Build a World-Class Performance Theater
Developing Kombo St. Mary’s Division
The Gambia has produced musicians, griots, dancers, dramatists, and performers whose talent is recognised far beyond the country's borders. What the country has not built is a venue worthy of that talent. The performing arts in The Gambia operate without a dedicated professional performance venue of national standard. Productions are staged in hotel ballrooms, school halls, and outdoor spaces not designed for performance and incapable of providing the acoustic quality, the technical infrastructure, or the audience comfort that professional performance requires. The consequences reach across the creative economy. International touring productions that might include Gambia in a West African circuit do not, because there is no venue that meets their technical requirements. Regional conferences and cultural festivals that could be hosted here go to Dakar, Accra, or Abidjan instead. Gambian performers who want to present their work at the standard their talent deserves must travel abroad to find the stage infrastructure that should be available at home. And the absence of a national performance venue is an absence of aspiration. The stage you can see yourself on shapes the scale of the ambition you allow yourself. The National Builders Party will build the stage.
A National Performance Theatre in the Kombo St. Mary's Division that is among the finest performance venues in West Africa. Where a griot's kora fills a 1,200-seat auditorium built with the acoustic precision to carry every harmonic. Where a touring West African theatre company finds the technical infrastructure their production requires. Where a Gambian filmmaker premieres their work in a cinema built to festival standard. Where a young drama student rehearses in a professional studio and performs in front of a live audience for the first time. Where the year-round programme covers traditional Gambian performance, contemporary music, theatre, film, dance, spoken word, and the full spectrum of creative expression. A building that Gambians point to with pride. A stage that the world comes to.
The NBP will build a world-class National Performance Theatre in the Kombo St. Mary's Division, designed through an open architectural competition that combines contemporary performance venue design with Gambian cultural reference to produce a building that is itself a national landmark.
The main house will seat 1,200 in an auditorium designed and acoustically engineered to the standard that professional music, theatre, and dance performance requires. A flexible studio theatre of 300 seats will accommodate chamber performance, experimental work, and emerging artist productions. An outdoor amphitheatre will bring performance into the open air for community events and large-scale festivals. Rehearsal studios, professional backstage facilities, green rooms, dressing rooms, technical production workshops, recording capabilities, and exhibition areas will all be built to the standard that working professional artists require. A film screening room built to festival projection and sound standard will host the annual Gambia Film Festival and visiting cinema programmes. The building will incorporate sustainable design principles including solar energy, passive cooling, and rainwater harvesting, and will be set in grounds developed as a public cultural park accessible free of charge.
The NBP will establish a year-round artistic programme that celebrates the full breadth of Gambian and West African creative expression, with traditional arts, contemporary performance, film, music, and cross-disciplinary work all finding a home on the Theatre's stages.
A Traditional Arts Residency Programme will bring griots, kora masters, sabar drummers, balafon players, and traditional dance companies into the theatre as artists-in-residence, providing professional performance opportunities, recording facilities, and documentation support that captures living traditional arts for future generations. An annual Traditional Arts Festival will present the full range of Gambian traditional performing arts in a dedicated festival week, including public masterclasses and community workshops. A Griot and Oral Tradition Archive, maintained by the theatre in partnership with the National Council for Cultural and Historical Preservation, will systematically record the repertoire, oral histories, and performing techniques of master practitioners across The Gambia. A National Music Showcase series will make the theatre the premier music venue in the country across all genres. An annual Gambia Film Festival will present Gambian and African cinema alongside international selections. Cross-disciplinary commissions combining music, dance, theatre, and visual art will establish the theatre as a site of creative innovation.
The NBP will make education and youth development as central to the National Performance Theatre's mission as the artistic programme itself, because a national cultural institution that serves only those who can afford tickets has failed half its purpose.
A National Youth Theatre Programme will provide structured performance training, production experience, and mentorship to young Gambians from across all regions, creating the pipeline of skilled performers, technicians, directors, and arts administrators that a thriving national creative industry requires. Year-round workshops, talent showcases, creative industry training programmes, and film screenings will make the theatre a working hub for Gambian creative talent throughout the calendar. Career pathway programmes in production, technical theatre, media, event management, and arts administration will create formal qualifications and employment routes for young Gambians who want to build careers in the creative economy. Annual school visits, touring outreach productions delivered to schools across all seven regions, and subsidised student ticket programmes will ensure that the theatre reaches young Gambians wherever they are, not only those who can travel to Kombo St. Mary's.
The National Builders Party will establish the National Performance Theatre Authority to operate the theatre professionally, govern it with genuine arts expertise, and position it as a cultural tourism anchor that draws international visitors and generates economic activity across the surrounding hospitality and creative economy.
The Authority will be governed by a Theatre Board comprising professional arts administrators, performing arts practitioners, creative industry representatives, and tourism sector representatives. An Artistic Director and an Executive Director will lead the creative programming and commercial functions respectively, appointed through open competitive processes that attract the calibre of leadership a national cultural institution requires. The theatre will be funded through a combination of government support, ticket revenue, event hosting income, private sponsorship, and international cultural partnerships, aiming for commercial sustainability while maintaining the public access and artistic ambition that a national theatre demands. Its proximity to the coastal hotel zone will make it a natural addition to every international visitor's itinerary. Regional and international cultural festivals hosted at the theatre will bring visitor spending into the local economy and build The Gambia's profile as a cultural destination alongside its reputation as a heritage and nature destination.
For Gambian Artists
A professional stage. A 1,200-seat auditorium with real acoustics. Rehearsal studios built for the work. Recording facilities. A programme that includes your art form. A touring circuit that brings your work to audiences across the country. A residency that gives you time and space to create. The National Performance Theatre is not a venue that Gambian artists aspire to perform in one day. It is the venue they perform in here, at home, in the country that produced them.
For Young Gambians
The National Youth Theatre Programme, the creative industry training, the career pathways in production, technical theatre, and arts administration: these are the structures that turn creative talent into creative careers. The stage you can see yourself on shapes the ambition you allow yourself. When the National Performance Theatre opens, a young Gambian musician, dancer, dramatist, or filmmaker will be able to see their name on that stage and understand that the ambition is not too big. It is exactly the right size.
For Every Family
Subsidised tickets, touring productions to every region, school visits, community workshops, and a public cultural park surrounding the building mean that the National Performance Theatre belongs to all Gambians, not only those who can afford premium seats. A griot performing in a world-class venue in Kombo St. Mary's is a griot whose art is honoured by the space that presents it. That honour is shared by every Gambian who knows the tradition he carries.
The New National Standard in performance is a stage that tells Gambian artists their work is serious, their culture is valued, and their nation invests in what they create. A griot whose kora is heard in a 1,200-seat auditorium designed to carry it. A young dramatist whose debut is presented in a professional venue with proper lighting and sound. A filmmaker whose work premieres in a cinema built to the standard of the world's great film festivals. A touring West African company that adds Gambia to its circuit because the venue finally meets their technical requirements. The National Performance Theatre will be built once. Built right. Built to last. And every Gambian who walks through its doors, as performer or audience, will feel the difference between a nation that settles for what it has and a nation that builds what it deserves.
The Gambia has produced musicians, griots, dancers, and performers whose talent belongs on the world's great stages. The National Builders Party will build the great stage at home. A cultural landmark where Gambians shine, not somewhere else, but here. In The Gambia. On their own terms.
Think Big. Build Big.
Read the plan. Join the movement.
Vote NBP