A paper
delivered at the Kenya International Theatre Festival, 17 November, 2017
By
Dr. Margaretta wa Gacheru
It’s been
said that Media write the first draft of history. That’s because they are the
eye-witnesses to an event. They are the data collectors, the documentarists who
future generations of scholars and students of history (and in this case
theatre) must refer to when seeking to understand what really happened back
then.
For this
reason, I wish to make use of this platform that the Kenya International
Theatre Festival and the Kenya National Commission of UNESCO have given me to
implore both theatre academics and theatre practitioners to make better use of
the media to bear witness to what they do.
I make this
request because so often, especially within academia there are theatrical
events that take place but are not covered by the press. They may have utility
as teaching tools for students, but they also could serve to inspire a wider
public and make a wider audience aware of the valuable theatrical events
underway in spaces like Kenyatta, Moi, Maseno and other universities in Kenya.
I make this
request for another reason. This relates to something discussed on the first
day of the Conference by a KU doctoral candidate, Gabriel Thuku. He spoke at
length about the value of research for theatre arts academics. I also value
research but if there has been no documentation of past theatrical events, then
the research on Kenyan theatre will be superficial at best. The research will
simply use scholarly papers by researchers who went over the same fields
without having detailed information about all that went on during specific
periods in Kenya’s professional and amateur theatre.
Dr. Mshai
Mwangola-Githonga spoke on the first day of the Conference about one technique
used in the social sciences to explore specific topics. It is called
‘auto-ethnography’ and is a qualitative research method that utilizes
information garnered from the researcher herself. I wish to employ this method in
the next section of my paper as I have been fortunate enough to have been an
eye-witness to several decades of Kenyan theatre, both within academia as an
undergraduate and graduate student of literature at the University of Nairobi
and as a theatre critic writing for Kenyan media. I was also an actor
performing with UON’s Free Traveling Theatre under the direction of the Ugandan
playwright, director and UON lecturer John Ruganda. I also acted in Ngugi wa
Thiong’o and Micere Mugo’s 1976 debut performance of ‘The Trial of Dedan
Kimathi’ which was staged first at the Kenya National Theatre and later at
FESTAC, the Second World Festival of African Arts and Culture in Lagos,
Nigeria.
As a
student, I had the good fortune to witness and be part of what I consider to be
the Golden Age of Kenyan Theatre. This was when Pan African thespians were
living and working in Nairobi, artists like Okot p’Bitek, David Rubidiri, Joe
De Graff, Francis Imbuga, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, John Ruganda, Micere Mugo, Janet
Young and Mumbi wa Maina.
A number of
them were my lecturers; the rest were my mentors who I greatly admired for
their dedication to theatre practice and scholarship as well.
What I
witnessed and later wrote about as a journalist assigned by my editor, Hilary
Ng’weno enables me to speak and write now as someone who pursued both the
academicians and the theatre practitioners for stories about what they were
doing artistically.
I won’t go
into great detail at this time, but I realize there is a tremendous need for
today’s theatre arts students to have a far better grasp of Kenyan theatre
history than what is available for them to see and study right now. So I will
make a quick run through the decades in order to offer a brief survey of that
history, starting in the 60s, the decade of Kenyan independence.
THE SIXTIES
The late
Sixties is when Ngugi wa Thiong’o spearheaded a cultural revolution at the
University of Nairobi, insisting the English Department with its Euro-centric
focus be replaced with an Afro-centric focus and renamed the Literature
Department.
The core
course in the new Literature Departure would be oral literature which later
became known as orature. Students were encouraged to go home to interview and
collect data in the form of stories and indigenous folktales from their elders.
These stories, which had been either ignored or discredited for being unwritten
and told in local indigenous languages, were to be seen in a new light.
Students would be involved in developing this new field of literature that not
only respected indigenous languages but also local people’s culture and oral
art forms.
The rest of
the curriculum would include Kenyan, West and South African literatures as well
as Caribbean, African American, Latin American and also European and American
literature.
THE
SEVENTIES
I was a
student at UON starting in the mid-1970s, while this revolutionary sense of
culture was alive and thriving. I then was asked by John Ruganda, founder of
the UON’s Free Traveling Theatre to rehearse and perform with Kenyan student
thespians as we traveled all around the country. This was an immense learning
experience.
So was my
participation in FESTAC productions with Ngugi and Micere. I was also witness
to Ngugi’s creating the Kamiriithu People’s theatre that performed in Kikuyu
and staged by local peasants and workers who Ngugi directed, working with a
script the peasants helped him to shape although he and Ngugi wa Mirie were the
official playwrights. That play ‘I’ll Marry when I want to” had a very powerful
political message and one that the Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi didn’t like
since it compelled peasants to appreciate the class conditions of the society
and the feasibility of an underclass rising to resist the oppressive conditions
they were enduring in the current social system.
Ngugi was
detained and thespians felt the chill of Moi’s heavy-handed style of
censorship. So journalists, thespians and academics either chose to flee the
country after that or practice a style of self-censorship that would enable
them to survive despite the political scrutiny and surveillance.
All the
while this was happening amidst African theatre circles, European amateur and
professional theatre was thriving among groups like Nairobi City Players,
Lavington Players, the Little Theatre Players of Mombasa, Nakuru Players and
others.
One African
theatre company that picked up the spirit of indigenizing Kenyan theatre was
the Tamaduni Players. Founded by two African women, Janet Young from the Gambia
and Mumbi wa Maina from the US, both were professionally trained actors; Mumbi
was also teaching at Kenyatta University.
What made
Tamaduni special was its effort to bridge the gap between academia and
grassroot theatre practice by having its cast members (mostly young theatre
students) to go to the streets and collect stories of street children. They
then wove those stories together into a play called ‘Portraits of Survival’
which was exceedingly powerful and unprecedented. But Janet left the country
with her family soon after that, and Mumbi chose to keep a low profile as a
university lecturer after Janet left, especially as her husband, an historian,
had been arrested as a political agitator.
THE
EIGHTIES.
In the 80s a
lot of theatre performances went on at Kenyatta University, but I didn’t hear
much about them as my focus was more on cultural festivals and performances
based in and around the Nairobi city centre where many foreign cultural centres
were supporting theatre practitioners. In that regard, there were plays
performed in English but supported by the Italians, French, German and
Americans. This enabled actors to perform their political sentiments while
using the metaphors of foreign cultures.
There were
also plays staged at UON directed by John Ruganda and the leading theatre group
made up of former university students was The Theatre Workshop. Mshai Mwangola
and Mueni Lundi were both there as were Oby Obyerodhiambo, Aghan Odero, Johnny
Nderitu, Catherine Kariuki and many others.
The
Mbalemwezi Players was another set of theatre practitioners who performed on a
semi-professional basis and even had annual awards ceremonies which recognized
the role of the media, for which I was quite grateful. This was because several
of the members had business and marketing backgrounds and understood the role
that media played in publicizing their work and attracting audiences.
SCHOOLS
DRAMA FESTIVAL
From the
50s, the European settlers established the Kenya Schools Drama Festival but it
was exclusively for European youth. It wasn’t until 1979 that the first Kenyan,
Dr Wasambo Were became Inspector of Education in the Ministry of Education and
the man overseeing the Africanization of the Drama Festival. This was a
wonderful transformation to watch as the students and their teachers served as
scriptwriters as well as cast members. The commitment to theatre was and
continues to be nurtured through that vehicle. But there was no theatre arts
departments in any Kenyan universities as yet so there wasn’t a big issue of bridging
the gap between academics and practitioners.
THE NINETIES
The donor
community got quite involved with funding various theatre groups to create
performances at community or grassroots levels to educate the public about such
burning social issues as HIV-AIDS, Family Planning and FMG. Many theatre
practitioners got involved with such ventures in the name of Theatre for
Development and Theatre for Education.
One of the
leading groups that started up at this time was called Muijiza Players. Started
by James Falkland who ran the Phoenix Players (which never lost the stigma of
being an expatriate theatre), Muijiza was led by Caroline Odongo. The players
became an avenue for Kenyan playwrights to be born and others to get going as
directors, actors etc. Muijiza didn’t survive beyond the 90s but it propelled a
number of practitioners into full-time careers in the theatre. A number of
smaller theatre groups grew up in this period such as Fanaka Players, Friends
Theatre, Festival of Creative Arts and Heartstrings Kenya.
THE NEW
MILLENNIUM AND BEYOND
I was out of
the country for most of the first decade of 2000-2009 but it was during this
period that the first Theatre Arts Department was established at Kenyatta
University. Several years later, more Theatre Arts departments were established
at Moi and Maseno Universities. These departments have apparently had very
little contact with theatre practitioners like Heartstrings and FCA.
But this
conference is highlighting the need for greater collaboration between the academics
and the theatre practitioners. I know I am missing a number of theatre groups
and productions such as the revival of Nairobi City Players (formerly all
European) by Kenyans. Strathmore University is another private institution that
has taken theatre very seriously. And a group like The Performance Collective
is promoting storytelling which is carrying on from the Sigana Storytellers, a
group started in the 2000s.
The point I
wish to make in conclusion is that a great deal has been conducted since Kenyan
Independence. There is so much I almost forgot two important Theatre
Institutions which were established, one in the 1970s at Kenya National
Theatre, the other in the 1980s at the French Cultural Centre. Both were
unaffiliated with academic institutions but both played important pedagogical
roles when there were no theatre training centres in Kenya at the time: the
first was the Nairobi Drama School led by Tirus Gathwe; the other was the
Nairobi Theatre Academy. Neither one has been covered well by the media but
they can serve as important sites for research into the history of Kenyan
theatre. Also, a number of Kenyans performed in European stage productions and
a few, like John Sibi-Okumu have carried on their love for theatre. But many
more have gotten caught up in other life styles and careers.
So I hope
that both theatre academicians and practitioners will be more aggressive in
making contacts with the media and getting themselves into publications as well
as on the radio and television to let the wider public gain knowledge of the
vitality of Kenyan theatre and also encourage them to come out and attend
productions.
Thanks again
the KITF, KU and UNESCO
