MEETINGS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

Meetings have consequences. (posted 11.1.23) That’s the first take away one gets from watching John Sibi Okumu’s play, “Meetings’ which was staged on opening night of the Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) following its successful staging earlier this year at Alliance Francaise. Directed by Prevail Arts’ founder and award-winning actor, producer, director, and scriptwriter, Martin Kigondu, the play explores some of Kenya’s darkest days during its recent past. The period following the 1982 coup was apocalyptic in that Daniel arap Moi gave a green light to goon squads going out to collect anyone breathing a hint of criticism of him or his autocratic regime. It meant that spies, moles, and traitors to ordinary Kenyans (like Ben Teke’s character, Meshack) were everywhere. It meant that no one knew who they could trust since your neighbor might be a spy for Moi. If so, the next thing you knew, you could be picked up overnight like Samora’s and Faoulata’s father, Augustus (Gibson Ndaiga) who had to flee the country before he was tortured in the basement of Nyayo House. No one dared speak their mind or share the bitterness they felt for the loss of freedom to speak out against what had befallen both the country and whole families, like those shattered during those traumatic times. Meetings is an intimate portrayal of one family’s matriarch, Gran (Marrianne Nungo) and her efforts to bring her children together after their ties had been shattered, both by politics and by delicate sensitivities that Kigondu brought out well in his outstanding cast. The play has a powerful message, but it probably deserved a more exclusive slot in the KITFEST schedule, rather than being staged at the tail end of the opening night’s program. The first unraveling of this dysfunctional family’s past comes as Augustus aka Gus (Gibson Ndaiga) and his African-American son, Samora (Cosmos Kirui) return to Kenya after Gus’s 26 years living in exile in the States. It’s the time for Samora to be introduced to family, including his jovial Uncle Julius (Emmanuel Mulili) and the sister Faoulata (Red Brenda) that he never knew he had until his uncle Julius tells him she exists. This is just one of the stunning secrets revealed during the play’s multiple meetings. Julius initially looks jovial, but he secretly harbors deep seated feelings of resentment towards his older brother even before Gus fled. His internal wounds only festered while his bro was away, only to burst out in their final family meeting. The climatic volatility of Julius’ powerful outburst was toned down for FESTAC, compared to an earlier performance this year. But the raw emotions were still there. Esther (Hannah Wanjiru), Gus’s girlfriend, had never told him before he fled that she was pregnant. Nor did she tell him about Faoulata’s birth. Consequently, Esther suffered as a single mother who blamed Gus for going, but who was also conflicted since she knew it was her choice not to tell him in good time. So, she too has tender feelings when he comes to see his child and for the siblings to meet. Faoulata also had to ensure her boyfriend Zeke (Steve Gitau) meets her Gran since she and her grandmother are close. Gran approves of the lad, irrespective of his being the son of the traitor Meshack (Ben Tekee) who Gran had known at Makerere University where she had been the first woman from her village to attend university. In fact, the play starts off in the first of a series of meetings, with Gran regaling her granddaughter with tales of her past life, being a hot chick who followed trendy fashions and drove the men wild with her flirtatious figure and matching intellect. But she is a widow now and wants nothing more than to bring her family together and heal their wounds in the process. But what we see from this bird’s eye view of the one-on-one meetings is that they all have issues that the Gran hopes to resolve to bring her family altogether. One other reason Gran wants that last meeting is for Samora to see how complicated his extended family is. He’s their embodiment of youthful hope in the present and future. Hope is also reflected by the anticipated wedding of Faoulata and Zeke, with her being the child of a freedom fighter, and Zeke, son to a post-colonial Home Guard who enjoys the fruits of Independence that only those who compromised with the colonizers who remain in Kenya to this day.

ABSTRACT ART TO REVIVE THE SOUL

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted october 29,2023) Mark Lecchini is one architect I know who doesn’t see a dichotomy between art and architecture. “After all,” he tells BD Life, “both are concerned with issues of composition and proportion, of harmony and balance.” With that in mind, one can understand how a man who builds homes that stand in the leafy suburbs of Nairobi can also be having his second solo exhibition at one off art gallery in rosslyn currently. It's true that he left a successful architectural firm in UK to return to the land where both his parents were born. But again, the man feels strongly that “There is art in architecture and architecture in fine art.” But to examine the giant diptychs that fill the walls of One Off’s stables gallery is not to see anything resembling a house, church, stadium, or amphitheatre. Instead, Lecchini’s art is perfectly abstract, giant exercises in the composition of color, curve, texture, and layers of oil paints. “I have to be totally relaxed in order to paint,” he says. He admits it’s not a frame of mind that he finds easily (if at all) in Nairobi. So, he rents a small cottage up at the Delamere Conservancy where he spends hours listening to Mother nature in all her diversity, music, mood, pulse, and vitality. His passion for nature is only equal to his love of music, specifically to jazz music, and the kind produced by jazz giants, men like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Theolonius Monk, and many more. “When I am not listening to nature, I am listening to them,” he admits, almost reverentially. He even listens to them while he paints, which can give one a clue as to what his abstract studies of color actually mean. He leaves meaning up to the viewer however since he strives to reach a transcendental sort of psyche where all logic and reason are ruled out so that all that’s left is pure emotion. “It’s the emotion I aim to paint,” he says, taking note of how different his abstract art is compared to his geometric brick homes, But there is nothing sketzophrenic about Mark’s approach to his style of living. On the contrary, he takes a more philosophical approach and notes the way the Stoics, over 2000 years ago, made more sense to him. A man like Marcus Aurelius described in his book entitled ‘Meditations’ how everything came back to Nature, or basically dust to dust. “I took the title of his book to be the title of this exhibition as well,” he says. ‘Meditations’ might be seen as a series of paintings that all reflect Lecchini’s contemplation of both the beauty of Kenya’s countryside and the elegant, improvisation of jazz saxophonists at the peak of their performance, which was basically in the 1960s in the US. “I was always listening to them as I painted,” he says, as if each of his strokes mirrored the mood of his favorite horn rising and dipping into delicious sounds that Lecchini sought to express emotionally through his paint. Explaining how his first layers of color were created by liquifying his paint with turpentine, thus giving his oils a water color effect on his canvas. He admits he would sometimes make sketches of his designs first, but he preferred letting the lines and curves come as they flowed. Then once he got the initial layers and colors as he wished them to look, he would now drop the turpentine and resort to linseed oil. The linseed would serve to enhance the depth of the oil tones and thicken the paint. So it is now that he will use various sizes of brushes to experiment with which strokes of color resonate best with his mood generated from his music and restful mind. All the names of Mark’s painting are taken from the titles of jazz tunes, mainly from Miles, but also from Coltrane and Monk. Most of them are diptychs, two painting bonded by theme and production. To some viewers who might not care to consider Lecchini’s philosophical approach to his art, his work might look like scratchy lines that a child might apply once they had a packet of colored crayons and pads of paper to mess with. But to the rest of us, one can actually feel the rumble of winds whispering in his ears as he put on canvas what he actually felt. Call it ‘Crystal silence’ or ‘Fire Waltz’, Lecchini’s abstract improvisations revive the soul.

FISH CHEGE THE MAN TO WATCH: GEN. THEO #1

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (wrote September 24, 2023)

Not everybody speaks Kikuyu¸ not even all those who have a ‘wa’ as their middle name. Nonetheless, if someone is good at reading body language and is fortunate to have as good a translator as Nyambura wa Maina was last Sunday when we met at Kenya Cultural Centre to watch ‘Nyitia Njohero’ or ‘Tightening the belt’, then one could at least get the gist of the play. Directed by Chege Muthamaki (aka Fish) who also co-stars with Humphrey Maina and Titus Wainaina as the three male patients staying in the Men’s Ward, the show is a comedy. But it is no ordinary comedy. “It made me laugh so hard, i felt like I was about to break a rib,” one audience member, Samson Kibocho told BFLife shortly after the show’s rather unfortunate ending. “There were several moments when I was laughing so hard, I had to step out of the auditorium as I was making so much noise,” he confessed. Set in the men’s ward of some anonymous rural hospital, each man has a different story to share. All three were from different generations. The oldest one is Chege’s character, General Theodore, who has been staying in the hospital ward for nearly 20 years. In fact, the anniversary of his arrival is upcoming; so is his impending departure due to hospital policy stating that 20 years is enough. Yet in all those years, the General had never been visited by a single family member, not a wife, nor a child. Their absence led him increasingly to feel like the only family he has is at the hospital.

Next in line after the General came Karuri, played by Humphrey Maina who we have most recently seen performing with Crony Players. But in Nyitia Njohero, he has a more prominent role, bantering with ‘Fish’ Chege about women and his desire to get together with their nurse, Wandia aka Karembo (Daisy Micere). Unfortunately, Karuri’s hopes of getting together with Wandia are dashed once the youngest patient to the Men’s ward arrives. James Ng’ure (Titus Wainaina) comes to their ward, bloodied, bullied, and badly beaten. His vulnerability has an appeal to Nurse Wandia that infuriates Karuri. Supported by the General who spurs him on in his verbal assaults against the pup, Ngure is more preoccupied with his pain rather than the threats coming from Karuri. His pain is so palpable, Ngure can’t help himself. He weeps nonstop and this gives Ngure and the General a chance to fight for patriarchal position related to their tradition on manhood wherein there is and still is no room for whimpering or weepy men.

That argument could have continued forever. Instead, there’s a blackout. And when the lights come back on, we see the Captain pondering over a document which we later learn is a Will. What we also learn is that the elder patient. General Theodore is worth a fortune which is how he could cover the costs of living in the hospital for 20 Years. In fact, Theodore has essentially subsidized the hospital all that time. But what is even more stunning is the fact once the will is read, that the General decided to leave all his wealrth to the only family he has had during those decades, the hospital. And before he chose to dole out his dollars, shillings, pounds sterling, Chinese.. and Russian,, he has secretly hadarock-solid relationship with Nurse Margareta.

But then the tide turns one last time when after bringing booze into the hospital in violation of hospital rules, Ngure slips and spills the alchohol all over the General’s wires, causing sparks to fly and the machine keeping the General alive, explodes and then dies. Both the machine and the captain die. The comedy’s story comes full circle, with the ending leaving us at a loss. We wish the Fish hadn’t died. But somehow, that was the best way for the story eo end. Well done for this new kikuyu company which will see again soon

KIKUYU HUMOR THAT TRANSCENDED CULTURAL CONFINES: G#2

GENERALTHEODORE’S KIKUYU COMEDY IS NAUGHTY BUT NICE:G#2 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 28, 2023) Watching a play that is not being staged in your mother tongue can be a challenge to anyone who loves theatre and story-telling on stage. But if you’re sitting with an excellent translator, as I was last Friday night, then a whole other lifestyle can open up as the language is always linked to a different culture, in which language plays a critical role. But one doesn’t need a translator for every word of a General Theodore production as I found out last Friday night while watching ‘Thua Nguthue’ at the Kenya Cultural Centre. Director Johnson ‘Fish’ Chege ensures that his cast throw their whole bodies into their performances. And by so doing, we the audience, are all the more informed as to what’s happening within each scene. For instance, one doesn’t need an interpreter to understand that there’s funny business going on when, in the bedroom of an old man known as ‘G’ (Fish Chege), two men (clearly hung over) wake up slowly, followed by a strange woman. The woman stealthily slips out of the younger man’s bed and into the loo. Dressed in super short shorts, the type meant to lure men after hours, she clearly has cultivated some sort of relationship with the younger man we’ll soon learn is David. My interpreter fills me in and lets me know, there was meant to be a wedding that day, but the time has passed now. It was meant to be with G’s future son-in-law, David (Tito wa Githomo) and his daughter Maureen (Njoki Maina). But the Bachelor Party, the one usually staged the night before a wedding, went on too long. The muratina honey beer was too sweet to stop drinking. And the woman who landed in David’s bed left a big question mark in everybody’s head. To fill them (and us) in on what went on at the wedding site is Kadenge (Humphrey Maina). He arrives in a flurry and never slows down. The epitome of dramatic amusement, he’s the one to tell of Maureen’s fury at both her father and her spouse-to-be. Sh5 million will be wasted unless the scene can be repaired. And that can only be done, if Maureen forgives David and finds out who the mystery woman is. G (short for General Theodore) works out a plan to reschedule the wedding for early evening the same day, as soon as Kadenge can find a pastor to conduct the wedding service at such short notice and for a fee of Ksh60,000. There’s also the business of reconciling Maureen and Dave. She’s hot and overwrought with rage at being left at the altar and left to be laughed at by the neighborhood gossips as she is taken to be a fool. But ultimately, his love for her penetrates the protective wall that she’s constructed to prevent herself from feeling any more pain. They were all set to say ‘I do’ (with Kadenge now serving as Pastor) when the truth was told: The strange woman, called Tatlana (Cereu wa Maina) is David’s wife! They had actually done a swift ceremony the night before when Dave was drunk and Tatlana, a busy sex worker, wasn’t going to let go of this big chance to find a way out of the ‘Red Light’ district and into respectability. But that’s the back story. Otherwise, Tatlana has the last word in the show. It is she who is the wife of David. She got there first. Kerplunk. The curtain falls. The end. It’s a rather clumsy ending, with all the loose ends left loose and unresolved. We are meant to recall that at some point during the bachelor party, David picked up Tatlana and took her to G’s place. When she was discovered the following morning, she’d refused to leave, knowing now that she had conjugal rights. So, Thua Nguthue is yet another cliff hanger, much in the style we frequently see in both Heartstrings and Crony productions. The trick that gives appeal to this format of a show ending is that it’s clearcut. The challenge of it is finding a line that is possible but not probable. And the more shocking, surprising and unimaginable it can be, the better. The ending of General Theodore’s play is not unimaginable; but it has been so much fun, with its amusing anecdotal approach to jokes, we were just pleased to watch their latest comedy, and also to have an excellent translator in the process.

EAST AFRICAN ARTISTS CONNECT WITH ART HISTORY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted october 24, 2023) When Veronica Paradinas Duro first came to Kenya in 2014, she was an architect, not a curator and founder of one of the country’s signature art galleries. But as she’d studied both fine art and architecture at University of Madrid, she was conversant in both fields. Ultimately, her love of art won the day. NavitArt Gallery was born by the end of 2016, once she had traveled around Kenya and met many local artists whom she felt deserved more exposure and appreciation than what they currently had. But from the outset, Veronica also made a point of seeing beyond encumbering boundaries. She’s visited artists from all over East Africa, many of whom are in her current exhibition, entitled ‘Beyond this face 2 – Echoes of the past’. “There are 32 artists in the exhibition, half of whom are Kenyan. The rest are from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda,” Veronica told BD Life. But numbers are not the issue in this remarkable show. It’s the correlations that she has made between contemporary artists and those of centuries past. Asked why she felt compelled to make the comparisons, Veronica was quick to respond. “To me, art is universal, but the history of art hasn’t yet included African art or art reflecting an African perspective,” she explained. But that is only part of what her ambitious exhibition aims to achieve. Having studied the historical movements of art, from ancient Egypt to the Renaissance up to Surrealism, and Modern Black Figuration, Veronica has tried to correlate all 32 contemporary African artists with painters from previous periods in time. In some cases, one can see, for instance, how the Egyptian painter Souad Abdel Rasoul has much in common with Mexican artist Frida Kahlo since both are women and both share an element of surrealism in their art. One can also see why she links Michael Soi’s art with that of Andy Warhol since both could correlate with the modern Pop Art movement. The same holds true with Kenya’s Ehoodi Kichapi and the African American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. “What I have done is not to say that one artwork is better than another, but give [East African artists] a place within the broader story of the history of art,” Veronica said. It is an ambitious and imaginative project, especially when she correlates Eritrean artist Fitsum Berhe Woldelibanos with the acclaimed French painter Henri Matisse, or draws a connection between Sudanese artist Eltayeb Dawelbeit and Marisol Escobar in Assemblage Art. At this stage, one can see that her knowledge of both the African and Western history of art is encyclopedic. For how else could she have recalled that one of Boniface Maina’s more recent works had comparable features to a surrealist painting by the Spanish artist Salvador Dali. Or that Shabu Mwangi’s art shares comparable features with the British painter Francis Bacon. In fact, Veronica doesn’t pass judgement on anybody’s way of painting. Instead, she takes their art at face value, looking at artists who either share comparable color palettes, or subject matter or even similar positioning of the subject seated as their portrait was being painted. The last consideration is one of the reasons Veronica saw correlations between Nedia Were’s ‘Mukhana Shiong’o’ (Beautiful Lady) and Leonardo di Vinci’s beautiful lady, ‘Mona Lisa’. Both women are seated in a three-quarter frontal position, both have an imaginary landscape behind them and both have a classically enigmatic smile. What I find most thrilling about this exhibition is that although it might seem absurd to look for commonalities among artists of the past and present, Veronica has curated this show in her own unique and unconventional way. She has sought to share African art from a different perspective, one that gives their art an open door into an international art world that can’t help being surprised by the beauty, vibrancy and diversity of African art. There’s a 42-page catalog that one needs to see if for no other reason than to read the captions in order to understand how for instance, Patrick Kinuthia could be correlated with the Fauvist movement of the late 19th century, and how Peter Elungat is appropriately classified as a magical realist. Even the way the curator found a compatibility between the 19th century German artist, Casper David Friedrich and Paul Onditi’s solitary figure of Smokey is a marvel. And even the way she appreciates how Coster Ojwang’s portraits are as stunning as Claude Monet’s portrait of himself. GravitArt is based at Peponi Gardens in Westlands.

KIBO LANE ART FAIR FILLED THE GARDEN AND HOME OF GERALDINE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 23, 2023) The Kibo Lane Art Fair, held last weekend in Karen, was actually the venue where three working artists came out into the open air after hibernating quietly for far too long. Geraldine Robarts, Gabriela Gakuo, and Gakunju Kaigwa may not look like they have much in common. After all, Geraldine is very much of a solo creative, working round the clock on her ever--experImental paintings. Meanwhile Gabby is more of an ‘emerging’ artist who only now, after many years working for an international airline, is coming back to her original training which was in art and design. And Gakunju is a professional sculptor whose art has been shown all over the world; yet he too had gotten lost in his teaching and dedication to his students, such that he’s now reemerging after sometime. Fortinately, it was Geraldine who called the other two to join her for the art fair. She held a bit of sway since she had been both of their Kenyatta University lecturer in fine art. “I had taught them both, and I had hoped to exhibit with them at some point,” Geraldine told BD Life at the opening of the art fair last Friday afternoon. She had even built a spacious, well-lit exhibition hall behind her home in hopes that other artists would come and exhibit there. But she never advertised that space since she’s been using it ever since to exhibit her own recent works of art. For instance, as she is a believer in recycling and upcycling found objects, Geraldine had found a lot of rusty mabati which she had once used on the roof of her studio. “I wanted to elevate the ceiling in my studio, so I decided to use the left-over mabati to create my latest paintings,” she said. For instance, her autobiographical piece entitled “My Family” featured mabati cut-outs of her sister, mother and herself, all three of which were painted and then stapled onto stretched canvas. Her granny is also in the painting but painted directly onto the canvas, symbolic of the behindthe scenes role her fashion-designer grandmother had played in her life. Her studio next door also displayed a half dozen of Gakunju’s functional artworks. These were shapely wooden seats and tables made from an array of local woods, either Eucalyptus or Podo, Grevillea or Jacaranda, and then finely polished with resin. Reassuring me that he hadn’t chopped down a single tree to create his wooden furniture, Gakunju said he’d found most of his giant tree stumps at building sites where the wood might otherwise have been used for firewood if he hadn’t picked it in time. Years ago, Gakunju told me he’d always wanted to teach, so when the opportunity arose, he happily went to teach ISK students. But it frankly curtailed his sculptural work, which he is just getting back to. Having worked in all manner of media, he’s created sculptures in everything from Carara marble and Kisii stone to bronze, clay, and fiberglass to welded steel, local building blocks, and Jacaranda wood. So one hopes the Kibo Lane Art Fair will re-activate Gakunju’s dedication to pursuing his own art, since he’s among our very finest sculptors in the land. And Gabby Gakuo is another fine artist who responded to Geraldine’s suggestion to help create a troika of artists exhibiting at the art fair. Having gotten drawn into administrative work soon after she completed her course at KU, Gabby is also just getting back to remembering she is an artist who need not apologize for it. The simplicity of her work is charming, but the ones that I feel are most effective are not on canvas, but rather on plywood where she paints trays in both abstract and picturesque images and on the sort of sufuria (metal cooking pan) that are normally called a ‘wok’. “There were builders working across the street from me who I saw shoveling cement and sand using that [wok], so I asked them to get me a few,” Gabby told BDLife. “When they brought them back to me, I realized what fun it would be to paint on them, rather than on canvas,” she said, speaking now like a good student of Geraldine who also loved looking for new materials to create with. Gabby’s paintings were all displayed outdoors on easels while the rest of Gakunju’s sculptures were graciously placed all over Geraldine’s home, a home in which every wall is filled with brightly colored paintings by the mwalimu herself.

KITFEST TO SHOWCASE INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL THEATRE TROUPES

By Margaretta wa Gacheru podtrd October 22,2023 The Eighth Edition of the Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) is nearly upon us and it’s bound to be bigger, better, more festive and flavorful than in years past. That’s because it has already signed up more than a dozen international, regional and national theatre troupes who will be performing from October 31st to November 21st. They’ll be coming all the way from Ireland, Italy, Finland, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland as well as from India, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania. And from Kenya, there will groups coming from around the country as well as some of the best productions seen in recent times, with most of them scripted by Kenyans themselves. Those include shows like Prevail Arts’ interpretation of John Sibi Okumu’s play Meetings, Ujumbe from Beyond the Mainstream by Wakio Mzenge, Son of Man’s Drums of War by Mavin Kibicho, CMG Posh media’s Big Boys of Shibale by Mark Wabwire and Allan Wantonyi, Mumbi Kaigwa’s own They call me Wanjiku, and Crony Players’ collective creation, Husband Home and Away. What most people don’t know about KITFEST is that it has been busy all year long. For instance, its ‘County Theatre Fiesta’ program ran a series of workshops in six counties as a means of strengthening theatre performances country-wide. It assembled some of our finest thespians to train local groups everywhere from Eldoret, Kisumu, and Nakuru to Mombasa, Embu, and Kiambu. “The workshops included training in everything from scriptwriting, producing, directing and acting, to stage management, light and sound design, marketing and even the legal aspects of doing theatre in Kenya,” KITFEST founder Kevin Kimani told BDLife. “We’ve been following surveys which indicate that up to 95% of theatre activities in Kenya take place in Nairobi, so our focus has been on training theatre groups in areas included in that remaining five percent,’ he added. The workshops ran for 12 days each, nine days for training, three for rehearsals and performing on the last day of each workshop. “The six counties where we ran our trainings will be represented at KITFEST by the theatre groups that went through the program,” Kimani said. They’ll include Young Women for Peace or YOWOPE from Nakuru, Blink Theatre from Uasin Gishu, Masafa Arts from Kiambu, Amazon Theatrix Ensemble from Kisumu and E-14 Dancers from Embu. There has also been another series of workshops running over the last three weeks by the KITFEST Trust. These have produced four new radio plays that were scripted, cast, produced, directed, then edited, and finally performed by the four teams trained by the Swiss Audio Theatre Professor Erik Altorfer. With support from the Swiss Arts Council, Prof. Altorfer was able to work with a mix of 16 Kenyan creatives who came from various backgrounds. Some were musicians, some actors, directors and scriptwriters, others sound engineers, along with several filmmakers. What brought them altogether was the desire to learn how to make radio plays. “I was here briefly a year ago and ran a three-day workshop on the production of radio plays. But I felt the time was too short. So, we managed to arrange for my return to run this [extended] workshop,” he told BD Life. Preceding his arrival in Nairobi, Prof Erik worked online with the 16 to develop the four scripts that would take their cue from the KITFEST theme, entitled “Echoes from Earth: Stories of Climate Action.” Each script was a collaboration, evolving as it bounced back and forth between the Kenyans and their mentor, the Professor. After that, came the casting by which time he had touched down in Kenya and was working with the four teams at a recording studio in Nyali. Speaking to the Professor’s students, most of whom had never produced a radio play before, they all were elated for having this opportunity afforded to them by the KITFEST Trust. The plan is to have a tent set up where the plays can be heard at any time. Unfortunately, all the other performances won’t be repeated, so one will need to keep track of programming and your time management. “We are going to try to stay on track, as close to the program scheduling as possible,” Kimani said. Staying on track for him has meant keeping his purpose—to help create a dynamic, world class Kenyan theatre movement-- always at the forefront of his thought. That hasn’t been difficult since Kimani’s whole life has been wrapped up in theatre. “It was like love at first sight.” And clearly, that love has never died. . “

TRAUMA AND TRUTH, NOT AN EASY MIX

bY mARGARETTA WA GACHERU (POSTED OCT. 17, 2023) Trauma is not an easy concept to understand as one would have seen last weekend when Prevail Arts presented ‘Matchstick Men’ at Kenya Cultural Centre. Trauma is defined in one dictionary as simply ‘a deeply distressing experience’, But the consequences of such experiences are not easily understood. Yet they can shatter relationships, turn one’s life upside down, and even disable someone’s grasp on reality. Martin Kigondu chose to tackle the topic of trauma sometime after the 2007-2008 post-election violence that rocked the country and traumatized whole families and communities. Shem (Emmanuel Mulili) is one man who’s been deeply traumatized by the violence that robbed him of his wife; but as the play opens, one cannot see visible scars on his body nor detect a psychological scar when his friend (Bilal Mwaura) arrives late for their meeting. There’s a white medic’s jacket on a chair in their meeting room that suggests this might be a psychiatric session. But then, who’s the doctor and which one’s the patient? One can’t be sure since both men seem to have issues. What’s more, as their conversation opens up and they start to address more intimate, personal topics, they seem to get eluded, intertwined in word games and mental twists and turns. Shem seems to be especially good at this sort of stone-walling, remaining with what the Shrink (who we have figured out is Mwaura) believes are Shem’s secret demons. Yet just as their hour-long session is about to end, there seems to be a breakthrough in Shem’s steel-clad story (that even he doesn’t remember). That’s when we see the Shrink step out of the room and tell his nurse he needs a ‘double session’ with this patient. But he quickly steps back into their interchange to try to unravel Shem’s traumatic experiences with his parents and also with his wife. As it turns out, both of those experiences were deeply traumatizing. So much so that Shem apparently buried them down in the deep recesses of his psyche. He unconsciously stashed them so far away from his rational consciousness that they might never hurt him again. Both traumas were closely associated with his close encounters with violence and death. They began in his childhood when he watched his cruel step-father beat up his gentle mum. The violence inflicted on her was so intense one night that Shem at aged 11 was now strong enough to fight back. He pushed the man down a flight of stairs, at the bottom of which the man lay dead. Yes, Shem had actually killed his step-dad. The other truly disturbing experience happened during post-election-violence when terrorists broke into his house, raped, killed, and chopped off the hand of his wife. It goes without saying that the loss of his wife by those exceedingly cruel and violent means must have had a profound impact on Shem. In fact, he was transformed from being a sensitive, loving man into someone numbed by the trauma of witnessing so much evil. That was why Shem's sister and her friend the Shrink decided it was imperative to get to the root of her brother’s problem. Otherwise, the State could take him away to some mental institution, and his problem would never be unearthed or treated and fully resolved.. So, the Shrink had sought to unearth both of these ugly experiences so that Shem could reconcile himself to what had happened in his life to have the trauma. Matchstick Man is an elusive script aimed at unraveling the truth about one man’s traumatizing experiences and breaking through the mental barriers that obstructed his grappling with his demons. At the end of the play, we naturally do not find out what Shem will do with all of this unadulterated information. He looks shocked by these discoveries about what he’s experienced in his life, and what he can actually do with this information. The two actors have a wonderful chemistry that enabled them to naturally swing from a sensitive exchange of ideas into a well-choreographed brawl that went on for several minutes, but it is beautifully achieved. The play ended rather inconclusively since Shem was now stuck having to address the guilt that he must have buried all those years. The Shrink had succeeded, but poor Shem. Both Mwaura and Mulili gave sensitive, often incandescent performances in Matchstick Men which I think Kigondu wrote to rouse greater public awareness of the problems associated with mental health. A

Sebawall Sio is a woman with scads of energy and a curiosity just as large. “I love learning new things,” the artist told BD Life at the opening of her first solo exhibition at One Off Gallery. It is actually one of two solo exhibitions that opened last weekend at One Off; hers is in the Loft, while Elias Mun’gora’s is in the Stables. Hers is the one with the rich mix of artistic genres including glass and fiberglass sculptures at the centre of the show surrounded by an abundance of paintings, prints, and water colors on all the walls. Yet as diverse, edgy and experimental as her artworks are, they can hardly hint at circuitous journey that Seba has been on prior to her discovery that she was destine to be a fine artist as well as one of the few female sculptors in Kenya, apart from the award-willing Maggie Otieno. Yet Seba’s realization that fine art was the path she wanted to pursue came long after she’d studied law, international finance and banking as well as other sundry subjects that apparently didn’t satisfy her passion for learning or her purpose to put into practice new insights related to truth and beauty. How she found her way to Brush tu Artists Collective a few years back is another story, but it was there that began working with other artists to experiment in various media and methods for making art. “I still consider myself a member of Brush tu although I’m currently working closely with Kevin Oduor at Kuona [Artists Collective, formerly known as Kuona Trust]. He’s my mentor in sculptural techniques and the use of materials like resin and fiberglass,” she added. It is in those materials, crafted into a series of sculptures that serve to expose Seba’s affinity for women as a central theme in her art. We could see it in her sculptures but also in her paintings which equally convey her love of women and love of being one as well. And while I feel Seba’s sculptures are the strongest works in this show (although it is difficult to compare 2D versus 3D art), I have to say that her perspective as a painter has also grown. It’s as if her previous paintings of women kept them in hiding. But at One Off, her women come alive as she now uses stronger strokes and colors to make clearer statements about women’s emotions and their impact on their lives. Meanwhile, next door in the Stables, Elias Mun’gora changes the subject altogether. Exploring the hot topic of history, and the salient subject of land, Mun’gora becomes a symbolic storyteller. He uses the issue of colonialism in East Africa, first by the Germans and later by the British. Either way, they came as land-grabbers intent on claiming whatever land they wanted while leaving Africans paupers, displaced and exiled in their own land. It’s no surprise to see Mun’gora taking up this topic since he comes from that region, the one the British claimed to identify with as they said it had similarities with their homeland. But the colonial land grab led many of the locals to rise up in rebellion, a movement the Brits named ‘Mau Mau’. But among themselves, locals called their initiative ‘The Land and Freedom Army’. The army fought to retrieve their land and to oust the Brits altogether. Unfortunately, after their leader Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi was arrested and hung, the movement lost its momentum. But Mun’gora’s show illustrates that this important history has not been forgotten, only re-imagined from a Kenyan’s perspective. But it left future generations food for thought and the perpetual concern over land. One point his art is making is that land grabbing continues to take place even now. It happens by Africans against their neighbors as well as by their former colonisers and by neo-colonisers like Chinese and Indians. Through his amazing artworks, he reveals how and where these practices are taking place, and the passivity with which Africans are still incredulous about what’s happened to their homeland. Images of men standing around also reflect a traumatized people who were so cruelly treated, first through the loss of their land and then by the cruelty of colonizers and their African conduits. Mungora had only brought ten of these post-colonial paintings to One Off, but each one contains an encyclopedic account of Kenyan history that deserves to be documented or at least turned into someone’s doctoral dissertation explaining all that Elias reveals in his mixed media art.

GRAVITAT FITS CONTEMPORARY EAST AFRICAN ART INTO BROADER ART HISTORY

EAST AFRICAN ARTISTS CONNECT WITH ART HISTORY By Margaretta wa Gacheru (POSTED OCT 16, 2023) When Veronica Paradinas Duro first came to Kenya in 2014, she was an architect, not a curator and founder of one of the country’s signature art galleries. But as she’d studied both fine art and architecture at University of Madrid, she was conversant in both fields. Ultimately, her love of art won the day. NavitArt Gallery was born by the end of 2016, once she had traveled around Nairobi and met many local artists whom she felt deserved more exposure and appreciation than what they currently had. But from the outset, Veronica also made a point of seeing beyond encumbering boundaries. She’s visited artists from all over East Africa, many of whom are in her current exhibition, entitled ‘Beyond this face 2 – Echoes of the past’. “There are 32 artists in the exhibition, half of whom are Kenyan. The rest are from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda,” Veronica told BD Life. But numbers are not the issue in this remarkable show. What is are the correlations that she has made between the contemporary artists and those of centuries past. Questioned as to why she had felt compelled to compare contemporary African artists and those of the post, Veronica was quick to respond. “To me, art is universal, but the history of art hasn’t yet included Africans’ art or art reflective of their point of view,” she explained. But that is only part of what her ambitious exhibition aims to do. Having studied the historical movements of art, from ancient Egypt to the Renaissance up to Surrealism, Graffiti Street art, and Modern Black Figuration, Veronica has tried to situate all 32 artists’ works with a comparable painter from the past. In some cases, one can easily see how the Egyptian painter Souad Abdel Rasoul has much in common with late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo since both are women and both share an element of surrealism in their art. One can also easily understand how Michael Soi’s art and that of Andy Warhol have much in common as both can be correlated within the Pop Art movement. What’s more, the link between the Kenyan Ehoodi Kichapi and the African American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is a no-brainer since they both fit into what she names the Graffiti art movement. “What I have done is not to say that one artwork is better than another, but give them a place within the broader story of the history of art,” Veronica said. It is a wonderfully ambitious project, especially as she so generously sets the Eritrean artist Fitsum Berhe Woldelibanos next to the popular French painter Henri Matisse and also finds correlations between Sudanese artist Eltayeb Dawelbeit and Marisol Escobar in Assemblage Art. At this stage, one can see that her knowledge of both the African and the Western worlds of art is encyclopedic. For how else could she have recalled that one of Boniface Maina’s more recent works just happened to have comparable features to the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali. I have always felt that Shabu Mwangi had a lot in common with the British painter Francis Bacon. But having recently seen an exhibition of Leo Mativo, I couldn’t imagine why she would have also correlated Leo’s art with Bacon’s. But then I saw how Leo’s art had radically changed since he began working closely with Shabu and cultivating some of his style and darker approach to painting. In fact, Veronica doesn’t pass judgement on anybody’s way of painting. Instead, she takes their art at face value, looking at artists who either share comparable color palettes, or subject matter or even comparable positioning of the subject seated as their portrait was being painted. The last consideration is one of the reasons Veronica saw so many correlations between Nedia Were’s ‘Mukhana Shiong’o’ (Beautiful Lady) and Leonardo di Vinci’s beautiful lady, ‘Mona Lisa’. Both women are seated in a three-quarter frontal position, both have an imaginary landscape behind them and both have a classically enigmatic smile. What I find most thrilling about this exhibition is that although it might seem absurd to look for commonalities among artists of the past and present, Veronica has curated this show in her own unique and unconventional way. She has sought to share African art from a different perspective, one that can give their art an open door into an international art world that can’t help being surprised by the beauty, vibrancy and diversity of African art. There’s a 42-page catalog that one needs to see if for no other reason than to read the captions in order to understand how for instance, Patrick Kinuthia could be correlated with the Fauvist movement of the late 19th century, and how Peter Elungat is appropriately classified as a magical realist. Even the way the curator found a compatibility between the 19th century German artist, Casper David Friedrich and Paul Onditi’s solitary figure of Smokey is a marvel. And even the way she appreciates how Coster Ojwang’s portraits are as stunning as Claude Monet’s portrait of himself. GravitArt is based at Peponi Gardens in Westlands.

3 G's AT KIBO LANE ART FAIR. GABBY GAKUNJU AND GERALDINE

KIBO LANE ART FAIR HOSTED 3 G'S: GAKUNJU GABBY AND GERALDINE (10.15.2023) The Kibo Lane Art Fair, held last weekend in Karen, was actually the venue where three working artists came out into the open air after hibernating quietly for far too long. Geraldine Robarts, Gabriela Gakuo, and Gakunju Kaigwa may not look like they have much in common. After all, Geraldine is very much of a solo creative, working round the clock on her ever--experImental paintings. Meanwhile Gabby is more of an ‘emerging’ artist who only now, after many years working for an international airline, is coming back to her original training which was in art and design. And Gakunju is a professional sculptor whose art has been shown all over the world; yet he too had gotten lost in his teaching and dedication to his students, such that he’s now reemerging after sometime. Fortimately, it was Geraldine who called the other two to join her for the art fair. She held a bit of sway since she had been both of their Kenyatta University lecturer in fine art. “I had taught them both, and I had hoped to exhibit with them at some point,” Geraldine told BD Life at the opening of the art fair last Friday afternoon. She had even built a spacious, well-lit exhibition hall behind her home in hopes that other artists would come and exhibit there. But she never advertised that space since she’s been using it ever since to exhibit her own recent works of art. For instance, as she is a believer in recycling and upcycling found objects, Geraldine had found a lot of rusty mabati which she had once used on the roof of her studio. “I wanted to elevate the ceiling in my studio, so I decided to use the left-over mabati to create my latest paintings,” she said. For instance, her autobiographical piece entitled “My Family” featured mabati cut-outs of her sister, mother and herself, all three of which were painted and then stapled onto stretched canvas. Her granny is also in the painting but painted directly onto the canvas, symbolic of the behindthe scenes role her fashion-designer grandmother had played in her life. Her studio next door also displayed a half dozen of Gakunju’s functional artworks. These were shapely wooden seats and tables made from an array of local woods, either Eucalyptus or Podo, Grevillea or Jacaranda, and then finely polished with resin. Reassuring me that he hadn’t chopped down a single tree to create his wooden furniture, Gakunju said he’d found most of his giant tree stumps at building sites where the wood might otherwise have been used for firewood if he hadn’t picked it in time. Years ago, Gakunju told me he’d always wanted to teach, so when the opportunity arose, he happily went to teach ISK students. But it frankly curtailed his sculptural work, which he is just getting back to. Having worked in all manner of media, he’s created sculptures in everything from Carara marble and Kisii stone to bronze, clay, and fiberglass to welded steel, local building blocks, and Jacaranda wood. So one hopes the Kibo Lane Art Fair will re-activate Gakunju’s dedication to pursuing his own art, since he’s among our very finest sculptors in the land. And Gabby Gakuo is another fine artist who responded to Geraldine’s suggestion to help create a troika of artists exhibiting at the art fair. Having gotten drawn into administrative work soon after she completed her course at KU, Gabby is also just getting back to remembering she is an artist who need not apologize for it. The simplicity of her work is charming, but the ones that I feel are most effective are not on canvas, but rather on plywood where she paints trays in both abstract and picturesque images and on the sort of sufuria (metal cooking pan) that are normally called a ‘wok’. “There were builders working across the street from me who I saw shoveling cement and sand using that [wok], so I asked them to get me a few,” Gabby told BDLife. “When they brought them back to me, I realized what fun it would be to paint on them, rather than on canvas,” she said, speaking now like a good student of Geraldine who also loved looking for new materials to create with. Gabby’s paintings were all displayed outdoors on easels while the rest of Gakunju’s sculptures were graciously placed all over Geraldine’s home, a home in which every wall is filled with brightly colored paintings by the mwalimu herself.

RUINED: A PLAY READING LIKE NO OTHER AT GOETHE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (May 5, 2023) It was a Play Reading like no other. A story told by 10 actors seated before a house-full audience in the congested upstairs library of Goethe Institute. It was also a performance that had never taken place before. That was because the ensemble assembled by director Esther Kamba had decided unanimously to do their first read-through of ‘Ruined’ without a prior rehearsal. “It was agreed to keep it simple and spontaneous,” Esther tells BDLife, referring to the award-winning play by African American playwright Lynn Nottage. Yet, when the reading was about to begin, all ten quickly climbed into their respective characters and gave them ‘full-bodied’ life, using just their voices. It began with Joe Kinyua as narrator, reading the playwright’s instructions to the cast. Those instructions are normally internalized by a show’s director and cast who are guided by the writer’s ideas. Then, what an audience sees in a show is dialogue blended with the director’s and cast members’ live interpretation of the play But in a Play Reading, the audience listens to the dialogue but they are left to imagine what those words might translate into on a stage. For instance, I saw the reading of ‘Ruined’ from a cinematic perspective. The actors got into their characters so well that I felt we were with them deep in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo during the height of a civil war between the State’s military forces and the rebel army. The play itself is set within a brothel owned and operated by Mama Radi, who is played with a no-nonsense style of humanity by Caroline Odongo. Her brothel is a neutral zone where members from all sides of any conflict can come to drink and fulfill their lusty desires with women employed and trained by Mama to do the job to her clients’ satisfaction. The play is filled with dark humor even as it reflects on the way women’s sexuality has been weaponized such that rape is a tool of torture and a means of destroying a people. DRC is the first country where rape and sexual assault were finally recognized as weapons of war, just as deadly as an AK47 or assault rifle. The problem was so rampant in Congo that Nottage was commissioned by an American theatre company to write a play about it. Goodman Theatre even sent her to East Africa where she met women who told her many terrible truths about the horrors of what was ruining the lives of women, girls, and the country as a whole. The play that Nottage wrote won her countless awards. It also compelled Esther Kamba to secure the rights to stage it here in Kenya. The play reading was meant to test the waters to see whether an audience would appreciate the script. Turns out they loved it, and urged Kamba to perform it as a full production. “But that will cost us more than we can afford just now,” Kamba confessed. Cost didn’t seem to quiet the audience who responded in the affirmative when one crew member asked if they would support a future production. The relationships in the play are raw and wonderful. There’s Christian (Arthur Sanya) who regularly brings Mama supplies, and who one day brings two young women to work in the brothel. Sisters Selina (Eileen Bulungu) and Sophia (Agnes Kola) need a safe haven, and Christian knows the Mama can provide them with that. But the Mama can’t be bothered. She is ultimately persuaded to accept them, but only Selina can serve the men fully. Sophia had been so badly damaged sexually that her female organs had been ‘ruined’ for good. Ironically, Sophia has the most exquisite soprano voice that unfortunately attracts bad men, including top fighting men who threaten Mama who, by playing a shrewd diplomatic set of cards, gets Sophia and her place off the hook. Meanwhile, Sophia is stealing cash from under the Mama’s nose. And when Mama confronts her, Sophia confesses she has heard of an operation to repair her damaged parts. Mama had planned to sack her, but in the end, there is a total turn around. There are other sub-plots in this dazzling play which nearly ends as a tragedy. But finally, there’s a fairy tale ending of the kind you only find in romantic novels like those of Mills and Boon. Included in the cast were Caroline Odongo, Nyokabi Macharia, Joe Kinyua, Arthur Sanya Mururi, Mugambi Kihara, Esther Kola, Ileene Bulungu, Sundrez Malley, Victor Mwangi, and Steve Njau. stage. For instance, I saw the reading of ‘Ruined’ from a cinematic perspective. The actors got into their characters so well that I felt we were with them deep in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo during the height of a civil war between the State’s military forces and the rebel army. The play itself is set within a brothel owned and It was a Play Reading like no other. A story told by 10 actors seated before a house-full audience in the congested upstairs library of Goethe Institute. It was also a performance that had never taken place before. That was because the ensemble assembled by director Esther Kamba had decided unanimously to do their first read-through of ‘Ruined’ without a prior rehearsal. “It was agreed to keep it simple and spontaneous,” Esther tells BDLife, referring to the award-winning play by African American playwright Lynn Nottage. Yet, when the reading was about to begin, all ten quickly climbed into their respective characters and gave them ‘full-bodied’ life, using just their voices. It began with Joe Kinyua as narrator, reading the playwright’s instructions to the cast. Those instructions are normally internalized by a show’s director and cast who are guided by the writer’s ideas. Then, what an audience sees in a show is dialogue blended with the director’s and cast members’ live interpretation of the play But in a Play Reading, the audience listens to the dialogue but they are left to imagine what those words might translate into on a operated by Mama Radi, who is played with a no-nonsense style of humanity by Caroline Odongo. Her brothel is a neutral zone where members from all sides of any conflict can come to drink and fulfill their lusty desires with women employed and trained by Mama to do the job to her clients’ satisfaction. The play is filled with dark humor even as it reflects on the way women’s sexuality has been weaponized such that rape is a tool of torture and a means of destroying a people. DRC is the first country where rape and sexual assault were finally recognized as weapons of war, just as deadly as an AK47 or assault rifle. The problem was so rampant in Congo that Nottage was commissioned by an American theatre company to write a play about it. Goodman Theatre even sent her to East Africa where she met women who told her many terrible truths about the horrors of what was ruining the lives of women, girls, and the country as a whole. The play that Nottage wrote won her countless awards. It also compelled Esther Kamba to secure the rights to stage it here in Kenya. The play reading was meant to test the waters to see whether an audience would appreciate the script. Turns out they loved it, and urged Kamba to perform it as a full production. “But that will cost us more than we can afford just now,” Kamba confessed. Cost didn’t seem to quiet the audience who responded in the affirmative when one crew member asked if they would support a future production. The relationships in the play are raw and wonderful. There’s Christian (Arthur Sanya) who regularly brings Mama supplies, and who one day brings two young women to work in the brothel. Sisters Selina (Eileen Bulungu) and Sophia (Agnes Kola) need a safe haven, and Christian knows the Mama can provide them with that. But the Mama can’t be bothered. She is ultimately persuaded to accept them, but only Selina can serve the men fully. Sophia had been so badly damaged sexually that her female organs had been ‘ruined’ for good. Ironically, Sophia has the most exquisite soprano voice that unfortunately attracts bad men, including top fighting men who threaten Mama who, by playing a shrewd diplomatic set of cards, gets Sophia and her place off the hook. Meanwhile, Sophia is stealing cash from under the Mama’s nose. And when Mama confronts her, Sophia confesses she has heard of an operation to repair her damaged parts. Mama had planned to sack her, but in the end, there is a total turn around. There are other sub-plots in this dazzling play which nearly ends as a tragedy. But finally, there’s a fairy tale ending of the kind you only find in romantic novels like those of Mills and Boon. Included in the cast were Caroline Odongo, Nyokabi Macharia, Joe Kinyua, Arthur Sanya Mururi, Mugambi Kihara, Esther Kola, Ileene Bulungu, Sundrez Malley, Victor Mwangi, and Steve Njau.

EAST AFRICAN ARTISTS CONNECT WITH ART HISTORY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (10.10.23) When Veronica Paradinas Duro first came to Kenya in 2014, she was an architect, not a curator and founder of one of the country’s signature art galleries. But as she’d studied both fine art and architecture at University of Madrid, she was conversant in both fields. Ultimately, her love of art won the day. NavitArt Gallery was born by the end of 2016, once she had traveled around Nairobi and met many local artists whom she felt deserved more exposure and appreciation than what they currently had. But from the outset, Veronica also made a point of seeing beyond encumbering boundaries. She’s visited artists from all over East Africa, many of whom are in her current exhibition, entitled ‘Beyond this face 2 – Echoes of the past’. “There are 32 artists in the exhibition, half of whom are Kenyan. The rest are from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda,” Veronica told BD Life. But numbers are not the issue in this remarkable show. What is are the correlations that she has made between the contemporary artists and those of centuries past. Questioned as to why she had felt compelled to compare contemporary African artists and those of the post, Veronica was quick to respond. “To me, art is universal, but the history of art hasn’t yet included Africans’ art or art reflective of their point of view,” she explained. But that is only part of what her ambitious exhibition aims to do. Having studied the historical movements of art, from ancient Egypt to the Renaissance up to Surrealism, Graffiti street art, and Modern Black Figuration, Veronica has tried to situate all 32 artists’ works with a comparable painter from the past. In some cases, one can easily see how Michael Soi’s art and that of Andy Warhol have much in common and how both can be correlated within the Pop Art movement. One can just as easily see how Ehoodi Kichapi and Jean-Michel Basquiat can fit well together within the Graffiti art movement. “What I have done is not to say that one artwork is better than another, but give them a place within the broader story of the history of art,” Veronica said. At this stage, one can see that her knowledge of both the African and the Western worlds of art is encyclopedic. For how else could she have recalled that one of Boniface Maina’s more recent works just happened to have comparable features to the Spanish artist. Salvador Dali. I have always felt that Shabu Mwangi had a lot in common with the British painter Francis Bacon. But having recently seen an exhibition of Leo Mativo, I couldn’t imagine why she would have also correlated Leo’s art with Bacon’s. But then I saw how Leo’s art had radically changed since he began working closely with Shabu and cultivating some of his style and darker approach to painting. In fact, Veronica doesn’t pass judgement on anybody’s way of painting. Instead, she takes their art at face value, looking at artists who either share comparable color palettes, or subject matter or even comparable positioning of the subject seated as their portrait was being painted. The last consideration is one of the reasons Veronica saw so many correlations between Nedia Were’s ‘Mukhana Shiong’o’ (Beautiful Lady) and Leonardo di Vinci’s beautiful lady, ‘Mona Lisa’. Both women are seated in a three-quarter frontal position, both have an imaginary landscape behind them and both have a classically enigmatic smile. What I find most thrilling about this exhibition is that although it might seem absurd to look for commonalities among artists of the past and present, Veronica has curated this show in her own unique and unconventional way. She has sought to share African art from a different perspective, one that can give their art an open door into an international art world that can’t help being surprised by the beauty, vibrancy and diversity of African art. There’s a 42-page catalog that one needs to see if for no other reason than to read the captions in order to understand how for instance, Patrick Kinuthia could be correlated with the Fauvist movement of the late 19th century, and how Peter Elungat IS appropriately classified as a magical realist. Even the way the curator found a compatibility between the 19th century German artist, Casper David Friedrich and Paul Onditi’s solitary figure of Smokey is a marvel. And even the way she appreciates how Coster Ojwang’s portraits are as stunning as Claude Monet’s portrait of himself. GravitArt is based at Peponi Gardens in Westlands.

DRAMATISING SHUJAA STORIES VIA BALLET

It would be a mistake to assume a show starring seven-to-twelve-year-olds wouldn’t be an entertaining and even enlightening way to spend a Sunday afternoon. ‘Shujaa Stories: A Celebration of Kenya through Ballet’ proved that point last weekend at Braeburn Theatre where Dance Centre Kenya brought together a slew of creatives to produce the first original Kenyan ballet. The stories were impressive enough for the former Westlands MP Tim Wanyonyi to come serve as the narrator of all 12 Shujaa Stories. He would share each one before a small team of DCK dancers would come out, bedecked in colorful costuming, and dramatize through dance, what each shujaa story was all about. “This show is a collaboration of many people among whom we have felt especially honored to be working with,” DCK’s founder and artistic director, Cooper Rust tells BD Life. “We are especially thrilled to have brand new music composed for us by Andrew Tumbo who also assembled five brilliant instrumentalists to perform his shujaa music live during the ballet,” she added. Noting that there are so many outstanding Shujaa stories, the Sunday show is likely to be the first in a series of performances linking storytelling with Kenyan history, and ballet. The first one would include super-heroes from all over Kenya and beyond. They would represent Shujaa visionaries coming from the Kamba, Embu, Nubian, and El-Molo to the Luo, Kikuyu, Giriama, Maasai, and Makondi. Each story was dramatized through dance, or more specifically through a series of short ballets, each one of which was choreographed by a member of the senior DCK troupe of dancers. The shujaas whose lives were revealed through vibrant music and swift-footed dance included legends like Wango wa Makeri and Maketilili wa Menzi, both of whom were leaders who ‘broke glass ceilings’ long before ‘feminism’ was understood. Wangu’s (Jamila Yunus} appointment as ‘Headman’ in Murang’a was unprecedented but generally accepted until she made demands in defiance of men’s double standards. After that, she became a freedom fighter for women’s rights. In contrast, Mekatilili (Rebeccah Sun) led a full-scale struggle against the British who she could see meant to take over her Giriama people. She was a visionary and fierce freedom fighter who the British arrested twice, but twice she escaped to fight the occupation of her people’s land. She was finally exiled to Somalia, but her tenacity and freedom-fighting spirit live on. There were several other women shujaa’s whose heroic moments were told and dramatized through ballet. They included tales about Queen Amanirenas, the archeress and leader of her Nubian people who eventually came and settled in Kibera; Syonguu, another prophetess, this one from Ukambani, and my favorite, Anyango Nyalolwe, () daughter of the Lake [Victoria] whose magical powers were revealed after she married a humble fisherman and helped him to get rich. He misused his wealth on drink and more wives. Anyango warned him to stop, but he didn’t listen. So she left with her co-wives and returned to the lake while her husband lost everything. Moral of the story? Respect your wife and listen to her wisdom. But the shujaa stories were not only about women. In fact, all the prophetic men were just as colorful and courageous as the women. For instance, Ireri wa Irugi, the prophet of Embu foresaw the coming of the British in a dream. He even saw them coming with a peculiar animal that had an iron mouth. It was that metallic mouth’ that would be used to overpower the Embu people. Still, they remember Ireri for his prophetic vision and voice. Then there was the story of Muyaka Bin Haji who was a skillful, pioneering poet from the Coast. All the shujaa have very different ways of serving their people. But these stories can also be seen as part of a wider process to decolonise Kenyans’ consciousness. That’s because many of them are about characters whose leadership and special skills came to light either before or during the early days of colonial development [disruption] in Kenya; before people were persuaded that colonial culture was superior to African ways of life./ What was also exciting to note about the show was the number of young Kenyan guys who have gotten involved with ballet and other forms of contemporary dance, many of whom are coming through DCK’s scholarship program which has enabled many youth from ‘underserved’ communities to attend dance classes with Cooper whose loving, disciplinarian style of teaching has shaped and re-shaped the lives of youth; many of whom can now see dance, and specifically ballet as a career course that might lead to a way forward in this life. In the final assessment, Cooper admits that the shujaa stories are a project that’s involved a large chunk of her students, many of whom became dance instructors as well as dance students under Cooper.

NAIROBI THEATRE THRIVING

THEATRE IS THRIVING IN NAIROBI By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October If anyone is under the illusion that there is nothing going on in the Kenyan theatre world currently, they need to be dispelled of that mistaken point of view. The best evidence proving there’s actually a thriving theatre scene took place this past weekend when no less than six productions were staged plus one public forum on ‘the history of Kenyan theatre’ led John Sibi Okumu, one of the country’s most prominent performer, playwright, producer, director and broadcaster. Even better than the number of shows bearing witness to dynamism of local theatre is the diversity of productions that were staged. They included every from an Alfred Hitchcock murder mystery entitled ‘The 39 steps’ to an insightful comedy by Heartstrings Entertainment called ‘Rock and hard place’ which of course is an abbreviated form for being caught between a rock and a hard place. The title refers to that place where millions of Kenyans currently reside or where they have been driven due to economic circumstances. Then there was one solo performance whose Bible-based script was an adaptation of the Gospel according to Mark. And just as Heartstring tends to stage original scripts, thus making their plays essentially ‘world premieres’, so Liquid Arts is also a troupe that regularly stages original scripts, often by the company’s founding father, Peter Tosh. This they did this past weekend. But unlike Heartstrings which always delivers laughs, Liquid Arts tackles more heavy-duty topics, often family-related. That is exactly what they did last Friday through Sunday when they staged Tosh’s original script, ‘Spot On’ which tackled the difficult topic of alcohol and the way it is causing havoc in many homes. Meanwhile, the Professional Centre, which had once been a centre of theatre activity is currently being revived by young theatre companies like the Journey’s Men. Illustrating how well the Scriptures can serve as a relevant source for theatrical performances. Mueni Lueni directed Isibi Isibi in a solo rendering of The Gospel according to Mark. Finally, there was the American musical, ‘The Sound of Music’ that became an instant classic once it came out as a film in 1965. Staged and sung by the students of St. Mary’s School, we have been seeing increasing numbers of both Western and Kenyan musicals being produced by Kenyans of late. Those include Sitawa Namwalie’s work in progress, ‘Escape: the musical’ and the latest musical initiative by Youth Theatre Kenya, entitled ‘Matumaini’. Unfortunately, one person couldn’t see everything, especially as there was also a forum led by Sibi Okumu on ‘The History of Kenyan Theatre’ held at Goethe Institute. Okumu’s talk would have been the quickest way to catch up on where local thespians have come from and where they are going as of now. Otherwise, some of us tried to attend everything that was staged, including the parody on the murder mystery by Braeburn Players, the indigenous scripts by Heartstrings and Liquid Arts, the Scripturally-based solo, the American musical and even the discussion on the history of Kenyan theatre. It was practically impossible to achieve, but the one venue where one was assured of finding a full house crowd which had come to watch a ‘rib-tickling’ comedy was at Alliance Francaise where Heartstrings comedy never fails to bring on loads of laughs. This held to be true with ‘Rock and Hard Place’. All about a guy called Marcus (Ibrahim Muchemi) who lives alone but attracts lots of his neighbors, almost all of whom are in arrears with their rent. The Caretaker (Fischer Maina) knows these deadbeats hang out at Marcus’s flat where the door is always open and no judgement against them is passed. Instead, they banter in anecdotal jokes as one after another arrives with their stories and quirky survival tactics to share. Eunice is the one female tenant that all the men admire since she works hard, doing several jobs, with a happy heart. Even Marcus admits before her arrival that he wouldn’t mind marrying her. But before he has that chance, a strange woman arrives with an apparent entitlement to Marcus’s heart. That’s when we learn he has inherited heaps of money and his family wants him home. But he doesn’t want to live among the rich. He’d prefer to live with real people. That’s when he finally proposes to Eunice who turns him down because her heart already belongs to the piki piki taxi driver (Timothy Drisii). What’s clear from the experience last weekend is that one can find all genres of theatre in this town.