BY Margaretta wa Gacheru posted (3.21.24)
If you are
not a fan of Country music and don’t keep up with the current popular Gospel
sounds, the play Three Wooden Crosses by Stewartz’ Players would be
virtually incomprehensible.
That’s where
I was until I got in touch with Stewartz’s producer Joe Mureithi, who gave me a
bit of the background on how Michael Mwangi had scripted the show that turns
out to also be a sequel to Stewartz’s previous production, Now Let Us Make
Man.
Fortunately,
I had seen that play and found it more straight-forward than the sequel. But
just imagine if I or anyone else wasn’t aware that Number one, the play was
inspired by a Country Western Gospel hit from 2002 and Number two, that the
story picks up from where things left off in Stewartz’ previous play.
Would they be lost? Maybe not, since the Narrator (Shadrack
Nduati) in Three Wooden Crosses seems to spell out the basic structure
of the play at the outset. He says the story will focus on three people. They
are Jack (Juma Ali) who is a rebel, rapper, and would-be teacher, Waira (Fiona
Ndungu), a peasant farmer who sacrifices everything to ensure her son Job (Dukealuu
Gichana) gets a good education, and Tiana (Jane Oduor), who tried for years to
escape the power of her pimp (Mugambi Ikiara).
Nonetheless, there is a whole lot of backstory about the
sequel that is invisible up to the end when we wonder, why did these three
people have to die? And one other salient detail that might have helped us
appreciate that this play is a sequel is the fictional ‘fact’ that the Narrator
is the baby boy born to Jill and Dr Sam in Stewartz’ previous production.
But if we
had been fortunate enough to hear Randy Travis’s popular Country Gospel song,
we would have known right away that the preacher, teacher, and farmer are the
ones who get buried under the three wooden crosses after their country bus
skipped a stop-sign and got banged by a giant lorry. Only the prostitute
survived and she’s not particularly happy about that.
Meanwhile,
we wonder why these three members of society had to be the ones to die? Was it because
it said so in the song, and the singer was simply passing by a cemetery and
sharing what he saw as he passed.
One wonders
if there was some higher significance to their deaths, a finer message than
Randy Travis’ serendipitous song. That significance is yet to be disclosed, but
one hopes it will all make sense when the third episode of their story about
the proverbial battle between good and evil is resolved. Right now, it looks death
and the Devil won this round of warfare.
Nonetheless,
the set design of the show (by designer Brian Mandere) is the first time I have
seen Ukumbi mdogo with a double decker sort of set. This set actually extends
all the way up to the ceiling of the stage. Mandere might have had a bit of
assistance from Shadrack Nduati who also designs sets and whose paintings were
on display on the stage. We welcome more
theatre groups giving more thought to how their walls might give deeper insight
into what’s going on on stage.
Also, Jack
didn’t want to leave jail when he was given a green light to go because he was
busy teaching a lovely chorus of singers, and composing his own songs. One of
those, which he sang (with a lovely tenor voice), got him his ticket out of
jail. But he basically had to be pushed to get him out since he’d realized while
in prison that his first love was really teaching.
One doesn’t
know when Stewartz came up with the concept of a theatrical trilogy. But
whenever that happened, it suggests they were given to long-term planning based
on their own script-writing. But what is essential when producing sequels is
for there be threads of thought or several characters to provide the continuity
necessary to actually call plays sequels or part of a trilogy.
I didn’t see
one character, apart from Death’s ‘angel’ (Newton Mbonge) who appeared in both
plays. Subsequently, I learned that Jill’s baby boy grew up to be Pastor Job,
but this was not clear.
So one hopes
Stewartz can create their next sequel so we can keep up with their avant-guard
thought.
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