PLAY READING ABOUT RAPE, WAR, AND WOMEN’S RIGHT TO FIGHT BACK

BY MARGARETTA WA GACHERU (written 5.5/6.23) It was a Play Reading like no other that I have attended before. A story told by 10 actors seated before a house-full audience in the congested upstairs library of the 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 the African American woman playwright Lynn Nottage. And yet, when the time came last Friday night and the reading was about to begin, all ten quickly climbed into their respective characters. And although it was only a sort of storytelling session, it was very different from that for several reasons. One was that Joe Kinyua became a kind of narrator, reading the playwright’s internal instructions to her cast. That instruction is normally internalized by a show’s director and cast members who are guided by the author’s ideas. Then, what an audience normally hears and sees in a production is the dialogue and the director’s interpretation of the way he or she sees the text. However, in a play reading, the audience gets to hear the dialogue but is also empowered to imagine what those words might translate into on a stage. For me, I saw ‘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 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, eat, and fulfill their lusty desires with women employed by Mama and who she also trains to do the job to the client’s 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. PLAY READING ABOUT RAPE, WAR, AND WOMEN’S RIGHT TO FIGHT BACK BY MARGARETTA WA GACHERU DRC is the first country where rape and sexual assault are finally recognized as weapons of war, just as deadly as an AK47 or assault rifle. The problem was so rampant in DRC that Nottage was commissioned by an American theatre company to write a play about it. Goodman Theatre even sent her down to East Africa where she met women who told her many terrible truths about the horrors of what was ruining both the lives of women and the country itself. The play that she 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 how an audience would appreciate the script. Turns out they loved it, and urged Kamba to please 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 Friday night audience who responded in the affirmative when one crew member asked if they would assist by supporting 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 abused sexually that her female organs had been damaged or ‘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 fix her up. Mama nearly sacks her, but then, 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 ultimately, there’s a fairy tale ending of the kind you only find in romantic novels like those of Mills and Boon.