MT KENYA UNIVERSITY SHOCKED US WITH A POIGNANT DRAMA

M By Margaretta wa Gacheru Roses of Blood was one of the first plays staged at the Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) 2023, performed by Mount Kenya University students in the tent temporarily replacing the Kenya National Theatre stage. The program claims the show is about a dead woman, madman, and dysfunctional family. How grim. Nonetheless, the set design has an instant appeal, being portable and stretched across the wide National Theatre tented stage. Act one opens inside an insane asylum. Mad people are misbehaving everywhere with the staff having no control. Even the doctor (Warren Othiambo) can’t take charge when he arrives with the family of the sick man, Stephen (Jacob Koli). Stephen is oblivious of their presence, unaware of his father Mr Johnson (Steve Odewa), mother (Marylyn Wangari), or brother Raul (Anthony Macharia) having come to see him. Instead, he's hearing voices that torture him mentally up until his dead sister suddenly appears. She’s dressed in a pure white gown, as if she’s either a ghost or an angel. The father isn’t impressed and would just as soon leave him there forever. But the mom urges him to understand the boy is ill. The issue that made him sick was news that his beloved sister Abigail (Irene Lucy Akinyi) had died. 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 proposes it to her brother, Johnson, but this is when the crux of the story comes to light. Johnson’s misogyny is revealed in all its raw, self-righteous hues. It’s deeply rooted in his macho concept of manhood. At the same time, there’s an economic element in his resistance to having his sister involved in the project. He’d already planned to rob the project and doesn’t need her snooping around and discovering his corrupt intentions. Johnson’s seeing Audacissia’s strength as a threat might not be apparent initially. But his attitude gradually appears. It’s misogynous and self-serving. 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 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 mental problems. Johnson transmits his over-the-top outrage to his son Raul who, when he has a one-on-one conversation with Stephany, is also propelled by the dad’s intense misogyny to pull out a knife with vicious intent. There’s a tense interchange between Stephany who knows she’s about to die, and Raul. The scene is a shocker. What gives this story such a fascinating and powerful twist at the end is when not just Stephan, but also Raul and Johnson hear from beyond the grave. Stephany’s ‘ghost’ had struggled to break through the mental barrier that separates the living from the dead. The conditions are now ripe for breaking through again and speaking first to Raul and then to Johnson. Somehow, the ghost is able to convey to her father that he must loosen up and give the women a chance to be ``equal partners” both in the water project and in life generally. Meanwhile, Raul is in agony, seeing what evil deed he did in destroying the life of another human being. The show ends in contrition and in convincing us that Mt Kenya University had an outstanding team of actors whose performance touched us deeply. They and their director-scriptwriter all dared to address some very relevant issues, doing so without belaboring points that might otherwise have put us to sleep.