William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is being reimagined as a two-hander, which follows Katherina Minola refusing to be tamed by Petruchio.
Katherina is sharp, fiercely independent and unwilling to be the obedient woman society expects her to be. Petruchio enters her life determined to tame her. The play explores themes of women's agency, power, identity, love and control.
Presented by Musyi Arts, the adaptation stars Rita Gitau and Charles Gachanja and will be staged on August 7 and 8 at Suave Kitchen & Social Club in Westlands, Nairobi. It was adapted by playwright and director Esther Kamba and Gitau.
The play examines what happens when a woman who refuses to be controlled meets a man who refuses to back down. It uses a boxing-ring concept to turn the performance space into a confined arena where Katherina and Petruchio are in a power tussle. Their arguments are loud and confrontational, but they also recognise something of themselves in each other.
Gitau adapted the Shakespeare production after a monologue workshop that Kamba facilitated at NIMPA Theatre a few years ago, in which Gitau was one of five participants. She was interested in Katherina and explored the possibility of developing the character further.
“She challenged the rest of the participants. She looked at several roles and adapted. After the training, I questioned if there is another text, someone to write a continuation,” says Kamba.
The research led to an adaptation that follows Petruchio beyond Shakespeare’s play, and her reading of The Tamer Tamed, written around 1911 by Shakespeare’s colleague John Fletcher, also fleshed this adaptation. Kamba then developed the script from a 10-minute piece to a 50-minute two-hander. She recalls that they couldn’t get space to put up a performance at the time.
Gitau says that the decision to reduce the ensemble to two actors brings focus to Katherina and Petruchio. The original play features a cast and several subplots around Katherina’s younger sister, Bianca, and their father, Baptista Minola. The original story is set against a society in which marriage is determined by patriarchal expectations. Baptista, determined to marry off his daughters, declares that both daughters have to be married.
Bianca is presented as beautiful, modest and compliant, qualities that make her attractive to suitors. Katherina, by contrast, is labelled a shrew because of her defiance.
Gitau sees Katherina as a woman ahead of her time, fighting to have her voice heard in a society where women who speak their minds are considered improper.
“It’s about two people who may be far more alike than they want to admit. So who is really taming whom? We’ll let you be the judge of that. Who decides when a woman weds, how she weds and who she weds?” she poses.
Gachanja says that Petruchio is driven by pride, determination and the belief that nothing is too difficult for him. His interest in her also becomes more complicated as he encounters someone as stubborn and determined as himself. Petruchio wants marriage and fears a life of loneliness, but his approach to Katherina is complicated by his conviction that he can overcome her resistance.
“They both thrive in tough love. Petruchio admires how resistant Katherina can be and how determined she is to be free,” he says.
Gitau explains that Katherina’s resistance is for her to preserve her identity.
“She has a plan to still be herself and not lose herself in the marriage. She’s unapologetically herself and refuses to shrink or pretend just to fit into society’s expectations,” she says.
She understood that defiance and anger by stopping to judge Katherina. She had to meet her in her humanity first, in her own wants and needs and beliefs.
She believes that the character is misunderstood because the people around her fail to listen to or care for her. Her frustration is intensified by watching Bianca receive approval for embodying the qualities society rewards.
“Watching Bianca succeed by conforming while she’s punished for living her truth fuels Katherina’s frustration,” she says.
The play raises questions about women’s rights, relationships and changing attitudes towards marriage. Kamba says she wanted to use the play to start conversations about why people enter relationships and why marriage is no longer necessarily an aspiration for everyone.
Kamba notes that at the time, being labelled a shrew carried serious consequences for women, who could face harsh punishment for refusing to conform to their husbands’ expectations.
Having studied in Canada, her directing sensibilities exist between different worlds of Western theatrical influences with perspectives from the African continent. She also says that she connects with Shakespeare through his portrayal of women.
“I believe that Shakespeare was an African woman, and that is how I connect to his work. He wrote for the African woman when they couldn’t at the time. I have encountered research about Shakespeare’s writing and the complexity of his female characters,” she says.
Shakespeare, she says, gave depth to women at a time when women were not allowed to even perform on stage. Female and children's roles were performed by men, though his plays included women with complex personalities, ambitions and contradictions.
Kamba describes herself as a Shakespeare enthusiast and says the adaptation allowed her to experiment with the piece. She was also trying to analyse his works for people to connect more with the story than the language.
She adds that Shakespeare’s language can be less intimidating when actors are properly trained in the techniques needed to perform it.
“I work with two-handers because we can restage it in different places. My way of creating is to deconstruct their setting,” she says.
The unconventional setting at Suave Kitchen & Social Club is therefore part of the production’s aesthetic. Kamba says that she is drawn to non-traditional performance spaces because theatre can exist in everyday environments.
Without conventional backstage facilities, costume changes, character shifts and other transformations happen in full view of the audience.
The actors rely on physical precision, vocal shifts and muscle memory to move between different moments without interrupting the action.
The original play has been interpreted as a story about breaking, controlling or disciplining a woman. By removing much of the surrounding action, the adaptation asks audiences to look deeply at the characters.
“Removing the subplots also revealed the theme of loneliness. When you cut out all the noise of the subplots, you aren’t looking at caricatures anymore; you see two absolute misfits,” she says.
She adds that the contemporary relevance of Katherina’s story lies in her refusal to be a more acceptable version of herself. She hopes that audiences will question who is really exercising power and whether the relationship is about one person dominating another.
Gachanja sees the production as an opportunity to examine the roles society assigns to men and women and what happens when those expectations are challenged. It also examines the systems that shape both characters.
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