NAIROBI: The Kenya National Theatre (KNT) was once a part of the legacy of colonial Kenya’s settler history, notorious for its seizure of national spaces and resources, which it would then turn into exclusionary White monopolies. In those colonial days, existence was tiered and strictly segregated, with whites at the top, Asians next, Arabs third and Africans at the bottom. Thus, in keeping with colonial Kenya’s ladder of racial privilege, the national theatre prioritised productions from the colonial metropolitan and in particular, Britain.
Foreign shows would run uninterrupted for weeks on end, filling up the drama seasonal calendar. When an occasional African play was slotted in, it would be for just for a few shows. I recall how as late as during the mid-1970s, a play by the title A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (based on a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart with lyrics/music by Stephen Sondheim), played for weeks on end, blocking efforts to stage one of Wole Soyinka’s plays – I forget which one. Ironically known as the Kenya national Theatre, it was once forbidden foreign land for ordinary Kenyans. Today, the KNT is nothing less than a piece of liberated zone.
Fast forward, following relentless struggle by patriotic Kenyans to liberate the space, the KNT was forced to open up cracks that eventually yielded to windows of entry by African oriented events such as the annual Kenya Schools and Colleges Drama Festivals and similarly, the Kenya national music festivals. I have fond memories of the annual drama festivals, as I had the privilege of adjudicating for many years and thus enjoyed a vantage viewpoint, witnessing the amazing creativity of pupils and college students.
STAGE APPEARANCES
I also recall moments of short-lived stardom when I was on the coveted KNT stage; but unlike talented Lupita Nyong’o, our celebrated Kenyan Hollywood star who played on that same stage as I did, I never made it even to Nollywood! Be that as it may, I have two most memorable stage appearances that I particularly treasure: one, as Sunma in Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed when I was a postgraduate student in Education at the University of Nairobi in 1967; and much later on in 1976, as Woman in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi co-authored by Ng?g? wa Thiong’o and myself.
Along with Francis Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi was the main Kenya’s national entry for the Black World Festival of Arts and Cultures in Lagos, Nigeria in 1977 - popularly referred to as FESTAC 77. Yet, to stage these two national entries at the KNT, we had to fight. In fact, at some point the director of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, the late Seth Adagala and Ng?g? wa Thiong’o were interrogated by the police about the production – intimidation tactics that did not work. Now, I could go on and on giving examples of the battles that have liberated the space we are commemorating right now, but I do not wish to be like the owl associated with non-ending weeping and wailing.
The refurbished theatre offers immense possibilities especially for professional and aspiring artists. The long, complicated and elusive search for the KNT’s title deed reminds us of the ugly culture of “grabbing” and dishing out Kenya’s precious public spaces as gifts to favourites and sycophants of the powerful. I say: one such space has been liberated and has reverted to its rightful status as a national cultural “monument.”
You cannot imagine what a difference refurbished space will make to artists and creativity in general, especially in the performing arts, not to mention ordinary lovers of theatre. Oral composers and writers who create drama texts can now imagine big in their compositions, for, the new space will match their imagination. Equally, performing artists will have all the space and amenities they need to create excellent theatre.
TOOL FOR DEVELOPMENT
Just as importantly, the producers, directors, stage managers and technical staff will have the best technological support systems imaginable. As a playwright, director, producer and performing artist, my mouth waters as I imagine what I could do with this new space. Culture and in particular, theatre and other performing arts play an imperative role in national development, especially with regard to the youth. By culture I mean a manifestation of societies’ intellectual and imaginative achievements as people shape their lives, their world and their environment. At best, it is a collective social and communal process/product and not the preserve of a given class or sector in society.
Culture has two major components: material culture and non-material culture. The first refers to tangible objects, while the latter relates to ideas, customs and social behavior. Sedar Senghor, the first president of Senegal, once defined culture as the sum total of a people’s way of life. But it is Amilcar Cabral, the assassinated revolutionary leader from Guinea Bissau who, in my view, provided the most profound definition. In brief, I agree with him that culture is the highest expression of a people’s struggle for survival, liberation, self-definition, self-realisation and self-determination. And further, that it is the flower, or flowering “moment” in a people’s history/herstory.
Moreover, to paraphrase and agree with WEB DuBois in Souls of Black Folk, culture and in particular its indigenous form and content, is the soul of a people. Thus material and non-material cultures are not just the evidence and expressions of a given society’s intellectual imagination, but gauges indicating the level of the people’s humanity; measures of what I have called “the essence of their being”: validations of their utu.
Now, theatre and the performing arts are key components of cultural production and expression. Indeed, it is my contention that, theatre and the performing arts are the pinnacle of artistic articulation, combining as they do various art forms: language, music, dance, song, enactment of stories, myths, legends, epics, etc dramatisation of poetry, mime etc. The performing arts converge at the interactive space where the intellect, the imagination, utterance and enactment form a confluence of streams of creativity that then flow as one mighty powerful river to water his/her story, and life.
Theatre and the performing arts teach, inform, imagine, dream, envision, rejuvenate and transform reality. They define not just who were are, but why we are; how we are; where we are coming from; where we are situated and where we are headed. Our refurbished national theatre has the capacity to bring about this cultural rejuvenation and social transformation. But whatever we do, let us make our indigenous Kenyan performing art form the foundation upon which our creativity stands. I say: let us highlight our indigenous knowledge art forms as sites of vibrant intellectual and imaginative engagement.
– The writer is an Emeritus Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence, Department of African American Studies, Syracuse University, US. (This is an edited version of the speech she made at the recommissioning of the refurbished KNT on September 4)
