'Liberated' Kenya National Theatre should fulfil our deferred dreams

President Uhuru Kenyatta listens to Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o during the official opening of the modernised Kenya National Theatre in Nairobi last week. On the right is Ngugi’s wife Njeeri (second right) and Prof Micere Mugo. {PHOTO: [ANDREW KILONZI/ STANDARD]

The occasion of reopening the revamped national theatre is simultaneously a re-enactment of the spirit of our history but also an enactment of its revival. The year 1952, the year this theatre was built, was also the year that Jomo Kenyatta, leader of Kenya African Union (KAU), was put in prison. He had a theatre background. In 1937, he had acted in the film, Sanders of the River alongside the great Paul Robeson, who once sang let my People Go.

It was also the year that Dedan Kimathi, leader of the KAU’s armed wing, Land and Freedom Army, which the colonial State renamed the mumbo-jumbo sounding Mau Mau, fled into the mountains. He, too, had a theatre background: he founded Gichamu Youth Theatre at Karuna-ini, Nyeri. It was a year of theatre.