deborah Kawe

Asiimwe Deborah Kawe was born in Kiruhura, Uganda, and is an award-winning playwright, producer and performer. Currently the Artistic Director of the Kampala International Theatre Festival, Deborah has worked with the Sundance Institute Theatre Program. Dividing her time between New York and East Africa, she led the East Africa Initiative, a program that covered the countries of Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda for six years. She continues to be associated with the Institute on its new initiative in North Africa and the Middle East. Deborah received a Diploma in Music, Dance & Drama as well as a BA in Theatre & Performing Arts from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts. Asiimwe’s recent plays include Forgotten World, Cooking Oil, Appointment with gOD, Un-entitled, and Do they Know it’s Khristmas?. Her radio play, Will Smith Look Alike won an award with the BBC World Service African Performance playwriting competition. Deborah has been a writing fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, and a guest lecturer and artist at Pomona College in California. Her recent play, Red Hills (co-written with Sean Lewis), was commissioned and produced by En Garde Arts in New York.