When the Bird Takes Flight

The NDSU Little Country Theatre finishes its 95th season with “When the Bird Takes Flight,” a story about love, war, and the struggle of youth in war-torn Africa, written and directed by NDSU student and Africa native, Amoussa Koriko. The play marked the beginning of a new era of theatre on the NDSU campus: the Newfangled Theatre, which started an epoch of entirely student-produced, university-sanctioned works with its commitment to theatrical excellence and newfangled vision of the next generation of theatre artists.
 
Koriko, native of Togo, West Africa, is a senior at NDSU majoring in theatre arts, and he came up with an idea for the play one morning when he realized that he should be a pioneer in this new way of storytelling.

“I woke up with feeling that a story of my youth should be written down and set up on stage some day. The unbeaten desire to share a story of my young years and my country was eating me from the inside,” Koriko said.
 
Koriko added that the idea of becoming an actor and storyteller came to him years ago, when he was a youngster.
 
“I used to watch acting during the cultural weeks many years ago at home and wanted to do it myself. But to do that I had to be a confirmed actor,” said Koriko.
 
Years passed, and his dream came true. Koriko went on with a debut of the new play on stage of Walsh Studio Theatre at NDSU last Wednesday night.
 
Through traditional African and modern storytelling, the breathtaking play tells the story of Djemi, a sixteen year-old girl struggling to survive during the painful aftermath of war for so-called independence in Togo, Africa. She finds a home with a gang of young men and falls in love with their leader. Even though this love is forbidden, the action of the play brings her to different angles and walks of life, where she is trying to find the right way out. “When the Bird Takes Flight” is a drama of the real life in Togo, depicting how tradition often struggles with the way a new generation thinks and lives.
 
“With this play I wanted to show how youth in Togo have to deal with a fast-paced world, to show what is going on in modern Africa from the inside, the truth of everyday life eventually,” said Koriko.
 
The actors performed brilliantly on stage, sometimes with slightly seen tears in their eyes. The topic of the play brought all of them together, so different and so alike at the same time. As the director and writer of the play, Koriko, said: “You don’t have to look for the differences and similarities among the actors. Just the way they are on stage unites them into single body and soul.”

It looked like all of them, despite their role, were soaked with the spirit of the play to their bones. The acting was coming from their hearts and souls, being perceived by the audience with sighs of amusement and uproarious applause.
 
“We’ve chosen our actors not just on criteria of selecting artistic devices, which would be able to act on stage. First of all they are humans in a full sense of this word. Humans being able to bring the intentional plan of the script to the satisfaction of the audience and reality of the performance,” explained Koriko.
 
Traditional African drumbeat followed the whole performance, emphasizing the words and foregoing crucial moments. With incredible light effects and decorations on the background the viewer is taken out from the theatre hall to the vastness of the African village, covered by the calm shadows of the baobab tree and torn by the fierce bullets of firearms.
 
Koriko went on to say that the most exciting part of the play is not even the words or actors’ performances. It is the moments of silence, when the audience has to filter the action on stage through themselves, deciding what is going on there even before the words are said.
 
“Those moments of silence are like the climax of the whole show,” explained Koriko.
 
Koriko is not going to stop at this point as this is just the beginning of his already bright career pace. He is thinking of bringing this play to his native Togo one day, where the life portrayed in the scenes of the story becomes reality for Togolese people.