African Performance 2010: Will Smith Look-Alike by Deborah Asiimwe

Will Smith Look-Alike tells the tale of a 17-year-old schoolboy Tereka, who hears that his school music group is entering a national competition. The winners will travel to perform in New York, so he joins the group as a Marimba player.

Once in the Big Apple he escapes from the group thinking he will have better opportunities in America, especially as he believes he could pass as a double for the famous American actor Will Smith.

Instead, Tereka finds himself alone, hungry and homeless, and while trying to escape from the attentions of the police, he befriends a homeless Jamaican woman called Liz.

She takes him under her wing and makes him realise that America is not everything that it might seem on TV.

More on the winner of African Performance 2010

Deborah Asiimwe is from Uganda and was ecstatic at having won BBC African Performance 2010.

She said she is also honoured and humbled that Professor Wole Soyinka chose her script as the winner.

The Nobel Laureate is someone whose writing Deborah says she fell in love with as a secondary school student.

Deborah’s interest in performance started in childhood as she was raised in a strong storytelling culture in South Western Uganda.

Deborah's play was seen as convincing and streetwise

She is currently working as a specialist with the Sundance Institute East Africa, and is a promising playwright and performing artist herself.

Her recent stage plays include Forgotten World, Cooking Oil, Appointment With God and Untitled, which have all received productions or stage readings in the US.

Lagoma Is Searching, You Are That Man, and My Secret all received productions at Uganda's National Theatre.

She is also a 2006 recipient of a scholarship of merit in Writing For Performance from the California Institute of the Arts, where she recently graduated with a Masters degree in Fine Arts.