Ugandan wins BBC global prize

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Thursday, 21 February 2013 22:29

Written by Polly Kamukama

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With her new play, Sunflowers behind a Dirty Fence, acclaimed Ugandan playwright Angella Emurwon won for a second time a BBC award, this time round, the 23rd BBC International Radio Playwright competition.

News of her victory started filtering through last week but was only confirmed on Wednesday night when the winners were officially announced at a packed ceremony in London.
Emurwon, who courted controversy last year by writing and directing the gay-themed stage play, The River and the Mountain, beat hundreds of other international contestants to the top prize, which comes with a recording deal among others.

“The recording of my play begins tomorrow and continues the next day which means full days as well as theatre plays in the evenings,” an ecstatic Emurwon emailed us on Wednesday from the BBC studios where the radio play will first premiere before coming to Kampala.

Her winning play Sunflowers Behind a Dirty Fence chronicles a naïve boy who runs away from his village home to Kampala where he befriends a street crook. Together, they discover why good people sometimes do bad things.

The winning play is Emurwon’s fifth since she hit the limelight in 2010. Her debut play, The Cow Needs a Wife which she reluctantly entered into the 2010 BBC African Performance Playwriting competition, emerged third best but was praised by judges as the most hilarious and creative.

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