KITFEST OFFERS CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOPS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru There were so much positive vibes that came out of collaboration between the Czech Republic artists, Mirenka Cechova and Pete Bohac and the Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) Trust. It was best seen when they spent almost a month in Kenya in June. The first big one derived from their 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 transpired towards the end of that month. The second positive feature of their cooperation was what happened as the culminating moment of the workshop. That was the performance by 15 Kenyan artists, selected on a first come, first served basis (not by favoritism, nepotism, or tribalism). Their performance was stages at Kenya National Theatre with musical accompaniment by the American cellist, Nancy Snider, who travels and works closely with the Czechs. As a rule, she provides backup sound to whatever project the Europeans are working on. An ‘Anthology of Everyday Struggle’ was an amazing achievement of the fifteen Kenyans who hadn’t worked together before. Yet they were transformed 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’ life stories before we scripted the show,” She explained just at the workshop’s end. “In a real sense, everyone had a hand in the creation of the program,” she added. Coming to Kenya with a bio that tells us she is 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. She explained how her country held artists in such high esteem that the Czech Government helped subsidize actors’ education, theatre centres, specific performances, and even offered them health insurance. What was also striking was how organized the theatre scene is in the Czech Republic. That might have to do with the fact that the Republic’s first President was award-winning poet and playwright, Vaclav Havel. One point that Mirenka made elicited an important response from one of Kenya’s leading female actors, Marrianne Nungo. She noted that Mirenka told us she writes 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 production and not expect someone else to do it for us,” Marrianne proposed. 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 neglected, undervalued, underpaid, and often cheated at the end of the day. Yet what Mirenka managed to infuse into the production was a beautiful sense of a unified ensemble. Backed by a rhythmic drum beat and mellow cello accompaniment by Nancy Snider, 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 should be due. But their first utterances in the show 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 stories and struggles. And 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.