JOHN SIBI OKUMU - "I have not aimed to tell people what to do...and I shan't abandon the thread of my thinking!"

"I do not share the nostalgia for the supposedly good old days when ‘theatre was theatre.’" - John Sibi Okumu, 2016.

Mwalimu John Sibi Okumu, actor, playwright, director.

JOHN SIBI OKUMU (known more affectionately as JSO) is a prolific Kenyan-born actor, playwright and director who has narrated and voiced award-winning documentaries and commercials in English, French and Kiswahili. He has acted in a number of local and international films, including The Constant Gardener (as Dr. Joshua Ngaba); Shake Hands with the Devil (as UN envoy Jacques-Roger Boh Boh) and The First Grader (as the Chairman of the Board of Education). He has appeared in leading roles on the stage, including Sophocles’ King Oedipus; Shakespeare’s Romeo, Oberon and Shylock; Beckett’s Krapp and Vladimir; Creon in Anouilh’s Antigone, Percy in Mtwa/Ngema/Simon’s Woza, Albert! Robert Mugabe in Fraser Grace’s Breakfast with Mugabe, and Serge in Yasmina Reza’s Art (played in French).

Under his direction, Kenyan musician Eric Wainaina’s Mo Faya! played to great acclaim in the USA as part of the New York Festival of Musical Theatre 2009, before enjoying a jubilant, homecoming reception at The Godown Arts’ Centre in Nairobi. He has authored nine plays, to date namely: 1) Role Play – A Journey into the Kenyan Psyche; 2) Minister, karibu! 3) Meetings; 4) Dinner with Her Excellency (for radio); 5) Elements (a monologue); 6) Kaggia and also the devised 7) In Search of the Drum Major; 8) Like Ripples on a Pond and 9)  Milestones – a Showcase for African Poetry.

For younger readers, he has written the short book Tom Mboya: Master of Mass Management. Besides the theatre and film, JSO is a teacher, an engaging public speaker, trilingual facilitator, moderator and master of ceremonies.

Welcome to the News-by-Fish: People and Peopleism blog, John Sibi Okumu. We are excited to have you here and we thank you most kindly for your time.

Straight away, theatre has been your favorite tool of exploring human experiences and communicating your observations and proposing alternatives to obtaining 'conflict' of life. Please share with us the critical lessons you have gained in your over four decades of practice.

JSO (shirtless) in the inaugural production of MUNTU (1975)

With that phrasing, you seem to have foisted your own view of my creative project upon me. Most certainly, I have incarnated, as an actor, and researched and observed, as a director and playwright. But with the words ‘proposing alternatives’ there is the suggestion of a didactic agenda. Whereas, the truth is that I do not like didactic theatre at all: I have not aimed to tell people what to do but rather to have them go away and think about what they had seen on stage and, perhaps, to arrive at a new perception of their reality. That’s all. Nothing quite so grandiose, I’m afraid, as changing the world.

You have, as a performer, lent your acting prowess both in stage theatre and in film. (And Lupita Nyong'o is actively doing that too). What unique opportunities do these two forums of projecting performance provide to today's actor?

The significant change is that, for my generation, for many years, we did what we did for love. And now, more and more, it can be done for money. So much so that theatre and film have become viable professions and not just pastimes.

You worked quite closely with Francis Imbuga, Kenneth Watene and David Mulwa. You also worked with Eric Wainaina when you directed his musical Mo Faya and acted with him in Tinga Tnga Tales. How has been your experience working in theatre with different generations of performers?

J. Sibi-Okumu as Lion in the production of Tinga Tinga Tales.

Of course, when I found myself on the same stage as Imbuga, Watene, Mulwa in the inaugural production of MUNTU, directed by its author, the Ghanaian maestro Joe de Graft himself, I was just a stage struck undergraduate who had no idea that I was being part of a landmark production featuring, serendipitously, many other significant practitioners of the years to come – apart from the ones that you have mentioned. A couple of years later, I had made my National Theatre début as Romeo in a contentious but highly successful ‘black and white’ production of Shakespeare’s play, with Pat Smith as Juliet. But all in all, I was raw and, above all, keen to please. Fast-forwarding to being Lion in the children’s musical, Tinga Tinga Tales, I was 19 years older than the next actor down. And there, I was struck by the enormous talent and, most importantly, the discipline of everybody on stage with me, including some first rate musicians. We Kenyans seem to persist in craving validation of our capability and maybe some national counselling is in order. But I do believe that the finest of our actors are as good as any in the world, particularly having had the opportunity to see some really excellent plays in the so called ‘West’. Or is it the North, these days?

Following on from the previous question, what opportunities and collaborations do you see the veterans of theatre forming with the new generation of tech-savvy performance artists? What can we lend each other in today's new world to further theatre?

JSO with other beasts in Tinga Tinga Tales, April 2016.

I am very much against the prescription of Creative Recipes and so, whatever your line of questioning, you are going to find me always pumping for the “Everything is Valid” corner. Question: Would I like to work with people who could be my sons and daughters and grandchildren? (I don’t think that great grandchildren form a biologically possible category, quite yet…) The answer is, yes. But first of all there has to be a vehicle for such collaboration. Let me try to explain: I didn’t go into Tinga Tinga Tales because I had some sort of messianic calling to impart my knowledge and experience to others but quite simply because I was seduced by the challenge of playing to drowsy three year olds and above and also because the script called for an older actor in the role of Lion. A great sadness is that there aren’t enough older actors, like myself, who have kept the faith over the years. So it is that in my own plays MEETINGS and KAGGIA, Lydiah Gitachu played Grandma and Mrs. Kaggia, both women who were decades older than she was at the time. There is something to be said for maturity and, excellent as Lydiah was in both instances, I would love to see an interpretation of those roles by an actor in her 60s, for example. As for tech-savviness, it can make for higher production values but not necessarily better performances.

Please share with us a critical reflection of your plays. Put another way, what do you say of the plays you have written?

JSO in Driving Miss Maisy, Braeburn, 1995

I would much rather leave that to the critics. However, not to be dismissive, I can speak about what has been my creative project to date: and that is to shine a light on Kenya’s history in the years after independence, as experienced by people of my generation, generally speaking, born in the 1950s. Thematically, that decision has brought in the predictable preoccupation with race relations (between wananchi, wazungu and wahindi), politically stoked ethnic rivalries, the expectations of marginalized groupings, to include, women and young people; the preponderant and often nefarious role of religious or, some would say, spiritual beliefs and, lastly, lack of tolerance for deviation from the norm. Now, such a summary makes my plays sound very portentous but anyone who has seen them would tell you that they have all been anchored in very accessible story lines.

You are currently the most prolific theatre practitioner (writes and produces a play at least once a year), and it seems that you have chosen not to be distracted by the cries of 'no support of theatre from Serikali' and gone ahead to prove the efficacy of theatre as a craft. Share with us the philosophies behind your project.

JSO directed Nathalie Vairac in his play ELEMENTS in 2013.

A correction, perhaps. I think that my good friend, David Mulwa whose 70^th birthday I helped celebrate publicly last year, has a much larger play count. As would someone like the late Barnabas Kasigwa, if I were to consider him, to all intents and purposes, a naturalized Kenyan. But once again, I have just got on with it. Good performance elects its own society, to steal the formulation (regarding the heart) of the American poet Emily Dickinson. When we have done good shows, be it In Search of the Drum Major, all those years ago, or more recently, Role Play, Minister, karibu!, Meetings, Kaggia and Tinga Tinga Tales, people have come to see them. The thing is, people thirst for good, challenging entertainment. Blaming Government is a bit like saying you can’t make something of your life because your father was only a cobbler. My injunction is: “Do something!” And the rest will follow.

How has theatre been significant to your teaching, broadcasting and interviewing duties?

The theatre is an excellent provider of communication skills. Under my (benevolent) dictatorship, performance arts in general and drama, in particular would have to be part of every curriculum from kindergarten to university. I have made a fulfilling living largely because of my ease with words and the theatre gives wonderful practice at speaking words aloud and getting to know and love them. I guess that as a substitute, I would recommend being/becoming a preacher. You also learn things like how to stand up straight, how to project your voice, how to pace yourself, how to wear a costume that communicates who you are, and so on. There are ‘how to’ authors who make millions imparting advice on correct behaviour which an actor has learned to display quite naturally.

Please share with us your reflections on the state of theatre in Kenya today.

            

Another weighty question. And I hope that I shan’t abandon the thread of my thinking in answering it. In short: what it is, is what it is. I believe that Kenyan theatre is in a good place inasmuch as it is the place to which we have evolved in 50 odd years as a nation state.

JSO with Sam Otieno (RIP) in King Oedipus, 1991

I do not share the nostalgia for the supposedly good old days when ‘theatre was theatre.’ As self-styled observers, when we look around us, we see that the days of the elders sitting around a tree sipping various types of brew whilst the women till the land are over. We think it a bit of a joke – albeit it a titillating one - to see muscle bound and bare-breasted ‘tribal’ dancers greeting the president at the airport runway. For the best educated among us, the measure of success is based on bourgeois aspirations and Money is the living God. Devolution in its gestation period is encouraging singularity rather than homogeneity. In other words, I am not talking down to anyone when I state that times have changed and tradition and culture are not what they used to be. I believe that the adjective ‘Kenyan’ is often used self-servingly and in vain. The focus should not be on Kenyan theatre but on theatre which is made in Kenya, by, with and for people who live in Kenya. So, others are welcome to hold an alternative view, and passionately so. But as for me and myself, I would wish to explore specific conduct rather than point to a desired, national sublime, on topics that interest me as an individual as opposed to giving treatment that might be of interest to the entire country, more than half of which I have never seen in my life. I hope that doesn’t sound too bloated and strident, in which case I would gladly soften my syntax.

Finally JSO, kindly take a moment to highlight for us some of the contemporary practitioners who are lending a useful hand to Kenya's theatre (as actors, directors, producers, critics etc.) In other words, celebrate those you consider to be adding value to our craft.

Harry Ebale (RIP) appeared as Bildad Kaggia in KAGGIA, 2013.

The selfish answer is that I would celebrate those I have worked with, who have all been wonderful and cherished collaborators. It would be unpolitic to single out specific actors but I was shattered by the untimely death of Harry Ebale who, white shoe-polish-for-grey-hair notwithstanding, was a magnificent Bildad Kaggia.  I can also single out one director who has been, by rights, the premier interpreter of my work as a playwright. And that is Nick Njache. As for

the work of others, I am a great admirer of Heartstrings Kenya. For those of us who have 'eaten much salt', Heartstrings have taken original, satirical, social commentary to the next level, since the days when the wages of taking the mickey out of the Great and Good was a protracted spell in a maximum security prison or in a torture chamber. If I were to go back to school to do a PhD thesis on theatre arts, it would be on their work, whose conception and execution I have found really fascinating.

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