By Margartta wa Gacheru (written 3.2.23)
Now that many aspiring Kenyan playwrights are coming forth with new scripts, it’s time to recall that many brilliant writers request assistance from their friends, including honest critics.
These writers are asking for help to ‘workshop’ their scripts in order to improve their writing and make it sharper, clearer, and qualitatively more compelling. Their friends might find loose ends that need to be tied; characters or scenes that require an extreme make-over or certain segments that simply do not make sense.
Through workshopping the script, those issues can be resolved before they are criticized in the public domain.
I would have come to a writer’s workshopping session if I had been invited, for instance, by Liquid Arts Productions. We could’ve discussed their latest satire, Kemit because it needed a bit of re-thinking before it came to the Kenya National Theatre’s main stage last weekend, not after.
For example, in the opening scene, there’s one proud, boastful researcher, Dr Boli (Tony Ngigi) who’s experimenting to find a serum that does something, which we do not know. He’s a fast talker and a parody of what real scientists look like. Case in point, he mixes this or that liquid, and suddenly, presto! He declares he has found the serum he’d been struggling to create. Now, it needs to be tested. Actually, no scientist can claim success unless he or she has taken their topic through a series of rigorous tests before declaring success.
But the issue of testing never arises again. Instead, his love-struck colleague, Dr Samantha (Mwende King’ori) comes in, quickly followed by his patron who’s apparently a corrupt politician, Richard (Majestic Steve), both of whom are impatient with Boli.
Samantha, who has been working with him for years, now wants him to open his heart to love. Implicitly, we know she means open to her. He can’t listen because he says he’s committed to science and to creating a legacy.
Richard wants something from Boli too. It seems he wants to claim ownership of Boli’s research. The concoction he wants him to create is an old fashion ‘Love Potion’. It’s not clear who he wants it for since he personally is being chased by Boli’s sister April (Veronica Mwangi) who’s already ‘in love’ with him. It seems he wants another woman to take it but that’s never clear. Actually, Richard wants to monetize the love drug which he’s already advertising, in time for Valentine’s Day.
Meanwhile, the ‘star’ of the play comes in carrying GOK boxes. Are they for Boli or are they simply being stored at Boli’s lab which Richard says he’s paid for? The ‘star’ is Richard’s Maasai Security guard (Sammy Mwangi). There’s nothing ambiguous about his character. He sips a bit of the love potion, without knowing what it is. Why he does it? Maybe he suspects that’s what it is. In any case, he’s immediately transformed into a ‘crouching tiger’, lunging after feisty Leah (Hadasa Kariuki), the lab cleaner. He implicitly ‘proves’ that Boli’s potion works. But after he drinks it, the research is never referred to again. It’s one of those loose ends that need to be resolved.
Another problematic moment in the play is when Cassandra (Isabella Moraa), the over-dramatized caricature of a ‘celeb’, also sips some unknown liquid off the lab table. She immediately loses her balance and keels over, as if she were dead. The reggae fan, Jamie (Kelvin Manda, Kemit’s playwright), also takes a sip of the same stuff and collapses even quicker.
So why, after all the others find Cassandra and Jamie “dead”, why wasn’t anybody except Richard and Maasai willing to touch the “dead bodies”? Why does April also ‘die’ immediately upon hearing Jamie and Cassandra are ‘dead’?
Too many things happen without clearcut motivation on Kemit’s stage to take the show seriously, either as a comedy or a comedic love story or comedy-drama.
Then there’s the issue of the cops. When they initially storm into Boli’s lab, they dash around the place without identifying who they are or why they are there. Perhaps we are supposed to understand they are trying to catch Richard in the act of stealing from the government which they eventually do. But at the play’s end, I still wasn’t convinced that Maria Beja or Karani were cops, (maybe konjoes).
In the end, Samantha persuades Boli to open up and accept her love while Cassandra, Jamie, and April rise from the ‘dead’. But the last-minute shocker is when Boli suddenly leaves Samantha’s embrace and rushes into the arms of Cassandra! What?! Does that work for you?
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