The Bright Side of Life
About the show: "Home is not where you come from, but where things are good for you." Followed by a conversation with writer Vamba Sherif and Bright O. Richards - in Dutch
This show by and featuring Bright Richards is a funny and confronting musical play (with live music) about an actor who must flee his home country, where he was famous and beloved. In the Netherlands, he goes in search of integration and a new audience.
The Bright Side of Life, a co-production of Theatre Utrecht and New Dutch Connections, shows a person in the process of leaving behind the old world an integrating in a new one. Ultimately, it turns out that home is not where you come from, but where things are good for you.
Bright was once a famous actor in Liberia, who fled that country 20 years ago due to the civil war. Theatre helped him build up a new existence in the Netherlands. He went to theatre school in Arnhem, created shows for Ro Theater, and has been touring the play As I Left My Father's House through the whole country since 2009. The arrival of more than 60,000 refugees in the Netherlands and the associated challenges for these people as well as for Dutch society inspired him to create this new show.
Following the performance, writer Vamba Sherif speaks with Bright O. Richards.
Concept, text and play: Bright O. Richards
Directed by: Ko van den Bosch
Music from and by: Oleg Fateev
Also with: MC Innocent Ekhator and some ten young refugees