PUPPET-MUSICAL SENDS POWERFUL PLASTICS MESSAGE IN TIME FOR UNEP SUMMIT

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted feb 27, 24)

Leo’s search for a new home’ is the first theatrical production that was not only open to the public as we saw last Monday afternoon when scores of school children came streaming into Peponi House in Westlands to watch this heartwarming, witty, and fabulously original play. It was also on the official program for the UNEP Climate Conference which opened the same day as the play, which is part puppet show, part musical, complete with lively music and marvelous dancing fit for children to come up and join in. “Several members from the EU (European Union) delegation to Kenya came to watch the show today,” Leo’s creator and director, Kasia Meszaros tells BDLife shortly after the 4pm performance. She adds that the EU delegation to Kenya (EUDK) is helping her Karagosi Theatre company produce the show, largely because of ‘Leo” making such a convincing statement about plastics polluting our oceans. It’s also a production that is child-friendly, interactive, and focused on capturing children’s (and adults’) attention with a clearcut message that plastic pollution does terrible damage threatening the very existence of whole species. But we can all play our part to end it. In fact, there is a point in the show when one puppeteer invites the children to go out into the auditorium and collect plastics for recycling. This they do, and clearly love becoming part of the performance. One scene that illustrates just how life-threatening plastics are to the oceans, takes place in the operating room of Dr Blade (Kennedy Aswani). The show itself is so fantasmic and fresh that one’s not surprised when a shipwreck is unearthed after a huge storm and Leo meets creatures who have made the ship their home. But then, the scene shifts and the ship opens up into Dr Blade’s clinic. Leo and his new friends, the eels, are looking for Mary, their eel sister. They find her getting her stomach cleared as Dr Blade who pulls out reams of plastic that she’d swallowed. Turns out, Mary is a survivor, but many more are strangled by plastics.

But before any of this takes place, Leo has to be born. The first scene of the show has a tortoise egg cracking open, and a nameless tortoise soon-to-be-named Leo emerges and realizes he must find a new home since his first one, the egg, is gone. Shortly thereafter, Leo’s puppeteer (Tirath Padam) appears. They’ll stay together from then on, but we are meant to believe the puppet is leading the person holding his stick, not vice versa. It’s tricky since this is puppeteering unlike the conventional puppet show. The innovations that Kasia interjects are more nuanced, daring, and liberating. Tirath has understood this quality of freedom which he’s strengthened since last June when Leo first came on the theatre scene working with Aperture Africa. Since then, Kasia has made major revisions in her script, aimed at sending out a stronger, clearer, more engaging, and interactive message. At the same time, she has streamlined her set, creating underwater garbage mounds made out actual trash that she’s collected from Nairobi’s garbage dumps. So her underwater mounds have everything in them from wheel plates and an old jiko stove to a rusty old bicycle.

The turbulent oceanic waters that nearly drown Leo are simulated with long blue ribbons and strobe lights. The waters sweep him up onto land and that’s when he had his first encounter with humans. Previously, Leo believed with his other fishy-friends that humans are their enemy because they are the worst plastic polluters. It is all their junk, especially their plastics which are bringing the biggest problems to the planet, including the fish in the sea. But Leo encounters other threats on his journey, like the Plastic Monster (Victor Otieno) and the sharks who are looking forward to eating Leo for lunch. It is not to be, but one shark (Dadson Gakenga) comes very close to munching Leo’s head off. The shark actually had a good grip on Leo’s head. But he paused, and Leo’s new fish friends had time to snatch him from the jaws of the shark who ironically has no teeth. They save his life and turn into Leo’s best buddies. They include everyone from Crab and Sunny Ray (Chandni Vaya), eels (Dadson Gakenga, Michelle Wanjiku, Neema Bagamuhunda), and Whale (Kennedy Aswani) to the toothless shark (Dadson). These are the creatures who give Leo a sense of hope, purpose and identity, and make him conclude he has finally found his new home.