Split/Mixed

Title: SPLIT/MIXED
Format: One-man stage play
Genre: Drama / Political / Psychological
Length: Approx. 70–80 minutes

Directed by Jude Christian

Sound by Helen Skiera

Lights by Katie Pitt

Written, created & performed by Ery Nzaramba

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Synopsis

 

SPLIT/MIXED is a powerful one-man play about a Rwandan man named Eddy Hamuletti, who attempts to tell the audience the story of an encounter he had with a woman in a nightclub. But this cheerful narrative is continually interrupted by his inner voices—Conscience and Vanity—who derail the script and force him to confront the suppressed memories of his youth in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. 

What begins as a flirtatious night out unravels into a raw and often harrowing excavation of Eddy's fractured identity. The audience is taken on a deeply personal journey through his childhood in Belgium, his family’s relocation to Rwanda, his elite schooling, and the sudden plunge into terror and chaos when civil war breaks out.

Through poetic monologue, rhythm, rap, and physical storytelling, Eddy recounts the joy of forming a boy band with his friends, the thrill of performing on Rwandan national television, and the heartbreak of slowly losing his friends, neighbours, and family to escalating violence.

As the narrative shifts into the genocide itself, Eddy explores life under siege: the nightly fear of militias, the moment of fleeing Kigali, and the chilling checkpoints where a word, an ID, or a look could mean death. He watches his closest friends—rich and poor, Hutu and Tutsi—disappear, flee, or be murdered. His family escapes, almost miraculously, and ends up in a refugee camp in Goma, Zaire (now DRC), where disease and chaos are rampant.

In the final act, Eddy reaches Belgium as an asylum seeker. Just when the promise of a new beginning seems within reach, he is struck by profound loss: first the death of his mother, and then his young sister Jenny, both to AIDS. These final blows underscore the cruel irony of surviving genocide only to lose loved ones to illness in peace.

The play ends where it began—back in the nightclub, where Eddy resumes his flirtation and, when asked where he is originally from, chooses to say “Belgium.” A final, quiet deflection that speaks volumes.

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