VIRTUAL REALITY, A NEW WAY OF KENYAN LIFE

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted February 26, 2022)

‘Virtual Reality’, the play scripted and directed by Derrick Waswa and produced by Dorion Production Ltd., is not about VR, the technology that creates illusory experiences that enable people to feel as if they are in the Himalayas while they are just sitting on their living room sofa.

VR is an incredible technology which can give one a 360-degree perspective on just about any place on or off the planet. But in the case of Waswa’s ‘Virtual Reality’, the term has a more literal and down-to-earth meaning.

It’s still about some people seeing and believing illusions rather than what most people call reality. Take the case of motherhood. Tiana (Arara Awuor) looks like she is a mother of several daughters, including Camilla (Claire Wahome). But her behavior is anything but motherly, in the sense of being selfless and loving, especially towards her daughter.

Tiana doesn’t display a single one of those qualities. For a moment, after hearing Camilla has been raped by her social media manager, Calistos (Keith Maina), she almost considers going to the police to report her daughter’s experience and exposing her business partner. But then, he appeals to her vanity, a factor that plays a big role in Tiana’s life. He also tells her he will destroy all her YouTube videos, reveal all her intimate emails, and cancel all her precious social media contacts. She’s currently using those contacts to build bridges into the heart of cable TV. He ultimately succeeds in convincing her it’s in her interest not to save her daughter even though she contracts AIDS from the guy.

Virtual Reality in Waswa’s play takes on many shapes and constructs, it would seem. That includes the reality and virtual reality of marriage, including family. Another virtual reality to be tackled by Waswa is monogamy, which has been attacked by African traditionalists from the first days that Christian missionaries introduced it as part of the ‘Good News’.

Philip (Martin Mwanzia), the spouse to Judge Joyce (Flora Okunji), plans to take on a second wife, which is valiantly fought by Joyce. Incidentally, she is not the same judge who presides over the court case between Tiana and Camilla who is suing her mom for emotional abuse. That case is presided over by Judge Steph (Stephanie Warua) and it’s integral the play’s central storyline.

In any case, the law is meant to give us a clear sense of social civility. It’s meant to give us a line that is clearly drawn between good and evil, black and white, right and wrong. As it turns out, there is nothing that concise in Waswa’s world.

For instance, baby-making is something that normally happens between a man and a woman who have intimate relations. But now, medical science has invented new ways to make babies. Now you can do it ‘in vitro’, by sticking an embryo in a test tube and then mixing in a bit of sperm. After that, if conditions are right, you can find the egg getting fertilized by the sperm. Then, the magical mix can be transferred into any available womb. And finally, Presto! After nine months, a baby is virtually born!!

Waswa illustrates the hazards of making virtual babies by ‘in vitro’ means. First, you have to find a virtual or surrogate mother like Sasha (Mithcele Atieno) to make her womb available for the nine-month process for the plan to work. In the case of Judge Joyce and Philip who try the ‘in vitro’ method of baby-making, they are shocked at the outcome. The baby is born with virtually no genitalia, neither boy’s nor girl’s. For Joyce, it’s as if this is not a real baby, but to Philip, the baby is acceptable as long as he can be raised as a boy.

Given I didn’t see the tail-end of the show, I can only assume Waswa had intended to send a message. And that was that our society has gone crazy with virtual reality, so much so that it’s making people hypocrites and fraudsters from morning till night. The plainest illustration of that is Tiana who is essentially trying to create her own ‘reality show’ comparable to the one that made the Kardashians rich and famous. But there is nothing genuine or spontaneous or even real about what she and her manager are filming. Perhaps when I missed the last portion of the play, I missed the arrival of characters who had some integrity, honesty, and simple goodness. Otherwise, they were virtually absent from ‘Virtual Reality’.