MT KENYA U. AT KITFEST ADDRESSING MADNESS, MANIA, AND MURDER

Roses of Blood was one of the first plays staged at the Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) 2023, and as I’d felt committed to attending as many of the shows being performed at the Kenya National Theatre, I decided to attend. The title might have put me off. What did ‘roses of blood’ mean? Something gory, I guessed, but as it was coming from Mount Kenya University students, I figured I should just be adventurous and find out. The synopsis shared in the program was equally cryptic. It was about a dead woman, a madman, and a dysfunctional family. How grim. But again, it might have something of interest to communicate. The first thing that confirmed I had made the right choice was the set design. It was both mobile and portable, and once opened, stretched all across the wide National Theatre stage. Act one opened inside a mad house, or insane asylum. Mad people were misbehaving everywhere with the staff having little control over the scene. Even the doctor (Warren Othiambo) couldn’t take charge as he brought the family of their sick son, Stephen (Jacob Koli) for a visit. But Stephen seems oblivious to any need to interact with, acknowledge, or communicate in any way with his father Mr Johnson (Steve Odewa), mother (Marylyn Wangari), or brother Raul (Anthony Macharia). But he does seem to be tortured mentally. He hears voices, which we too get to hear. They are troubling to him, up until his dead sister appears, dressed in a pure white gown as if she was either a ghost or an angel. It’s as if we are meant to be climbing into his head since nobody else on stage can see or hear her but Stephen and us. The father isn’t pleased with his son’s behavior and sounds as if he would just as soon leave him there forever. But the mom urges him to be patient and understand the boy is ill. The issue that had made him sick was the news that his beloved sister Abigail (Irene Lucy Akinyi) was dead. The cause of her death is not explained and the dad claims he loved the girl too, but that doesn’t mean a real man would break down as Stephan has done. The family departs as the doctor is amusingly ineffectual. The set change is signaled with the lighting, which shifts to the room next door where Johnson and Raul are planning how to benefit themselves in the name of serving the community by setting up a water project which supposedly will serve the whole community. Now the scene has cleverly shifted to a flashback or prequel-side of this story. The water project was originally the dream of Johnson’s and his sister Audassia’s (Florence Nyasiwe) Dad. It’s Audassia’s plan to pick up the idea and run with it. She proposed it to her brother, Johnson, but this is when the crux of the story comes out. Johnson’s misogyny (hatred of women) comes out in all of its raw and self-righteous colors. It’s also deep-seated, ridged, and rooted somehow in what it means to be a man. At the same time, there’s an economic element to Johnson’s resistance to having his sister involved in the project. First and foremost, he’s already planning to rob the project and doesn’t need Stephanie snooping around and discovering his corrupt practices. So, to say that Johnson is threatened by Audacissia’s strength might not be initially apparent. But his attitude is ugly, argumentative, and self-serving. It’s also extremist and deeply insulting in its demeaning of the entire female gender. In any case, Audacissia ignores her brother’s opposition to her being involved in what he now sees as his family business. She proceeds anyway, enlisting her niece to set up their own company in order to bid for and legally win the tender to carry out the whole water project. When Johnson hears about their plan and their efforts to take legal steps, his rage against his sister and daughter is manic. It leads one to seriously wonder if he isn’t the one with the more extreme mental problems. Johnson transmits that sense of intense, over-the-top outrage to his son Raul who, when he has a one-on-one conversation with Stephany, he’s also propelled by the dad’s insane misogyny. Thus, once Raul pulls out a knife, one could feel his vicious intent. It was truly a tense, threatening interchange between Stephany who was about to die, and Raul. But it was still a shock. What gave this story such a fascinating and powerful twist came in the final scene when not just Stephan, but even Raul and Johnson can also hear from beyond the grave. Stephany’s ‘ghost’ had struggled to break through that mental barrier that divides the living from the dead just to reach Steve. But the conditions were ripe for breaking through again and speaking first to Raul and then to Johnson. Somehow she was able to convey to her father that he had to loosen up and give the women a chance to be equal partners both in the water project and in life at large. Meanwhile, Raul was in agony, seeing what evil deed he had done to destroy the life of one human being. The show endS in contrition and in convincing us that Mt Kenya had an outstanding team of actors whose performance touched me deeply. They and their director and scriptwriter all dared to address some very relevant issues, doing so without belaboring points that might put us to sleep. Keep it up, good people.