We are pleased to announce the cast and creative team for Tero Buru, a new play by the late, great Beldina Odenyo which has been posthumously interpreted by Beldina’s sister, Leah McAleer and directed by Beldina’s friend and collaborator Julia Taudevin.

Beldina Odenyo, akaHeir of the Cursed, died in November 2021 and left an unstaged play, Tero Buru, named after a funeral ritual practised by the Luo people of East Africa. In this play four women are summoned back to the African continent as strangers, eventually becoming sisters with one common thread: the blood of priestesses.

The cast features award-winning writer, poet and performer Hannah Lavery whose work includes Lament for Sheku Bayoh, (National Theatre of Scotland, EIF and Lyceum Theatre) and Finding Seaglass (NTS and Almost Tangible for Radio 4), and is the current Edinburgh Makar; Kimberley Mandindo, an audiobook, screen and stage actor who has just finished touring with Mercury Award winning band Young Fathers whose most recent film work includes Sebastian (Bêtes Sauvages, barry crerar, Lemming Film, and Helsinki Filmi) and Annika for TV (Black Camel Pictures). They are joined by Jamie Marie Leary, a theatre and screen actor who work includes Cyprus Avenue, Aganeeza Scrooge, Nae Expectations (Tron Theatre), Anna Karenina (Royal Lyceum) and River City (STV), and Chinyanta Kabaso, a dance choreographer, performance artist, teacher and content creator with a large following on social media, who was crowned Miss Africa Great-Britain in 2020.

Beldina’s own voice leads the production in a sound design created by Joe Rattray with the recordings Beldina left specifically for the production of this play and extracts from Heir of the Cursed’s forthcoming album. Sound healer and multi-instrumentalist Edugie Clare Robertson brings her own unique sound and many instruments from a range of African musical traditions. She is joined in the band by Marie-Gabrielle Koumenda a French-Cameroonian musician, composer and singer-songwriter performing under the artist’s name Djana Gabrielle.

Designer Sabrina Henry brings textile, red earth and literal fire to the stage and in dialogue with Lighting Designer Emma Jones, the worlds of the living, the long dead and the recent dead are created in a production that is both comforting and challenging.

Leah McAleer said:

“Amidst the devastation of her loss, we are tasked with gathering and preserving her legacy. Beldina’s work represents the comfort which can be found in connection and her lifelong dedication to the power of words and music to speak universal truths and offer solace to others in song and storytelling. We hope to invoke and honour her spirit and build a monumental event to express our love for our sister.”

Julia Taudevin, director, said:

“Shortly before she died Beldina asked me to help her bring Tero Buru to an audience. It is a privilege to honour that request and in doing so to remember with joy how funny, witty and uncompromising Beldina was as a person and an artist. She was a towering talent who still has so much that is wise, challenging and amusing to say about what it means to be a alive in the world today, even though she herself is no longer with us. I am delighted that audiences will get the opportunity to engage with Beldina’s wisdom, her humour, her beauty and her pain through the fictional world she has created in Tero Buru.”

Tero Buru will be performed on 15 and 16 November at Platform, Easterhouse, Glasgow. Book tickets and more information here.