Esteri Tebandeke

Esteri Tebandeke

Tebandeke before Maria Kizito performance in New Orleans, October 2015
Born Esther Brenda Apolot
(1984-05-16) 16 May 1984
Kampala, Uganda
Residence Kampala, Uganda
Occupation Actress, Visual artist
Years active 2008-present

Esteri Tebandeke (born 16 May 1984) is a Ugandan film and theatre actress, dancer and visual artist. She is a graduate of the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art at Makerere University.

She has played roles in the films Sins of the Parents (2008), Master on Duty (2009), Queen of Katwe (2016) and Her Broken Shadow (2016) which will be her first foray into science fiction.

Early life and education

Esteri was born in Kampala, Uganda and is of Teso descent, and is the sixth of eight children and her family has been living in Uganda. Esteri attended St. Joseph's Girl's Secondary School in Uganda and acted in school plays and dance performances.

Career

Dance

Esteri starting working as a contemporary dancer in 2008 and has performed with various dance companies in Uganda namely Keiga Dance Company, Stepping Stones dance company, Mutumizi dance Company, Guerrilla Dance Company among others.

She has staged performances at various arts platforms namely; Dance Week Uganda, Dance Transmissions Festival (both annual contemporary dance showcases), Bayimba International Festival of the Arts and Umoja International Festival– initially as a student and a teacher for 3 years– to mention a few. Her work is not only restricted to Uganda but she has also been involved in projects in Kenya, Rwanda, Madagascar, South Africa, Tanzania, the United States of America, and Ethiopia. She has performed at La Mama in New York in 2012, Artwater Village Theatre in 2013 and New Orleans Fringe in 2014.

Theatre

Esteri during a solo performance at Dance Week Uganda Festival 2014

She has been an actress since 2008 performing in a variety of theatre and film productions in Uganda. Her debut theatre production, Lion and The Jewel where she portrayed Sidi was directed by Kaya Kagimu Mukasa.[1] Other theatre projects have included Maria Kizito– lead actress as a psychopathic nun– a play by Brown University professor, Erik Ehn about the trial of nuns who facilitated the massacre of Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide. She was the lead actress in Cooking Oil, a play by award winning playwright Deborah Asiimwe, which was performed in Uganda and the United States of America. Other theatre projects have included a mentally disturbed psychiatrist in the Ugandan production of The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War as well as a frustrated wife in The Marriage Chronicles.[2]

Esteri at The Story Circle Project public presentation at the National Theatre, October 2015

In late 2015, Esteri travelled to the Northern part of Uganda with a group of artists to collect stories and hopefully turn these into stage plays that will be presented to audiences around the world. The Story Circle project, which was headed by Jerry Stropnicky, a theatre practitioner in the United States gave her great insights into the use of story as a mechanism to help people cope with different aspects of life such as trauma.

She has also ventured into directing and worked on a theatre project, Afroman Spice from Afroman ensemble, an all female theatre ensemble. The project premiered in Kampala in June 2015 and has since been staged at The Market for African Performing Arts (MASA) in Ivory Coast and is booked to show in Rwanda, Tunisia and Niger in 2016.

As a teacher she has facilitated training sessions with other arts projects and her desire to gain more life experience and share what she knows with others in a professional environment drives her to work with people from all walks of life. Her experience has also involved instruction of children in different schools around the city of Kampala.

Film

Esteri got her first acting role in a short film on one of the programs of the Maisha Film Lab program– a Uganda-based non-profit film training initiative founded by award winning director Mira Nair for emerging East African and South Asian filmmakers. She acted in Judith Adong's Sins of the Parents in 2008 and Master on Duty in 2009 by Joseph Ken Ssebaggala. Her latest film work was on the soon to be released Walt Disney Pictures production, Queen of Katwe, starring Academy Award winning actress Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo.[3][4] Speaking about the film, Esteri describes the impact that Queen of Katwe has had on her in the following words:

"Before the film, I was afraid of my dreams because they were so big. But now I am even more scared—they are bigger."[5]

Mira Nair, one of her greatest inspirations in the film industry in a recent article describes her as "a luminous person."[6] Quoting Mira Nair's famous maxim:

"If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will."

To that end, she is committed to developing stories from her home country, Uganda and the African continent which address themes of local significance but with international appeal. She is exploring the possibilities of developing Ugandan content in collaboration with Jim Resley, a Ugandan director and cinematographer.

Personal life

Esteri has been married since 2011 to Samuel Lutaaya Tebandeke, a screenwriter and actor. They live together in Uganda.

Performances

Film

Year Title Role Director Notes
2008 Sins of the Parents Sister Adong Judith Short film
2009 Master on Duty Vicky Joseph Kenneth Ssebaggala Feature film
2016 Queen of Katwe Sara Katende Mira Nair Feature
2016 Her Broken Shadow Adongo and Apio Dilman Dila Feature film

Theatre

Year Title Role Notes
2011 Lion and the Jewel Sidi
2012 Cooking Oil Maria
2012 Maria Kizito Multiple characters
2013 Cooking Oil Maria
2014 Maria Kizito Maria Kizito
2015 The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War Kate
2016 Conversations With My Mother Multiple character

External links

  1. http://www.playbill.com/article/cooking-oil-a-new-play-set-in-developing-africa-gets-nyc-reading-may-28-prior-to-uganda-com-168784
  2. http://www.soulographie.org/the-plays/maria-kizito/
  3. http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2014/11/19/review-maria-kizito
  4. http://www.nofringe.org/
  5. http://www.masa.ci/en/
  6. https://www.yahoo.com/music/queen-katwe-esther-tebandeke-working-224100032.html

References

  1. ↑ "The lion, the jewel and the political undertones". Retrieved 2016-10-15.
  2. ↑ "Playwright network is finally back". Retrieved 2016-10-15.
  3. ↑ "'Queen of Katwe' Ugandan premiere set for October 1 – theinsider.ug". Retrieved 2016-10-15.
  4. ↑ "Queen Of Katwe: Esther Tebandeke On Working With David Oyelowo". Retrieved 2016-10-15.
  5. ↑ Kaggwa, Andrew. "Esteri Tebandeke: Queen of Katwe changed my life". www.observer.ug. Retrieved 2016-10-15.
  6. ↑ "SA film location irks Ugandans". News24. Retrieved 2016-10-15.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/14/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.