THEATRE IN ABUNDANCE THE REST OF 2019

                                                          A scene from Heartstrings' recent play; it's now doing 'Double Trouble'

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 31 July 2019)

While Heartstrings’ ‘Double Trouble’ runs this weekend at Nairobi Cinema and the ‘improv’ team of ‘Because you said so’ has a show next Saturday, 10^th August, at The Junction, there’s lots happening on the horizon in Kenyan theatre.

Kenyan writers, directors and producers have gotten in gear, preparing shows for now as well as the rest of this year and next.

In the immediate, next Wednesday, 7^th August, Kenyatta University’s Dr Emmanuel Shikuku has revived David Mulwa’s classic script, ‘Redemption’. It will only be staged for one day, at 3pm and 6pm at Kenya Cultural Centre’s Ukumbi Mdogo.

                                                       A scene from an earlier Fanaka Arts Kikuyu comedy

Kikuyu theatre is also alive and well as Fanaka Arts Theatre is staging ‘Hihinya Ihuha’ the following weekend, from 9^th August at Alliance Francaise. And the weekend after that, on Friday, 16th August, Prevail Arts Company will revive Martin Kigondu’s ‘Matchstick Men’ also at Ukumbi Mdogo.

                                                Bilal Mwaura (R) will costar in Martin Kigondu's Matchstick Men

As exciting as all this upcoming activity is, what may be the theatrical event of the year is Hearts of Art’s original creation of ‘Wangari Maathai the Musical.’ It certainly must be one of the more ambitious projects that HOA’s founder and playwright Walter Sitati has embarked on. But he has also received lots of support both from his theatre company and Gilbert Lukalia who Sitati says came up with the bright idea first.

“I had actually been thinking about such a project, but when Gilbert brought it up, I knew we had to do it,” says Sitati who is responsible for virtually all the scripts that Hearts of Art has produced since he formed the company shortly after completing a degree from Moi University.

                                                 Gilbert Lukalia will direct 'Wangari Maathai' the Musical

Gilbert is directing the show. But as it’s scheduled to open in November, he and Walter are still in the process of casting. In any case, this is a show to highly anticipate.

The other amazing news comes on the heels of ‘Sarafina’s finale last Sunday night. At the insistence of the Minister of Culture, Dr. Amina Mohamed, Nairobi Performing Arts Studio is bringing back the musical! The earliest booking Sarafina’s producer-director Stuart Nash could get at KNT is 4^th-6^th October.

     Minister of Culture, Amb. Amina Mohamed (R) insisted Sarafina be restaged after watching it the last night of its run at KNT. It will happen first weekend in Octover. (L) Artist Geraldine Robarts.

So be prepared to get tickets early since many were turned away last Sunday. They are likely to be first in line.

Finally, NPAS also plans to put on Nairobi Half-Life and Lion King early next year. And this October, NPAS brings ‘Blood Brothers the Musical’ to University of Nairobi.

  '                    Wangari Maathai the Musical' is being scripted by Walter Sitati (L) and directed by Gilbert Lukalia (R)

BUILDING TRANSMEDIA PROJECT FOR EX-STREET KIDS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 30 July 2019)

Amrish Shah, a fourth generation Kenyan based in London and Sandra Creighton, an Afro-Irish Canadian based in Toronto both have specialized skills in transmedia. It is those skills and a children’s shelter in Ngong that brought them to Kenya where they’re currently designing a multi-media (or transmedia) platform to assist the home.

Transmedia, Amrish explains, refers to everything from virtual reality and podcasts to websites and sound bites for radio, video clips for Vevo, YouTube and cable, and even the ‘old fashioned’ print media. “Although the print that will be part of the project,” says Sandra, “will be digitalized and also voiced over by the children themselves so that all kinds of viewers [and listeners] can access the information we are creating for the shelter.”

The shelter Sandra refers to is the Hadung Cradle of Hope which she first heard about from Canadian friends who knew the young Kenyan, John Machio who founded it 17 years ago.

“He had already started a feeding centre for street children in Ngong, when a Canadian family gave him USD10,000 to start the shelter,” says Sondra who met Machio in Toronto and was impressed with him. In part, she says, because he was once a street boy himself; but he taught himself Taekwondo. After that, he went on the win top awards in the sport.

Currently based in Canada where he works three jobs so he can send funds back to Kenya every month, Machio supports 16 children, ages 10 to 22, and pays school fees for eight more whom he managed to relocate back to their families.

Sandra normally designs transmedia projects for a living. But as a creative producer and director, she prefers working on projects that have social impact like the one she’s currently doing with Amrish.

“We first met in Cape Town when we were both working on a music video for the South African jazz singer, Auriol Hays,” says Sandra who had needed a cinematographooer and camera equipment, and Amrish had all that.

“We got along well and as I recalled his family lives here, I called him from Toronto and asked him to work with me.” Adding that what she also liked about Amrish was his attitude, his insistence on not producing anything like ‘poverty porn’. “That’s the media that makes Africans look like impoverished beggars,” he says.

Nonetheless, since they both agreed to do the project pro bono, they had to figure out how to cover their costs, namely transport, food and accommodation, including airfare, he from London, her from Toronto.

“So I set up a ‘go fund me’ account online,” he says.  https://www.gofundme.com/empowering-the-huband-cradle-of-hope-in-kenya.

On it, they calculated their costs and set a target goal. That account helped them fly here with their equipment, stay at Airbnb’s and travel back and forth daily to the shelter.

“We took care not to interview the children on camera,” says Sandra who has no intention of looking like exploitative voyeurs. “We only take shots of them playing with the two Canadian volunteers who came with us,” she adds.

“The virtual reality shots are meant to provide an immersion experience so viewers can see where and how the children live, and where the funds people give are going,” says Amrish who studied English Literature at University of Kent in UK. “But once I assembled a [multimedia] portfolio to commemorate my family’s 100 years in business in Kenya, I realized how much I’d always loved storytelling. So I went back to film school in South Africa and eventually started a business there, providing equipment and services in film and virtual reality production.”

The ‘social impact’ that Sandra says she and Amrish aim to achieve with their project is economic empowerment of the children’s shelter. Noting that Machio’s monthly remittances are ‘stretched’, Amrish says those funds have to cover the costs of rent, food and salaries for staff, including the cook, laundress and Matron who Sandra describes as a mother-figure to the children, while John as like a dad.

“In addition to covering all that and the children’s school fees (including uniforms and books), it also pays for one child in boarding school and one at university,” says Sandra who hopes the new website and all the other digital components they’re in the process of creating will enable the shelter to grow and Machio to have more support. “Right now, the man hardly sleeps,” she adds.

CAN PLANTS REALLY PREVENT CANCER?

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 30 July 2019)

Having your own indoor garden may seem like a compromise for not having an estate where you can grow all the flowers and trees, fruits and vegetables that you would like. But designing an indoor or kitchen garden of your own can actually have many benefits.

For one thing you can see your garden growing every day, even if you have a busy life and wouldn’t have the time, in any case, to go out and plant, prune, weed, water and look after your seedlings as a true gardener really should.

But one of the best things about having your own indoor garden is that you can grow ‘anti-cancer’ plants. These are plants and herbs that have been tried and tested. And while they cannot be said necessarily to cure cancer, they are help you and your family fight the deadly disease and help prevent your ever getting it in the first place.

The herbs best known to contain components that can help prevent cancer include everything from mint, basil, parsley and oregano to hibiscus, rosemary and saffron. Some studies have suggested that such herbs can actually cure cancer. What is known for sure is that for centuries, all of these herbs have played an integral role in the work of indigenous healers from Asia and Africa to Latin America. Herbal remedies that have worked for generations have largely been lost in favor of modern medicine.
But as people have found that modern medicine does not necessarily cure cancer, the next best thing is prevention. And these herbs all contain components that are antioxidants capable of suppressing the growth of tutors and cancer cells.

Herbs such as mint and basil can easily be eaten raw as the leaves are sweet. But the big advantage to growing such herbs indoors is that they are on hand for cooking everything from pestos and pilaus to brewing teas, soups and sauces.

And no matter what medical ‘expert’ you consult, they will all tell you that eating fresh rather than processed foods is one important way to stave off cancer cells. And drinking freshly brewed teas rather than sugary sodas and bottled fruit drinks will do you a world of good.

And if you have space in your indoor garden to grow a few greens, be it kale (sikuma wiki), spinach or thoroko, eat more of those, spiced up with some basil, parsley and even saffron to improve not just the nutritional value but the cancer-prevention value of your meals.

DR JOYCE LABOSO, A DIFFERENT KIND OF KENYAN LEADER

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 30 July 2019)

Kenyans barely had a chance to learn how great a leader Dr Joyce Laboso was, leave alone to find out how far-reaching a role model she could have been if she had lived longer than her 58 short years.

Sadly, she passed on quietly at Nairobi Hospital last Monday, 29th July. Cancer was the crook that stole her from us, just as it had recently taken two other outstanding local leaders, Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore and Kibra MP Ken Okoth.

But unbeknownst to most Kenyans, Joyce had been fighting a lonely battle against the cruel killer for many weeks. Being a woman who valued her privacy, few people knew how this pioneering woman leader was fighting, first at the Royal Madden Hospital in UK, then in India where she went for another three weeks of treatment and finally back home where doctors had assured us that all she required was bed rest and she would be fine.

That wasn’t the case. But still, Dr Laboso has left a legacy of leadership that will stand the test of time, even though she only become a public figure in 2008 after her younger sister Lorna died in a plane crash. Lorna was the first female in the Laboso family to be elected MP for Bomet.

Yet unlike Lorna, Joyce had never aspired to be a politician. She was an academic, having trained initially to be a teacher of French (one of the first Kenyans to take up that career); then to go abroad (the first Kipsigis woman to do so) to the UK to get a Masters degree from University of Reading followed by a PhD from University of Hull. She then headed home to join the Egerton University faculty, again teaching French.

Joyce had been called by her sister’s political party, ODM to “fill the gap” in Parliament left by Lorna. They claimed it would be a way of honoring her sister’s memory if Joyce took her seat. So she ran and won the By-election by a landslide. Only then did she decide she had to fulfill that calling. It would be a matter of selfless service, to serve her people as effectively as she could.

From then on, Kenyans have seen an exemplary politician, a public servant who is in the honest business of serving her constituents. When she won a second term in Parliament, it was because she’d quickly proved herself to be a doer, not a talker.

Then after getting elected one of the three first Kenyan women elected governor, she immediately simplified the protocol. For one thing, she turned down the ‘special seat’ her predecessor, Isaac Rutto had insisted he sit on (like a throne) at every public occasion. She also refused the title ‘Your excellency’ and simply wished to be known as Madam Governor.

And perhaps most emphatically, she refused to be flown everywhere in a chopper, unlike Mr. Rutto who insisted he needed a helicopter to travel all over his constituency. Joyce said she might be slower in showing up, but she promised her people quicker services and far less waste. That way, she said, there would be more resources available for the development of Bomet County.

It was decisions like these that illustrated the qualitatively different sort of leadership style that Dr Laboso was giving her people. “I have no time for luxury,” she had said, alluding to Rutto’s throne. “I want to spend my energy serving the locals,” which is exactly what she did up until the cancer’s grip on her life was more than she could bear.

But even before she got elected governor of Bomet, she had shown her metal as a national leader. In 2013 she was elected by her fellow parliamentarians to be the first female deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. Handling rowdy MPs wasn’t the easiest job to do, but Joyce handled both genders with calm poise and professionalism.

So, by the time Joyce was elected Governor of Bomet, now on a Jubilee ticket, she had proved that she was a different kind of leader, one who was principled, purposeful and committed not to politics as usual but politics as public service to the people.

Rotary DG Joe Otin on Rotary Impact&Image

'Bring back Nelson Mandela': Sarafina in rehearsal

'Bring back Nelson Mandela': Sarafina in rehearsal

Walter Sitati on Wangari MAATHAI the musical

PAIRING COFFEE WITH ADHIAMBO’S THE DRAGONFLY SEA

Yvonne with Mshai Mwangola-Githonga and Zein Abubakar of The Performance Collective at Point Zero Book Cafe @14 Riverside

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 26 August 2019)

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor had been a shining star on the East African cultural scene long before she became a world-acclaimed writer and the author of the award-winning book ‘Dust’. As the woman in charge of the Zanzibar International Film Festival several years before Dust came on the scene in 2015, Yvonne was spearheading a fledgling film industry that has subsequently blossomed with Kenyan films like Lusala, Supa Modo and Kati Kati.

But it’s her latest novel, ‘The Dragonfly Sea’ that is winning hearts and minds currently. When she did a reading of her book last weekend, coincidentally with the launch of the Point Zero 2 Coffee House at 14 Riverside Drive, fans of the writer showed up in droves.

“We had our best attendance yet for the Point Zero Book Café,” said Dr Mshai Mwangola-Githongo who cofounded the Book Café with her Performance Collective and the Point Zero Coffee House.

The Point Zero Book Café happens every third Saturday of the month and has been reading and performing more than a dozen books thus far.

“I think ‘The Dragonfly Sea’ is our thirteen book, although this past Saturday was a special occasion since Yvonne was here,” said Mshai who has been a close friend of the author ever since they worked together at Aga Khan University.

Normally, Mshai and The Performance Collective focus on a single African writer and novel over a period of two months. “The first month [the third Saturday] we don’t expect our audience to have read the book yet [be it ‘Born a Crime’, ‘Beloved’ or ‘The Binti Trilogy’]. So we give them a short synopsis, a bit of background on the author and then we perform, reading selected portions of the book,” explained Mueni Lundi, who together with Mshai, Aghan Odero and Zein Abubakar established The Performance Collective back in 2017.

The collaboration with Point Zero Coffee’s Andrea Moraa and Wangechi Gitobu got underway the same year. “A portion of each Book Café session is also dedicated to Coffee,” said Mshai. “Andrea is a professional coffee taster, so we normally start off by talking about the book and then Andrea talks about different kinds of [specialty] coffees that one can taste at Point Zero,” she adds.

“I actually show people how to be a professional coffee taster,” says Andrea who worked for many years at Starbucks Headquarters in the UK. She not only shows her book audience the artful techniques of tasting coffee. She also shares shot-glass cups of the special coffee that she’s discussing that Saturday. Then to top her session off, she ‘pairs’ the coffee with a pastry that she says enhances the coffee taste.

Last Saturday, Andrea highlighted two coffee flavors, one from Kenya called Origin Othaya, the other from India called Monsoon Malabar, which she said was meant to correlate with the novel since we learn that day that the ‘Dragonfly Sea’ was none other than the body of water best known as the Indian Ocean.

It was Zein who gave us the historical background on Kenya’s being a ‘maritime nation’. Having been born and raised in Mombasa, he had a special perspective on the ‘Dragonfly Sea’ which was closely related to ‘decolonizing the mind’ by remembering who actually gave that body of water its name. It wasn’t the indigenous people; it was the colonizer.

It was Mshai and Aghan who did a dramatized reading from Yvonne’s new book that whetted our appetite for the writer herself to finally take the mic and not just read but tell us stories about what had inspired certain portions of her enchanting tale.

Like many in the audience that day, I have not yet completed reading ‘The Dragonfly Sea’. But I had read enough to know that the little girl Ayaana is a charming, compelling character whose life journey takes her far from Pate Island at the Kenya Coast and takes us through many adventures and realms that will open our eyes even further to the elegant artistry of Kenya’s own Yvonne Adhiambo.

SARAFINA’S BACK THIS WEEKEND

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 July 2019)

Is it too much to say that Sarafina the musical has it all! Talk about fabulous live music, beautiful choreography and a dance troupe wholly in sync with the sound, spirit and story of Soweto students’ militant resistance to the South African Apartheid system. 

When it opened last weekend at Kenya National Theatre, courtesy of Nairobi Performing Arts Studio, there were spine-tingling moments that barely waned, especially when Sheila Munyiva as Sarafina came on stage. She’s not the first Sarafina we have seen, since the play was scripted by Mbongeni Ngema back in 1986, made into a film in 1992 and re-staged the world over, including in Kenya in 2003 when Mkamzee Mtawale starred in the title role and 2018 when Brenda Wairimu did the same.

But this time round, the show has the benefit of a cast filled with a powerhouse of stars: some were there last year like Mkamzee, Hellen Mtawali and Fanuel Mulwa. But then Sheila’s Sarafina adds a fiery presence that electrifies the whole stage and sparks a chain reaction, particularly as Martin Githinji co-stars as her nemesis, the villainous Sabela. He’s the African who (like Kenyan home guards) stands in for the European oppressor with as much, if not more ferocity and vile.

But what’s particularly remarkable about this staging of the modern classic—apart from it not aging over the years, (possibly because the heroic tale of the downtrodden resisting exploitation is an iconic theme) is the intensity of feeling. Both sides are virtually at war, with neither one prepared to relent. It was true at the time and true in the play which dramatizes that profound clash of opposites with tragic consequences.

People die in this Sarafina, not like the somewhat sugar-coated film in which Whoopi Goldberg soft-pedals the role so powerfully played by Mkamzee, She’s the history teacher who conscientiously instills a sense of pride among her students, and pays with her life.

Yet as stunning as are those moments when many of our favorite characters get clobbered, water-boarded and shot outright by the Boers and their stooges, it’s the spirit of ‘do-or-die’ that the students and their inspiring Teacher consistent project in their dance, song and incessant outrage that will be best remembered from this Sarafina; a show that may go down as one, if not the best, dramatic musical of 2019. 

                                       Stuart Nash, director of Sarafina, in rehearsals at Kenya National Theatre.

BIKO TALES IN BREATHE 2 ARE AT ONCE HAUNTING, HILARIOUS AND HARROWING

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (24 July 2019)

‘Breathe 2’, Back 2 Basics’ second original creation of a stage play based on the stories by the Kenyan journalist and man-about-town, Jackson Biko, was very different from the first Breathe, staged at the same venue, Alliance Francaise, several months ago.

All the actors’ performances were still strong, but the show as a whole lacked the pizzazz impact of the original play.

It’s the plight of many a ‘sequel’ (a label the show’s conceptualiser Mbeki Mwalimu would undoubtedly reject). The expectations have been set high by the first version, but it’s rare that they are ever met. Such was the case with Breathe 2 which had much in common with Breathe 1. It just felt slightly belabored, as if Mbeki’s most favored Biko tales had already been seen the first-time round.

There were many positive correlations between the two shows nonetheless. Both derive from the genius storytelling of Biko who supposedly writes his stories based on actual people and incidents that he encounters in his everyday life.

Both featured stories that Mbeki selected to create a chiaroscuro effect, placing light short skits side by side of dark, at times lugubrious stories.   

And both had outstanding casts, omitting a few from the first round such as Gilbert Lukalia, Bilal Mwaura and Martin Githinji (who was on stage next door in Sarafina). But who came on stage in their place were two of Nairobi’s finest actors, Ian Mbugua, formerly famed for being the boss at the late Phoenix Players and Brian Ogola (who recently knocked our socks off playing the title role in the new Kenyan film, ‘Lusala’).

Director Nick Ndeda maximized on their acting chops, giving Ian the anchor role twice in his ‘Man Moment’ and Brian as the grieving widower in ‘The Duke of Gatanga’.

Plus Back 2 Basics can never go wrong with its regular cast, including Wakio Mzenge, Brian Munene, Mwikali Mary and Wanjiku Mburu who was especially good as the woman who’d been in a head-on collision and had a complete facial and body make-over.  

What is a constant feature about B2B’s cast is their consistent ability to literally throw themselves into their characters such that even if one had a problem with any one of the graphic (occasionally gory) stories or the light satiric skits, you can still be awed by the acting which was excellent.

Ian’s Man Moments had to be two high points of the show, especially when Nick cast two strong women, Wakio Mzenge and Mwikali Mary, as two guys messing around in the men’s locker room!

There was only one seriously weird moment in the second ‘Man Moment’, and that was when the two angel-like figures appeared behind the would-be lovers, played by Brian Ogola and Linda Milimu. One guesses the ‘angels’ (played by Bruce Makau and Wanjiku Mburu), dressed in solid gold kaftans and pink-winged specs were the psyches of the two lovers, but it was slightly beyond being far-fetched.

What Mbeki managed to do very well was select stories that at times were either gory or glorious, macabre or mirthful, poignantly painful or pleasantly playful.

The main issue I had with Breathe 2 came towards the end of the play. Wakio’s heart-wrenching story of Mai Mai murders, group rapes and cannibalism could have been curbed a bit although one can never get too much of the actress. What didn’t quite work was the miming of the gory scenes behind a bed-sheet so we saw shadows and silhouettes, not the actual terrorism.

The other story that could have been edited slightly was that of Wanjiku’s tale of reconstructive surgery. But what was fascinating about that scene was Bruce Makau’s journalistic character which seemed so ‘Biko-like’. Certainly, his man had the curiosity of a tenacious reporter who wanted to hear all the graphic details which Wanjiku gave him unashamedly.

The scenario that best revealed Biko’s uncanny attention to detail, as well as what one assumes was the writer’s own experience of globetrotting by air, was the YouTube scene in which three flight attendants had delightful mini-stories to tell. The only quibble I had with the scene was the flagrantly stereotypical (even racist) observations. But as they were based on the flight attendants’ first hand experiences, one can hardly deny that some people are two-faced, hard to please, picky, pushy, annoying and occasionally cool.

In short, Breathe 2 had some wonderful moments but the emotional aftermath of the show was hard to handle viscerally.

'Lwanda Rockman' the play by JJ Jumbi, based on Luo legendary hero

PORTRAITS WITH A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE BY GRAVITART

                                                                                  Artwork by Elias Mung'ora

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 22 July 2019)

Anyone with even a fleeting interest in Kenyan or African contemporary art should have gone to see GracitArt’s superlative exhibition entitled ‘Behind this Face: The Human Face Evolution in Painting’. Better still, anyone who had interest in fine art generally should have made their way to Westlands’ Peponi Court to see a fascinating show that framed African art within a global art context.

But not just any African art. What makes this show so special is the way Kenyan and Kenya-based artists are appraised on the same plane and platform as world-renowned painters like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Leonardo di Vinci and Henri Matisse.

GravitArt founder Veronica Paradinas Duro is an architect, fine artist and gallerist who doesn’t define or confine artists according to age, environment or artistic background. Her concern is the art itself. She says she had wanted to create an exhibition that linked artists whose works convey comparable styles.

Having studied centuries of Western art and currently collecting African art to present at her online gallery and at pop-up shows like the one that just closed, she sought to convey the unity of artistic expression that transcended time and space. Initially, she wasn’t sure how to present that unity until she thought of portraiture as one genre of painting that presented itself in practically every age. It was there in the ancient art of Egypt all the way up into present-day Graffiti spray painting.

Such an undertaking had been devised once before in Nairobi by the former director of the Italian Institute of Culture, Francesca Chiesa. But hers was on a much smaller scale, with just one painter, Longinos Nagila. Hers was also an impressive undertaking; it also placed the Kenyan artist’s works in a broader, deeper and historically wider context, placing Nagila’s art in a global art realm.

But Veronica didn’t limit herself to one country or person. The African countries represented in ‘Behind this Face’ included Egypt, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya and Sudan. But the preponderance of contemporary artists that she and the newest member of GravitArt, Hiroko Ishikawa, selected to compare and contrast are Kenyan. 

They included Anthony Okello, Boniface Maina, Dennis Muragura, Elias Mung’ora, Elungat Peter, Lincoln Mwangi, Onyis Martin and Shabu Mwangi. Also featured are Nairobi-based Pan-Africans like Eltayeb Dawelbait and Hussein Halfawi, both from Sudan and Fitsum Berhe from Ethiopia.

What made the Gravitart show so fascinating is the way Veronica and Hiroko compared artists we know locally with internationally acclaimed painters. For instance, they saw similarities between Boniface Maina and the Surrealist Spanish Salvador Dali, Lincoln Mwangi with another surrealist, the Belgian Rene Magritte and Peter Elungat with not just the neoclassical Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya and the art nouveau Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt. She even correlates aspects of Elungat’s art with the Italian Renaissance artist, Leonardo Da Vinci.

 

They identified elements of Shabu Mwangi’s art with those of the ‘New Figurative Art’ of the British painter Francis Bacon. They did the same for Onyis Martin and the conceptual artist, American Joseph Kosuth. And their comparing Elias Mung’ora’s paintings of ordinary working people and local street scenes with artwork by the American realist, Edward Hopper, was a ‘no-brainer’. Both are straight-forward in their clear-sighted style. Yet as realistic as their images may seem, both create paintings that are distinctive. One can identify a Mung’ora on sight just as easily as one knows a work by Hopper.

The other thing that made the Gravitart exhibition so exciting is the fact that no one has previously perceived contemporary Kenyan art so broadly as to view it within a global art context. The closest comparison to Gravitart’s curatorial design is the exhibition curated several years back by the former Italian cultural director Dr. Francesca…. She mounted a show especially for Longinos Nagila, correlating his works from one particularly exhibition with mainly Italian Renaissance painting.

Francesca’s was an excellent, eye-opening show. But Gravitart’s exhibition was wider both in depth and scope. For instance, she related the Egyptian artist Mohamed Rabie’s painting with ancient Egyptian art from the 31^st century BC. But in another respect, she could see elements of Rabie’s work that correlated with those of Peterson Kamwathi.

In most cases, we agreed with Veronica’s and Hiroko’s comparisons as for instance, Shabu Mwangi’s compatibility with Bacon, Peter Elungat’s with Da Vinci and Boniface Maina with Salvador Dali. But whether one agreed or not, it was a revelatory exhibition that one can only wish Veronica would bring back to a more accessible space.

Sarafina makes a comeback at the Kenya National Theatre

SARAFINA SETTING A HIGH BAR FOR KENYAN THEATRE

By Margaretta wa gacheru (posted 18 July 2019)

                                       Sheila Munyiva as Sarafina and Fanuel Mulwa (Crocodile) in NPAS's Sarafina

Sarafina the musical exploded on the Kenya National theatre stage this past Thursday night. The return of this iconic story of anti-Aparteid struggle came back as a result of popular demand. The Theatre had to turn away a multitude of theatre-lovers the first time Nairobi Performing Arts Studio put on the show, making it an imperative for NPAS’s director Stuart Nash to reassemble his cast and crew.

                                                    Stuart Nash in rehearsal for Sarafina (Sheila Munyiva @right)

This time around however, more than half the cast is new. One need not say ‘improved’ since one must see for him or herself. But having Martin Githinji play Constable Sabela, the Home-Guard-kind of villain who’s an instrument of Apartheid oppression against his own African people, is incredible to see. One has rarely watched such a wicked bad on our local stage. What’s more, Martin says he loves playing the part of a nasty guy since villains tend to be the most complex characters in any production.

                                        Martin Githinji (Constable Sabela) threatening Sarafina (Sheila Munviya)

He also says he loves playing opposite Sheila Munyiva who, this time round, stars as Sarafina, a role previously played by Brenda Wairimu.

Martin is not alone in describing Munyiva (who starred in Wanuri Kahiu’s film, Rafiki) as an energizing force in the production. Fanuel Mulwa who comes back in the same role of Crocodile in this award-winning production, also has loved working with this lively lady who is likely to be the show-stealer as Sarafina.

Yet Mkamzee Mtalele is also a shining star in NPAS’s ninth musical. Playing the role of the much-adored history teacher, Mistress, whose defiance of the Boer-brand of Afrikaner education gets her into big trouble with the System, personified by Ian Barton and his son Chris who both play Afrikaner cops who surveil the Soweto school and find Mistress to be a militant menace.

                                           Mkamzee Mwatela being tortured by Boer/Afrikaner cop (Ian Barton)

More than half the cast is new. Most are in their twenties, being students at NPAS for whom their participation in a live Studio production is mandatory. It’s a rigorous commitment since Nash is a professional performer, having been on West End stages (UK’s equivalent to Broadway in New York) from the age of nine. He not only directs the whole show, but produces it and assembles the cast, crew and band which are performing all the magnificent music live for the next few weekends.

For those who don’t know or remember much about the heinous Apartheid regime or the racist, white supremacist system that prevailed in South Africa for many years, it’s important to recall that Soweto youth like those in the play, originally written by Mbongoni Ngema, are the ones whose courageous confrontation with the System’s racist bigotry effectively launched the mass movement that ultimately led to the freeing of Nelson Mandela after 27 years locked up on Robbin Island and to the Independence of South Africa.

Sarafina was actually staged twice before, once in 2018 and previously in 2003 when Mkamzee played to title role of the girl whose passionate prayer for the liberation of Mandela fueled first the play, then the musical and finally the film.

Stuart Nash combined elements of all three to create an original production that will surprise those who have watched the film, which starred the African American actor Whoopi Goldberg.

                                                     Sarafina also being tortured by the Black apartheid interrogators

Come to the Theatre prepared for an electrifying experience as this cast has imbibed the spirit of liberation struggle set to music and marvelous dance, choreographed by Alexus Mwangi. Come prepared for a first-class production, even if you saw Sarafina in 2003 or 2018. It’s a show for the now!