ABOUT

Asiimwe Deborah Kawe is an award-winning playwright, producer and performer. Currently, the Producing Artistic Director of Tebere Arts Foundation and Artistic Director of the Kampala International Theatre Festival.

Asiimwe has worked with the Sundance Institute Theatre Program; dividing her time between New York City and different cities in East Africa, she led the Sundance East Africa initiative, a program that covered the countries of Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda for several years. Ms. Kawe received a Diploma in Music, Dance and Drama, and a B. A. in Theatre and Performing Arts from Makerere University in Kampala-Uganda, and an M.F.A. in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts. Ms. Asiimwe’s recent plays include The Promised Land, Red Hills, Forgotten World, Cooking Oil, Appointment with gOD, Un-entitled, Do they Know it’s Khristmas? to mention but a few.

Her radio play, Will Smith Look Alike won an award with the BBC World Service African Performance playwriting competition.

Asiimwe has been a writing fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, a guest Artist at Pomona College in California, Brooklyn College in New York, and at the New York University in Abu Dhabi. She was recently one of the playwrights in residency at Residenz Theater in Munich, and an awardee at the 30th anniversary of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (September 2023), for her theatre work and leadership on the African continent and the world. Ms. Kawe lives in Kampala with her family.

For more about Asiimwe’s work, visit the following websites: