KITFEST WORKSHOP BEARS BEAUTIFUL FRUIT

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted June 20, 2023)

There are many positive things that have happened since Czech Republic artists, Mirenka Cechova and Pete Bohac, joined hands with KITFEST (the Kenya International Theatre Festival) Trust. The first big one was the agreement to jointly run a ten-day acting workshop for Kenyan artists who were invited over social media to apply to participate in the event which just ended this past week. The second positive feature of their cooperation was what happened during the culminating moments of the workshop. And that was the performance by 15 Kenyan artists, selected on a first come, first served basis (not by favoritism, nepotism, or tribalism). They were accompanied by the American cellist, Nancy Snider, who travels and works closely with the Czechs to provide backup sound to whatever project they are working on. An ‘Anthology of Everyday Struggle’ was an amazing achievement of fifteen Kenyans who hadn’t worked together before. Yet they were shaped into one harmonious ensemble by the time the ten days were up. “We agreed that at the end of the Workshop, we would produce a show to reveal what the actors had learned during the workshop,” Mirenka told BD Life on the first day of the workshop when warm-up exercises were about to begin.

“I spent the first four days just listening to the artists’ stories before we scripted the show. In a real sense, everyone had a hand in the creation of the program,” she added after the show. A leading Czech stage director, producer, actor, and playwright, Mirenka was asked to describe her theatre life back home during a ‘Q & A’ session held after the performance. What she shared was a sobering moment of revelation that another country could hold artists in such high esteem that the Government helped to subsidize actors’ education, theatre centres, specific performances, and even health insurance. What was also striking was how organized the theatre scene is in the Czech Republic, which may well have to do with the fact that the Republic’s first President was award-winning poet playwright, Vaclav Havel.

One point that Mirenka made elicited a response from the leading Kenyan actor, Marrianne Nungo. She noted that Mirenka said she wrote her own Grant proposals to raise funds for her forthcoming productions. “I understand KITFEST conducts workshops, so I would like to suggest that they run one on how we artists can learn to write Grant proposals so we can fund our own productions rather than be waiting for someone else to do it for us,” Marrianne suggested. That put the onus on KITFEST Chairman Ben Ngobia and Workshops Director Dickens Olwayl who kept that possibility open. Meanwhile, the performance itself was a rich blend of mime and mimicry, contemporary dance and acrobatics interspersed with a cascade of complaints about the way artists are undervalued, underpaid, and often cheated at the end of the day. Yet what Mirenka managed to create at the outset of the show was a beautiful sense of a unified ensemble. Backed by a rhythmic drum beat and mellow accompaniment by Nancy Snider’s cello, the entire troupe moved onto the stage like a magnificent wave. They looked like an organic ensemble of fish as they swirled and swarmed around one another as if they were one united body. The beauty of their performance was that they never lost that sense of unity, even when they hemmed and hawed about the injustice of the status quo who didn’t give the artists or the arts the respect and pride of place that they deserved. But their first utterances on stage were their life-long dreams and aspirations. Each one in their turn told of ‘when they were little’, they used to dream. One wanted to be a dancer, another a super-hero, another a super-star, and so on.

But then came the disappointments, the negative stereotypes to quash those dreams. Meanwhile, there was always a feeling of defiance as they danced to the dreams they retained. They also mimed parts of their struggles. They even mimicked a government’s spokesman who promised so much, but ultimately came up with nothing much other than a flash in the pan. In short, their Anthology encapsulated so many aspects of performing artists’ life struggle, from the competition among them to the pittance they get paid to the rejections that can lead to depression and a loss of hope. Yet through it all, the actors were clearly pleased to have this rare opportunity to be mentored by Mirenka, Pete, and Nancy, courtesy of KITFest.