Alu, the Amharic Comedy About Rumor, Returns to Hager Fikir Theatre

Every Wednesday at Hager Fikir Theatre in Addis Ababa, a small mistake grows into a murder case on stage. The play is Alu, an Amharic comedy that began in Dublin in 1904 and first reached Hager Fikir in 1986.

The Reporter, the Addis Ababa newspaper, published a long report on the production on Saturday, October 10. Hager Fikir administrators told the paper that the current cast is the fifth generation of Ethiopian actors to perform the play. The newest run opened on June 24, 2026, with support from the Embassy of Ireland.

The Amharic title means “they say.” When the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) reported on the opening in June, its headline asked what the end of “alubalta,” or rumor, would be.

A rumor at an Irish country fair

Alu is based on Spreading the News, a one-act comedy by the Irish playwright Lady Augusta Gregory. The published edition of her plays says it was first performed at the opening of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on Tuesday, December 27, 1904. The poster for that first week is now held by the National Library of Ireland. It lists Spreading the News first, above plays by W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge.

The poster for the Abbey Theatre’s first week in Dublin, December 27, 1904, to January 3, 1905, with Spreading the News listed first (National Library of Ireland / Wikimedia Commons, public domain) [file photo]

In Gregory’s script, a new magistrate visits a country fair and expects to find crime. He asks Mrs. Tarpey, an apple seller who cannot hear well, about the town’s main business. She answers: “What business would the people here have but to be minding one another’s business?”

The plot starts with a forgotten tool. Jack Smith leaves his hayfork at the fair, and Bartley Fallon walks after him to return it. Mrs. Tarpey misses the start of the scene, and other villagers supply the rest. Each person adds a new detail. Soon the village believes that Fallon has killed Smith and plans to take Smith’s wife to America. The magistrate puts Fallon in handcuffs. When Smith walks in alive, the magistrate arrests him too.

Gregory explained in a note printed with the play that she first saw the story in a darker way. “The idea of this play first came to me as a tragedy,” she wrote. She pictured a young woman who lost her good name “because of some sudden story that had risen out of a chance word.” She wrote a comedy instead because, in her words, “comedy and not tragedy was wanted at our theatre.” The same note says the play had already been translated abroad in her lifetime.

An Ethiopian village in place of an Irish one

The Amharic version came from Teferi Alemu, a theatre professional. The Reporter said he first read Gregory’s English text in 1985, soon after he graduated from the theatre department. He told the paper that the Irish villagers reminded him of behavior he had seen in Ethiopia.

“It felt as though I was reading an Amharic script,” Teferi said.

He kept the structure of the play but changed the names of the characters. He also moved the action to a traditional Ethiopian village and adjusted the humor and expressions for local audiences, according to The Reporter. The paper said the motives of the characters stayed the same, and so did the focus on how a twisted statement causes harm.

Teferi gave the script to Hager Fikir, and it passed the state censors. The theatre staged it in 1986 under the director Debebe Eshetu, whom The Reporter called a prominent theatre professional. At that time, major productions at Hager Fikir usually ran on Saturdays and Sundays. The Reporter said demand for Alu led the theatre to add a Tuesday show.

Teferi believes the play has lasted because it uses comedy to deal with a social problem that repeats itself, The Reporter said. In the story, one wrong version of events produces another, until the community struggles to tell the original account from the rumors.

Hailegebrel Demesse, the assistant director of the current production, told The Reporter that theatre staff searched archive material for older plays with educational and artistic value. Research papers from Addis Ababa University led them to Alu, which people still knew by name.

Hailegebrel said the goal was not only to revisit a classic. The team also wanted to bring its social message to today’s audience.

The Reporter traced a series of delays. A production proposal was submitted in late 2019, and rehearsals began under the director Zewdu Abegaz. Abdulkarim Jamal later became the director. After nearly three months of rehearsals, the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the work.

After health restrictions eased and the Hager Fikir building was renovated in 2020, Alu opened to the public and ran for nearly six months. The production stopped again when the theatre halted shows during work on Addis Ababa’s corridor development project, The Reporter said. Addis Fortune, another Addis Ababa newspaper, reported in May 2025 that Hager Fikir had been closed for eight months because of nearby construction.

EBC’s June report dated the new opening to Sene 17, 2018 in the Ethiopian calendar, which is June 24, 2026. EBC named Abdulkarim as director and Hailegebrel as assistant director. On the opening day, the Embassy of Ireland in Ethiopia wrote that it was “proud to support this Irish-Ethiopian cultural collaboration.” The next day, the embassy told readers they could see the play “every Wednesday at 5:00 PM.”

Video: EBC Entertainment’s report on the June 2026 opening of Alu at Hager Fikir Theatre (in Amharic).

The current cast includes Fekadu Kebede, Atsetizazu Taye, Kedist Gebreselassie, Samson Girma, Fuad Mohammed, Alemtsehay Ejigu, Hailegebrel, Abraham Aysero, Wondu Gudisa and Yodit Assefa, according to The Reporter.

Laughter, and some questions

Samson plays Demisse, a broker. He told The Reporter that his interest in comedy was one reason he joined the cast, and that Alu is his 10th professional production. For him, the play shows how people repeat a claim without checking it, and how each retelling makes it sound more true.

“It is a serious social issue, but it is presented through comedy,” Samson said.

Some viewers had questions as well as praise. Tsinat Zewedu, a theatre professional, praised the acting and the technical work. She also questioned the use of familiar character types that she sees across Ethiopian theatre.

“The theatre is good. It is comedy, and I was laughing. The characters are interesting, and the actors performed excellently. But as a theatre professional, I saw many repetitive characters, which is common in many Ethiopian theatre productions,” Tsinat told The Reporter.

She said Ethiopian theatre could try new approaches to voice, staging, character development and performance. Getahun Besha, an audience member, spoke about what the play says about society. “This theatre made me see our society today,” he told the paper.

The revival comes as theatre in the capital faces what The Reporter in June called “one of the most difficult periods in its modern history.” It said Ethiopia has only five permanently active institutional theatre houses, and all of them are in Addis Ababa. Its reporter counted about 50 people at one show at the Ethiopian National Theatre, in a hall built for nearly 1,200. Theatre professionals told The Reporter that tickets at government-run theatres have risen from about 80 birr to nearly 200 birr in recent years.

In the same report, Kaleb Walelegn, the executive director of the National Theatre, linked money problems to the choice of plays. “Because of financial limitations, many productions depend on translated plays instead of original local scripts,” he said.

Alu is one of those translated plays, but it first reached the Ethiopian stage four decades ago. Teferi turned its Irish villagers into Ethiopian villagers and kept the central story. In Gregory’s version, a man follows a neighbor to return a hayfork. By the end of the day, the whole village calls him a killer.