LIQUID ARTS PLAY ON INTER-ETHNIC WEDLOCK (OR WARFARE?)

                    INTER-ETHNIC WEDLOCK A TABOO OR NEW HOPE?

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted August 20^th, 2021)

Peter Tosh has a taste for tackling troubling social issues in his plays, like the topic that doesn’t go away, namely ethnicity or tribalism.

His latest tale treats tribalism like a superbug that gets handed down from one generation to the next.

Technically, Kenyans are supposed to be over ethnicity. Or at least the younger generation are. Yet will the elders allow the youth to violate tradition and culture, or not?

These are the issues theatrically raised by Liquid Art’s latest production, entitled ‘Katiba’ which premiered last weekend at Kenya Cultural Centre.

Brill (Stephen Mwangi) and Vanessa (Nora Adisa) are intent on getting married and their wedding is just two days away. But there are heavy-duty family forces that are dead-set against it .

The most adamantly opposed is Uncle Tim (Felix Peter) who can’t even be persuaded by his clever wife Rose (Polyann Njenga) to let the youngsters alone. Instead, Tim threatens his nephew that on no uncertain terms will the wedding take place. He doesn’t disclose what his sinister scheme could be, but his hostility is clearly unsettling for Brill.

Vanessa also has her own ferocious naysayer in her mother, Rukia (Vivian Nyawira), who has similar ethnic arguments to Tim’s. They are reinforced once her father (Peter Tosh) arrives. He too is deeply committed to his culture and time-honored traditions. But he also blames Rukia for ‘underfeeding’ Vanessa who is skinny ‘like a mosquito’, a term similarly used as an insult by Tim.

What is clear is that Tosh is trying to show us that these ethnic stereotypes, especially those opposing cross-cultural marriage, are deep-seated beliefs. ‘Katiba’, the play’s title, is actually a metaphor for a new type of ‘c

onstitution’ being sought by the youth. In an interview that Weekender had with Tosh last Sunday, he explained his metaphor.

“Just as we fought for a new constitution, but the one we got turned out to be no better than the old one, so the new notion of relationships [based on monogamy and romantic love] may seem to be a new and better way of constituting marriage. But really, is it any better than what couples had before?”

While his perspective sounds somewhat cynical, the second half of the play reveals what he means. For as the wedding hour draws near, the lovers reveal their anxieties about their parents’ opposition to their plans. Both are deeply in love, but clearly when their families are so ferociously against them, they are in limbo about what to do.

That is when Uncle Tim bursts into Vanessa’s house (how did he know where it was?) and viciously attacks the girl. His taunts are not only abusive to the bride to be. They are literally terrorizing and scary.

But thereafter, what comes out in an exchange between Brill’s Pastor Ben (Majestic Steve) and Uncle Tim is that Tim had once loved Rukia desperately, and she had felt the same way toward him. But at one critical moment, they had a misunderstanding that each took to be intentional. They had planned a late-night rendezvous. But both got lost and didn’t meet. Each took the event personally and they never saw each other again. The bitterness of that ‘betrayal’ is what has fueled both Tim’s and Rukia’s opposition to their offspring’s wedding. They had once been brave enough themselves to cross tribal lines to fall in love. But it hadn’t worked for them, so they fell back into familiar tribal territory rather than to reconcile and be friends again.

The finale scene is the wedding which looks hopeful since Rukia arrives with her girl, head covered in kangas as is a custom in some cultures. But when the cloths are lifted, and after Brill has gleefully sung “Just the two of us”, it’s revealed that the bride is not Vanessa, but Uncle Tim’s choice, Salma (Mary Muthee). At that discovery, Brill faints and that is The End.

What I found most interesting is that the house-full audience, like myself, had no intention of applauding then. We were waiting for what we anticipated to be the final scene, when Brill would go for Vanessa and their ‘new katiba’ would begin, when as Brill explained, they would be making their own rules. But that last scene never came. So the ending is inconclusive, but disappointing all the same.

                             Peter Tosh, founder of Liquid Arts Production and playwright, author of Katiba, plays Guka

Just as Tosh said, as long as elders oppose inter-ethnic wedlock, and until there’s a radical change in perspective, mixed marriage may continue to be a taboo.