MANIC MONOLOGUES

 Whole cast, Vikash Patnii, Nick Ndeda, Nyokabi Macharia, Julisa Rowe, Auudi Rowa, Charles Ouda, Elsaphan Njora

The manic monologues is steeped in so many intensely emotional moments, it’s almost too much to grasp in a single sitting.

The production, produced/staged by the author and clinical psychologist Just Jhoom, tackles so many tabooed topics in a single go that one feels almost shell-shocked at the end of the showcase.

All stigmatized by society so they are rarely discussed outside the confines of family life, the monologues dare to bring them out into the open for the world to stop pretending these painful issues never happened to them or their loved ones.

                                                                                               Nyokabi Macharia

There’s the issue of suicide. How can a 12 year old be hoodwinked into thinking it’s the best thing they can do with their life, to end it in death. How can a brilliant university graduate or a scholar or a mother try to bump themselves off.

The scary thing about the monologues is that they reveal true stories. They are collected mainly among americans, although there are three out of the 19 assembled by thom and buck, that are by Kenyans,

Starting with those two, one was written and portrayed by elsaphone njoka, who told the terrible tale of his treasured sister who committed suicide. The inexplicability of her deed still haunts him clearly. Her passing clearly affected him deeply and we feel his sense of loss. We too are affected by his tears.

Charles Ouda told an equally haunting tale, but this one was about his own life experience. Repeating the 4our words he says he heard often before he left, you are so lucky, ouda’s life experience was more like hell than heaven, filled with more pain than pleasure, penury than plenty, hate than love. But the myth of America land of hope is what got him suckered him into leaving warmth of home.

Stories of suicide were shocking

Stories of alcoholism and its tragic consequences, destroyed homes, broken promises, tears and fears and loneliness and stress.

Sounds like a depressing show to see? Well, it could have been except that it was such a privilege to get back these amazing 8 back onto the stage, to one we had never seen before at Western Heights near best western nestled deep in Westland's.

Cast included two mentors, Julisa who taught most of cast at aystar University, and Mugabi also her former student, whose part of improv group…..

Auudi Rowa, Wakio Nzenge, Elsaphan Njora, Nick Ndeda, Charles Ouda last seen in Cheaters Guide, Nyokabi on drug regime, Shaline Lucas, Vikash Pattni….

Opening all the horrible words associated with manic—nuts, crazy, etc

Nairobi theatre braver, more daring, address untouchable topics, stigmatized issues, ones kept hidden but JJ believed the best way to bring them into the light of day and addres them so people may understand them….not dispise them,…so mm were born just before pandemic times in the uss.

Enhanced with 3 from Kenyans portrayed by elsa, chas and pattni, 3 of amazing cast assembled by mugambi after his being called by his therapist jj to direct the scrip that she had seen and wanted to bring to kenya.

He got cast together,,,,,8 great ones…..sensitive, emotive,smart, and stage savvy cast.

Venue unbelievable and new. Excellent stage and seating.

Explosive works…… impactful…difficult to watch

How many did I identify with? Many? The guilt, the suicidal brother, the disparaging father so she decided to sucide instead..

BIO FOR KENYA NATIONAL THEATRE SHUJAA

 BIO FOR KEVIN KIMANI of KENYA NATIONAL THEATRE

OCTOBER 8, 2022

Margaretta wa Gacheru studied theatre arts at University of Nairobi in the literature department with John Ruganda, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Micere Mugo. She was a member of the University of Nairobi Free Traveling Theatre in the Seventies, the only mzungu (before or since) to be in it. She also performed in the premiere production of ‘The Trial of Dedan Kimathi’ by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo. Thereafter, she got a job in Journalism, first with the National Christian Council of Kenya, then with Hilary Ng’weno and The Weekly Review and Nairobi Times where she was hired to write about African arts in Kenya. She has been so doing ever since. She has been writing about Theatre, Film, Visual Arts, and books ever since.  She has also been a lecturer at Kenya Methodist University teaching Journalism.

Margaretta has a master’s degree in Literature from University of Nairobi, one in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, one in Education, and one in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago. She also has a Ph.D in Sociology of Media and Culture from Loyola. Margaretta also gives workshops on Critical and Creative writing for the Kenyan arts.

 

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 COLD HEARTED CONMAN GETS AWAY WITH HIS CON

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (8 October 2022)

Slapstick is a style of comedy that requires an expert sense of timing, tone, texture, and technique. It’s not my favorite sub-genre of comedy. But it’s the one Peter Tosh’s Liquid Theatre group chose last weekend when they staged ‘Cold Heart’ at Kenya Cultural Centre.

The main source of the excessive noise and frenetic energy derived from the relationship between our sugar-tongued protagonist, Rex (Stephen Mwangi) and his partner in wheeler-dealing Bill (Caleb Kuria).

One never quite caught what their wheeler-dealing was all about. It could simply be that they were both conmen, committed to covering for one another when they were close to getting caught.

That seems to be why Bill shows up shortly after Rex and his newly-wedded wife Penina (Isabella Moraa) have arrived home after their two-week honeymoon. Bill brings in a flurry of frenetic energy because he’s successfully made a deal with some doctor to see Penina at a specific time. The guys have apparently calculated that while the wife is away, Rex’s so-called fiancée Brandy (Faith Wambui) will be flying in from South Africa.

Normally, it would make no sense for a man newly married to a blind woman have her visit her doctor without her loving spouse by her side. But no, despite the first moments of the play being all about Rex making emphatic promises of eternal devotion to his wife, he lets her go it alone. Meanwhile, he plans to await the fiancée at his house which again makes no sense. But we will chalk this off to slapstick.

Initially, Rex doesn’t look like a Casanova-type, or the kind of guy who can pick up and drop his women in the blink of an eye. But how else can we understand his being okay with having two women finding their way back to him without his concern for what sparks will fly or what sort of animosity will ensue once they understand they are not the only woman in Rex’s life.

In fact, they are not the only women. There’s Rex’s mom (Veronica Mwangi) also arrives on the scene, only to meet the pesty landlord Charles (Majestic Steve) who’s demanding Rex’s back rent or else. Mom is there to be a mainstay support to Penina who she wants to see pregnant with her grandchildren. Ten is the number she wants. But as neither the son, wife, nor fiance are home when she arrives, she meets Charles whom she gives a piece of her mind. Mom is the toughest of the bunch and even tells off Bill once she meets this noisy trouble-maker.

But Mom also gets into the slapstick mode once she must deal with Bill and Rex. The two guys are out to obfuscate their deals from the mom as well as everyone else, including us, the audience. But when she comes too close, Bill pretends to have some sort of seizure that compels her to go out and find special dawa to heal him. Of course, it’s one more trick that the two do to keep the mom at bay.

The climax comes when the two women, Penina and Brandy meet and figure out they both have claims on Rex. A physical fight ensues but ultimately, Penina takes a stand. She claims everyone must get out of her house! So they do. But as Rex wasn’t there then, by the time he shows up, she’s now ready to leave since she’s seen he’s no better than a lying Casanova, not a spouse.

But Rex seems to be the ‘Cold Heart’ who doesn’t really care that she’s left. He lives on, still apt at wooing another woman.  This time she is Bree (Maria Mutake) who has just paid Charles a deposit on Rex’s house. The moment they meet, he is back on track. Rex easily charms the new woman and proves once again he’s an impeccable conman and Casanova who to me, seems to have not a ‘cold heart’ but a hot one which is ever able to adapt and make himself desirable to any woman he wants. And now it’s Bree.

Tosh’s script has a few holes in it this time. For instance, how can a man who affords a fancy wedding and honeymoon not able to pay his rent? And why get married at all, given Rex’s love of the ladies? His incentive and intention are never made plain. And why did Penina pretend to be blind? Building backstories for characters is always helpful for readers.

MACONDO LITERARY FESTIVAL FEATURES NOBEL PRIZE WINNING WRITER

                              Dr Abdulrazak Gurnah with Dr Mshai Mwangola-Githongo at Macondo Literary Festival

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 4, 2022)

The second edition of the Macondo Literary Festival came and went this past weekend with a flurry of mind-boggling activities.

Taking over both the main Kenya National Theatre stage (where the seats were filled for practically every session of stimulating talks, panels, performances, and book premieres) and the smaller Ukumbi Mdogo, the festivities also stretched out beyond the theatre’s brick walls. It extended into the parking area where tents were filled with some of the newest books, (mainly novels) by African writers.

One of the most mind-boggling achievements of the fest was the remarkable array of prominent African writers that came as headliners on the program. “The idea was to bring together for the first time on the continent, writers from English, French, and Portuguese-speaking countries, and engage them in conversation,” states the Festival’s detailed program.

                                                       Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, cofounder of Macondo Festival

So to create greater cohesion among African writers and the public at large, the festival organisers, Anje Ingekstorff and Yvonne Adhiamb Owuor, invited authors from almost a dozen African states to attend the Macondo Literary Festival entitled ‘The Future of memories’. They included Angola, Cameroon, Kenya, Guinea Bissau, Madagasscar, Mozambique, Somalia, Senegal, Tanzania, and the UK-South Asian mix.

Not all of them could make it. The ones living and working in the States or UK had an easier time getting through the red tape of bureaucracy. But thanks to what we have learned about virtual communication during the pandemic, the Mozambiquan author Mia Conte was able to take part via zoom in a lively panel discussion.

                          Yvonne with Guinea Bissau's Abdulai Sila and New York Times correspondent at Macondo

It was Conte who noted that the deeper significance of the Festival was its defiance of the barriers that lead to Africans knowing less about their neighbors than about Western icons of culture. The barriers include everything from language and geography to countries’ diverse colonial histories. But many of these issues were addressed over the weekend when the Macondo Literary Festival interrogated the writers and got to know some of the leading intellectuals from the region.

Starting off the program in the most welcoming and luminous way were Mshai Mwangola-Githonga and Aleya Hassan sharing excerpts from an essay by the award-winning Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor.

After that, Aleya dug into the depths of the Senegalese poetess, Sylvie Kande’s poetry. Then came members of the Orature Collective (Aghan Odero,  Mueni Lundi and Wambua Kawive) performing a series of readings from novels by writers in attendance at the Festival.

                      Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, cofounder of Macondo Festival with Cameroon author Patrice Nganang 

Clearly the best way to familiarize their audience with the writers and their works was the kind of crash-course presentation that the Collective gave. It featured in-depth readings that got under the skin of every character they represented on the KNT stage.

That was true as they briefly dramatized bits from first the Angolan-Portuguese Yara Nakahanda Monteiro’s ‘Loose Ties’, followed by an excerpt from her countryman Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s novel ‘The society of reluctant dreamers’.

Following those two, they went on to dramatize a powerful bit from Somali-born Nadifa Mohamed’s ‘The Fortune man’. Then came ‘A trail of crab tracks’ by Patrice Nganang of Cameroon and Guinea Bissau’s Abdulai Sila’a novel ‘The Ultimate Tragedy’ which was dark and dystopic in contrast to Hafsa Zayyan’s ‘We Are All Birds of Uganda’ which reflected on the Seventies, when Idi Amin threw out the South Asian community from that country, and they scattered around the world. It turns out a few of them were her relations.

                 Nobel Prize for Literature for 2021 Dr Abdulrazak Gurnah at Macondo Literary Festival, October 3, 2022

Next, the Collective performed an excerpt from Malagasy journalist Naivo’s (aka Naivoharisoa Patrick Ramamonjisoa) novel ’Beyond the Rice Fields’.

And finally, they performed a salient excerpt from the Zanzibari writer, professor, and scholar, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s latest novel, ‘After Lives’ which reflects on the lives of his people during the difficult days of the first world war.

There was no mention in the program about Abdulrazak’s winning the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2021. Yet having him attend the Festival was a major milestone and honor for Macondo, an event that got its name from another Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez who created Macondo as the home town of the Buendia family in his magical realistic novel, One hundred years of Solitude.

Abdulrazak is the first Black African to win the prestigious prize for Literature since Wole Soyinka won it in 1986. (Professor Wangari Maathai won the Nobel for Peace.)

So it was brilliant to have him come to Kenya and also to have his books available to ravenous readers who stood in long line to get his books signed for them. Those books include After Lives, Paradise, By the Sea, Gravel Heart, and many more. His public one-on-one interview with Dr Mshai Mwangola-Githongo went straight onto social media and is available on Twitter and YouTube. Best of all his books are available locally both in paperback and online as well.

….

 

 

ZIPPY’S TELL-ALL TALE WAS REVITING

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (written 28 september 2022)

Dr. Zippy Okoth gave a mesmerizing stand-up performance last Wednesday night at Kenya National Theatre that kept her full-house audience enthralled for no less than two and a half hours.

Mind you, most standup comedians can only keep their audiences engaged for an hour at best. But Zippy’s ‘Side-Chick Wife’ kept us riveted to our seats, disbelieving that she could speak so casually about sex and how it has been an essential element in her character’s life.

Speaking on a barren National Theatre stage, decorated with only two simple flower-filled tables and a chair she barely had a moment to sit in, Zippy was ever in motion.

She starts off coolly. Speaking straight to her audience, she establishes her credibility with us by giving her genealogy and lineage.    

She quickly took command of the stage, having only her microphone as a prop. Her story was what we had come to hear, and boy, did we get an ear-full!

Having watched most of Zippy’s one-woman performances in the past, I’d expected this one to be autobiographical, which I believe it was. There might have been points that she embellished, like the number of men she met through online dating sites or the number of times she tried fasting or juicing to lose weight. Otherwise, this was a seamless story about the Zippy who is happily divorced from Ricky (who mistreated her badly and featured prominently in “Diary of a Divorcee’) but who wants to have another man to love in her life.

She finds him in Bobby, but before she lets him get under (and all over) her skin and into her heart, she lets us know how much she values her freedom and renewed sense of strength. She had inherited that resilience from her family who for generations have produced strong women.

But she succumbs to Bobby’s charms and ‘accidentally’ gets pregnant. She explains how she had been using a ‘coil’ to avert pregnancy, but had recently removed it. She says she hadn’t had sex for five years so thought there was no need of keeping it in. Apparently, she felt her active sex life was over, but then, Bobby walked in.

Initially, she’s committed to having the child, irrespective of his feelings or plans. She makes no demands on him since she had actually wanted a child to companion with the one she had with Ricky.

But then, he’s happy to accommodate the child, and even happier to befriend her first born girl. But once she raises the question of ‘what next?’, everything changes. His response to her query is to duck the implied issue of wedlock and gradually distances himself emotionally and physically from her.

Eventually, she discovers she has been deluded. She is neither a wife nor the only girlfriend he has got. Or put another way, she has been living as if she were a wife, but now, she realizes she is more like a side-chick since he’s been having affairs with other women all along.

Zippy is a brilliant storyteller whose story comes straight from the heart, whether it is all autobiographical or not.

Yet no matter the motivation, what makes the tale super-juicy is the way Zippy unravels her feelings about sex in the process of telling her story. She claims she is basically ravenous for it and distraught when Bobby is no longer there for her sexually or emotionally.

What sends shockwaves through the play is Zippy’s unvarnished language related to sexuality. She is shameless in speaking about the most intimate aspects of love-making, which is quite amazing in a country where local ‘morality police’ refuse the teaching of sex education in the schools.

So while Kenyans are still tight-lipped about sex and publicly caught up in Puritanical notions like even speaking about the biology of sexual reproduction might pollute children’s minds, Zippy is talking about what’s already happening among young people who honestly need to hear how to deal with their biological changes, urges, and feelings, especially as they relate to sex.

Zippy only staged ‘Side-Chick Wife’ once last Wednesday. One hopes she performs it again, although one feels her performance was so natural and emotionally charged that she might not find it easy to expose herself so publicly again. Maybe that challenge will compel her to come back on stage, a place one feels is her true artistic home. But whether she repeats her frank and unfettered discussions related to sex and reproductive rights is another issue altogether.

 

IRREGARDLESS VOL.2 OFFERS A GENTLE POST-ELECTION LANDING

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted september 26, 2022)

Even if you had seen the first volume of Chatterbox’s July production of ‘Irregardless’, you might have felt (as I did) that it was incumbent upon you to check out volume two of the same show, just to see what sorts of changes JJ Jumbi made between his pre-election and post-election writing.

In the attractive program that he created to share with people who came to his shows, which ran from 23-25 September at Braeburn Theatre Gitanga, he claims he created “an entirely new script”. In one sense that is true. But on the other hand, the structure of the play is quite similar. He still highlights specific social institutions, like the schools, churches, markets, prisons, and even the High Court as well as specific concepts like corruption and criminality. 

But he seems to delete most references to the issue of class, which were some of the most intriguing and important parts of the play.

But no matter. Only that Jumbi clearly chose to cool down his social commentary, including blatant references to class inequality. Instead, he chose to be more positive and to amplify sentiments associated with peace and the promise of a new day with new faces taking the lead politically.

Nonetheless, he hasn’t given up on critiquing politicians as we see in the first act. As in volume one, his show begins in the classroom, only now his youth are more disciplined and less rowdy. Here we see a more subtle reflection on class in that the Professor tells his students just how ’special’ they are. It’s like a mantra they are meant to repeat and believe as their right to feel special, and even superior.  

The students are there with him to learn the art, guile, and strategic thinking of the smart politician, something they apparently are meant to become one day. The Professor teaches a course he calls ‘political theology’ and the students are there to learn the language and the games that politicians play. Sounding almost Orwellian, the Prof warns that smart politicians never make ‘promises’. Instead, on the campaign trail, they must stay aspirational and ‘ambiguous. The idea is to never talk oneself into commitments your constituents will expect you to keep. The rest of the play seems to proceed along that line of ambiguity.

For instance, in act two, as in the first edition of Irregardless, we proceed to the church. Once again, we see the churches falling in line with politicians and the flow of money being a major motivator of church leaders. But now the congregants are more subdued. They’re keen to welcome the Winner, their new leader, a man who might vaguely resemble our own new head of state.

The president is received well, especially musically speaking. The live music is fabulous, filled with many well-known (and original) tunes with their lyrics adapted and revised to ingeniously meet the need for innuendo and levity.  

This politician has promised to clean up politics and dispense with dirty money. He’s promised to sanitize the whole system, which leads us into one of the most memorable sections and songs in the show. It comes when the choir breaks into a song about God being the great Sanitizer. Meanwhile, the new leader has apparently brought a batch of Hand sanitizer bottles for sale in the church, which is like a sign to signal that the churches are just as unclean as ever. But the song is so sweet. The musical score from this Irregardless needs to be made available for us to purchase!

Meanwhile, before the Winner leaves the church, he wants to hand over the six billion that he’s brought to give, since that’s the central message of church leaders like the ones played by Martin Kigondu and his wife, the church’s Mama. Mother Mary is emphatic about her gratitude for the cars and other gifts and goodies given her and her spouse for serving as conduits for God and His son, Yesu Kristo.

Another marvelous moment in this scene comes as the Leader breaks down in feigned humility and wipes his tears with paper money and then hands the paper cash to locals who happily take it as a bribe.

The rest of Irregardless 2 takes you from the High Court and the Jail to the local Market and the Mau Mau mzee. But the gist of JJ’s story is clearest for me in the first two acts of his satire.

 

 

POLICE IMPUNITY STAGED AS FARCE AT STRATHMORE

 

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 26, September 2022)

What happens when a bully takes charge of a situation, be it a police station, a city, or a country?

And what if the bully is really a conman who can just as easily pass himself off as a mad man who can be ‘forgiven’ for all his bad deeds since people generally believe that no sane person can behave as badly as he does. Thus, he must be insane.

We have seen bullies and conman operating a lot in the world these days. Take the former president of the United States, for instance. We also just saw one in last weekend’s production by the Strathmore Drama Club of Dario Fo’s brilliant satire on crazies and bad cops in ‘The Accidental Death of an Anarchist.”

Fo’s play grew out of a real-life incident that took place decades ago in Milan, Italy, where there were street protests over the death of a political dissident, an anarchist who was picked up by cops and shortly thereafter the same cops declared the anarchist had ‘accidentally’ died.

Then when the public was not appeased by the cops’ claim of ‘accidental’ death, the police declared the man had committed ‘suicide’ instead. The public went wild with outrage, and Fo scripted his controversial play. Seen as inflammatory for taking on the topic of police impunity, Fo has subsequently been praised for his daring use of dark comedy as a means of opening people’s eyes to the reality of impunity and their ability to fight it.

Trevor Munene plays the flamboyant Maniac, the flippant conman who has a knack for swapping identities at the drop of a hat. He’s been hauled into the same police station as the anarchist had gone and charged with a slew of misdemeanors. But he’s not worried. Instead, he seems to relish the chance to meet Inspector Bulinga (Justin Mwanzia) and turn this cop’s world upside down.

In this case, the Maniac’s a vagrant, but he claims otherwise. In the course of minutes, he morphs from being a Pastor, Lawyer, Doctor, and Ph.D to being a Psychiatrist, Army Captain, a Teacher of Calligraphy. And when he has a chance, he expands his covert plan of disrupting the cops’ operation.

Maniac initially doesn’t look like there’s a method to his madness. But after picking up the Inspector’s phone and playing his receptionist, he starts off a chain reaction among the police that eventually leads to the play’s stunning end.

Divide and conquer seems to be one tactic this cunningly crazy Bully employs. He proceeds stealthily, calls in the police Superintendent (Denzel  Maniple) and succeeds in bullying him and his underlings until they all are scared of being ‘found out’. For Maniac, now playing a retired High Court judge, intends to reopen the cold case of the Anarchist.

The scene gets increasingly insane as ‘the Judge’ bullies the cops into doing everything from singing and dancing to essentially admitting they bumped off the anarchist.

Behind their backs, the Maniac calls up the Media, represented by Ms Sophia (Venessa Gichio) who he has quietly coached on what questions to ask, such as where are the forensic reports the press never got to see?

All this time, the Judge claims he is only seeking the truth, yet he doesn’t reveal that he’s been officially ‘certified insane’. None of the cops are wiser until Inspector Bulinge returns to his office wearing an eye patch that he got after being punched by his fellow Inspector (Jeff Obonyo) who’d been misinformed by the Maniac about nasty things Bulinge purportedly said about him.

Bulinge immediately detected something fishy about the Judge. But it isn’t until Maniac discloses that he’s been recording their conversation since he arrived as the flagrant vagrant that the scene gets intense. Maniac gives that recording to the journalist who quickly meets the same fate that we now see must have happened to the anarchist as well.

The Anarchist had been charged with dropping off bombs in train stations. But the Maniac claims the cops, in cahoots with the Government, planted bombs to disrupt everyday life and keep the populous unprepared to protest their country getting turned into a police state.

Our slippery Maniac manages to escape the fate of the Anarchist in a split second. But before he goes, he finds one undetonated bomb and pulls the pin. Boom! That’s the end!

I have to say this cast did a fabulous job; Trevor Munene leading the field in capturing Fo’s defiant spirit of anarchy and fearless freedom of expression.