Aganza Kisaka

MLA CALL FOR CAST 2023

Aganza Kisaka is a Ugandan multi-talented performing artist. She is an award-winning actor, playwright, director, theatre producer, and published author.

She won Best Supporting Actress at the Uganda Film Festival for her role in N.S.I.W.E (2019) and Best Actress at the Pearl International Film Festival for her role in Faithful (2017).  Her short story, Operation: Mother’s Bruises about depression was published in The Different Shades of the Feminine Mind (2017) as part of the Afriwowri Literary Project.

Kisaka made her debut as a playwright at the Kampala International Theatre Festival in 2016 with Black which tackles issues of race, blackness, and identity.  Kisaka’s play, Killing Time, featured at the Lagos Theatre Festival (2021), the Kenya International Theatre Festival (2021), and the Kampala International Theatre Festival (2021). Most recently, her short film, Vanilla was nominated for the Berlin International Art Film Festival (2021) and the Toronto Black Film Festival (2022).

She has produced outstanding works such as The Betrothal by Joshua Mmali, and Red Hills by Asiimwe Deborah Kawe as well as the Kampala International Theatre Festival 2019. In 2022, she completed an assistant directorial role for the Merchant of Venice and her most recent theatre directorial work is for the outstanding production of My Fair Lady musical in Kampala.

Kisaka is the founder of Yenze Theatre Conservatoire (YTC) which trains performing artists in acting, movement, and voice while providing artist management and production services to artists in Kampala, Uganda.

As a proud fellow of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, her work is inspired by how unique spaces and movements inform our identity, behaviour, and interactions.