COMEDY, DRAMA & DICKENS AT STORYMOJA FETE 2017

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted September 26, 2017)

Mike Kudakwashe came all the way from Harare to take part in Storymoja Festival 2017 which opens today (Wednesday, September 27) and runs through Sunday, October 1^st at the Nairobi National Museum.

The Zimbabwe actor will costar this coming Saturday night in ‘A Man Like You’ with his countryman Kevin Hanssen and with Kenyan actors Davina Leonard and Omwoma Mboga. The foursome will perform Silvia Cassini’s gripping political drama on Saturday night in the Louis Leakey Auditorium as part of the Festival. That same night, Sitawa Namwalie’s ‘Room of Lost Names’ will be staged at the same venue right after Silvia’s play.

But Mike, who plays a hot-tempered Somali kidnapper, doesn’t only do dramatic roles. In fact, back home in Zimbabwe his stand-up comedy is what he’s best known for.

Billed as ‘the funniest man in Harare’, he’ll be sharing his stand-up comedy on Sunday evening at 7pm also on the Leakey stage.

But Mike is not the only cast member of ‘A Man Like You’ who will stage their own one-person show during the Festival. Kevin is performing tonight (Wednesday) in ‘Dickens’, a script that’s almost entirely based on the writings of the great British writer Charles Dickens himself.

Hanssen will perform excerpts from two of Dickens’ most well-known novels, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’. He will also dramatize Dickens’ complete short story, ‘The Signalman’.

Finally, Davina Leonard who just produced Nassim Soleimanpour’s ‘White Rabbit Red Rabbit’ last weekend will star in her solo show, ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ on Sunday at 5pm also at the Leakey Auditorium

The foursome performed ‘A Man Like You’ last April in Nairobi during the first leg of their African tour. The show then went to Harare and Cape Town where they got an invitation to perform a slightly shortened version of the original script in November as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival.   

‘The Hong Kong Festival compelled us to revise our script slightly, which is what Nairobi audiences will see on Saturday night,” says Silvia.