By Lizzy Owade
Published November 15, 2022
A play dedicated to women forgotten in history shall premiere in Nairobi on November 18, 2022.
Titled Speak Their Names and starring Brian Ogola, Nini Wacera, Martin Kigondu, Matthew Ondiege and Nixsha Shah, the play revolves around a modern Italian playwright who gets drawn into the defence of women charged with witchcraft 400 years earlier. As he works to uncover and relate their story, the playwright’s dreams are invaded by victims, and his own life thrown into turmoil.
RELATED: Westgate Mall Attack-Inspired Play Comes to Nairobi
“The narrative explores the suppression of the names, voices and experiences of these persecuted women, and their struggle across the centuries to be heard,” says Silvia Cassini who has written the play. “But, for me, it speaks to more than Europe’s sad history of witch-hunting, instead offering a vehicle of salvation in retrieving the names of all the women whose suffering is never told: as those who persecute them seek to obliterate their traces.”
RELATED: What Has Age Got To Do With Love?
Speak Their Names, which opens at the Muthaiga Country Club, is Cassini’s first premiere since 2016 when she launched A Man Like Me in Nairobi ahead of its global tour. The play, about an expatriate kidnapped in Somalia, went on to headline at Africa Festival in Hong Kong, Harare International Festival of Arts, Kampala International Festival of Theatre, and was staged off-Broadway in New York and in Cape Town. It won the Sanaa Theatre Awards prize for Best Tragedy in 2017 and brought the Best Actor award for the late Maina Olwenya.
RELATED: Exhibition Which Fuses Art and Technology Opens With Calls To Embrace Extended Reality
Silvia Cassini has led the way among international playwrights in choosing Nairobi for her launches, this time coming from her home base of France to stage the premiere.
RELATED: Nairobi Terrorist Attack-Inspired Play Goes on Southern African Tour
“The quality of Kenya’s acting talent has created an exceptional platform for the launch of new works,” she says. “For playwrights, Nairobi offers access to top calibre stars that bring vibrancy and pathos to scripts. I am convinced that where I am leading, others will follow: the level of attention to Kenya’s rising theatre scene may be limited, today, but its dynamism and quality is becoming outstanding.”
After Muthaiga Country Club (November 18 and 19), Speak Their Names will be staged at Peponi Preparatory School (November 25 and 26).
