Undone Theatre

Edufa…………..

The first production  after the election crisis in Kenya that the organization put together was the play EDUFA. This is a tragic-drama script written by GHANAIAN Efua T. Sutherland. In the play, Edufa is a young prestigious man with a lot of pride, He knows it even the villagers, and the local people know it. Ask any one and they will tell you! The locals look up to him to earn a lively hood. “His decision dictates their survival!” 

The Night Before…………

Yet another African Masterpiece - THE NIGHT BEFORE: BY Nigerian writer BODE SOWANDE, is a University Drama the night before the most important day in the life of a university student, the graduation day. The whole background natural in a shrub forest. A simple drinking shack furnished in bamboo. The students own small bags or briefcases in which they have their academic gowns. A bonfire glows right through the action.

They drink from calabashes and gourds of palm wine but there is no sign of drunkenness. The situation is a celebration between dusk and dawn. It is a drinking party on the eve of a graduation ceremony. Memories are sharp and dim. The past is regretted and loved. The future is dreaded and aspired to. The students’ thrush about in anticipation of their future as time flips from past to present, future, and back again.

While the search for “alternatives” continues among the conscious progressives, “accidents” and repressions occur against the struggle often with methodic planning. Dedicated to students lying in graves or lunatic asylums or prison cells of those dictators who litter what they call the “free world.”

Theatre in the Park: Generation Firimbi…………….

Generation Firimbi; intoduced  the Theatre in the park initiative that saw theatre going into more daring spaces and building new audiences. The work sponsored by the Kenya Community Development Fund together with the GoDown Arts Centre, Chandaria Foundation, Sarakasi Trust and the U.S Embassy is a devised musical theatrical piece on  Firimbi, (whistle) a generation that fights so hard for so long to replace the filth and muck that has over the years been considered a norm in third world Africa. There is a sigh of relief with the feeling of the dawn of a new world and signals of the determination to end these practices.

 “It was an amazing thing for one moment in a hundred years, to all feel the same way and to feel that it was good”

The joy and hope for a better tomorrow is however short-lived. This generation had learned how to win but had not learned how to keep. The trusted became greedy and selfish. They sold their land. They ate. It was their turn. They killed our hope. They killed our sun. But when the generation regained their hope they decided not to let them. They must not enjoy their turn. They will not take our victory from us. They will not kill our sun. But this time they learnt how to keep. Even if it meant living a lonely life.

They will learn how to keep at whatever cost even if it meant death. They will blow whistles. They might not live to witness the new dawn, but they will do it for posterity and the echoes of their whistles will bear fruits. One day- sometime. This is a devised piece of work from two books based on a story in Kenya and Nigeria. It’s Our turn to Eat by Michela Wrong and Africa Kills her sun by Ken Saro-Wiwa.