/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-KENYA: Striving to Improve Quality

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Feb 18 2003 (IPS) - Frustrated by his inability to find a ”good quality, original Kenyan script” to stage, theatre director Gichora Mwangi set off for the Robert Redford’s Sundance Village in Utah, the United States, last year.

”There’s a lot of writing going on in Kenya but the quality is shocking," he says.

”People are writing as instinctual outbursts of emotion, of anger. You’ re sitting at the bar one day and think, ‘That’s a good idea.’ Go home, knock it off and that’s it.

”For plays, work needs crafting,” he stresses.

Mwangi is not taking the moral high ground here. He admits that he too was in desperate need of professional help.

”I’ve written eight plays. One was staged and it went very badly. I knew something was dreadfully wrong. But there wasn’t anybody who could tell me what,” he recalls.

Redford set up the Sundance Village in 1981, with the aim of doing just this – helping emerging screenwriters and directors develop their talents.

Mwangi attended the annual Screenwriters Lab, a five-day writers’ workshop, where a dozen emerging writers work intensively on their scripts until they reach the most compelling version of the story they are trying to tell. There are problem-solving story sessions and run-throughs of dialogues, all with the support of experienced creative advisors.

Inspired, Mwangi persuaded one of the participants Kim Euell, to come to Kenya and run a similar workshop in the country. Euell, an African-American playwright and dramaturge, readily agreed.

”It didn’t take much to persuade me. This is my sixth visit to Africa. And it’s an exciting time to come to Kenya,” she enthuses.

Euell is currently the resident writer at Los Angeles’ Robey Theatre Company, co-founded by actor Danny Glover. But she spends half of her time working as a dramaturge, whose job is to help writers work on their scripts, restructuring them and sometimes axing entire characters.

”The average play is re-drafted six to eight, sometimes as many as 16 times,” explains Euell.

After an audition, a dozen budding Kenyan script-writers, several of whom are better known as performers, were selected to take part in Euell’s workshop, including Kawive Wambua, Biko Gwendo, Raymond Owino, George Chomba, Hellen Namai and Cajetan Boy.

After three intensive weeks, Boy’s ‘Backlash’ was selected for a public read-through.

The story opens with a young woman, Keisha, who has just given birth. Her husband, Toby, cannot be traced and his parents take her back to their home to rest.

It soon becomes clear that there is something deeply wrong with their marriage. Through flashbacks, Keisha explains how her domineering mother in law ”from hell”, Emma, engineered a blind date between the couple.

Before they wed, Emma insisted on stripping her to make sure that she was a virgin. Later, she persuaded Keisha to have a caesarean section because ” natural birth is for poor women” and she would no longer be able to satisfy her husband.

It emerges that Emma’s firstborn son, Noel, died and she pressurised Toby, her only remaining son to get married and produce a grandchild. She even insists on calling Keisha’s new-born, Noel ignoring the fact that his own mother has christened him Jumba.

As with Boy’s other plays, such as last year’s ‘By Any Means Necessary’, ‘Backlash’ has a powerful sting in the tail.

Boy says the idea came to him when he was hearing the news.

”I had no idea how I was going to present it because of the time-span. The workshop really helped me,” he says.

Euell suggested the use of flash-backs to jump between Keisha’s childhood to her initial meeting with Toby and up to the present moment.

Boy also benefited from having his work critiqued by his peers.

”It’s good to develop a group of people you can call in for your read-throughs. They know what kind of comments you’re looking for – some of which I’m still trying to digest!” he laughs.

Although Euell is on her way back to the United States, the work is far from over. The Kenyan writers will keep meeting up until June to discuss and critique each others’ drafts. Then, they will try to get them staged. Mwangi says several directors have already expressed an interest.

”Six months down the road, for the first time, there’ll be at least 10 full-length scripts that will have been through the workshop process, coached by a professional playwright. That’s a completely new thing for Kenyan theatre. That’s like, ‘Wow’!” says Mwangi.

Mwangi’s dream is to make the workshop an annual event.

”I’m trying to set up a writers’ lab for playwrights so that we are constantly churning out new plays,” he says.

”I want audiences to see more Kenyan stuff and none of this British farce rubbish. If we do that, it will develop,” he predicts.

Mwangi believes theatre has a role to play in helping Kenyans develop a stronger sense of national identity and culture.

”I think part of our problem with social cohabitation stems from the fact that we don’t have things we identify with as easily as we should,” he asserts.

”I don’t think theatre can change the world. But I think theatre can change the way people perceive themselves if it is relevant and directly related to what they are doing.

”I think it will give people a great sense of pride to see a well-acted, well-written Kenyan play in the same way we are all suddenly proud to be Kenyans when the Harambee Stars (the national football team) start doing well,” he laughs.