Invest fully in film and theatre education or lose storytellers

Nyangweso Junior Secondary school from Nyanza presents a play entitled Kenya Sign Language during the Music and Drama Festival at Kagumo Teachers Training College in Nyeri. [Kibata Kihu, Standard]

I am not wired to mourn problems in life, but to solve them. I was educated to confront problems, not to romanticise them. The people of the Republic of Kenya invested in my mind, and that investment demands a return through thought and action. It is this sense of duty that compels me, time and again, to step into difficult conversations about issues that lie within my area of jurisdiction. Today, I turn my attention to a quiet crisis unfolding in our schools: the teaching of theatre and film in senior school.

Let me begin with a simple truth. The expectation that teachers of literature can seamlessly handle theatre and film without deliberate retooling is, to say the least, a serious aberration. It is an assumption that collapses under the weight of reality. Theatre and film are related to literature, yes, but they are not mere extensions of it. They are disciplines with their own grammars, technologies, and professional demands.