At dinner last night, at Diamond Beach, I sat with Sitawa, our Kenyan poet/playwright to pose some questions to her about her past and the “why” of her story. We are trying to identify what pieces of her own experience might frame the poetry of her play. Her father was a good friend to Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and she grew up in a life of privilege. Now, she sees her father, in his late seventies, struggling to understand the disappointment of the Kenyan people and the loss of hope in their leadership. She speaks about the changes in her life since the PEV (Post Election Violence) and how it opened a door for her to have conversations with her closest friends about sensitive topics that could never before be discussed. She is from the Luhya people, of the West, and has experienced a share of discrimination because of this. The profound influence of tribal origins comes to me in wave after wave of stories. I think in one day my understanding of Kenyan history, told to me by a Kenyan, has increased 100 fold. And of course, I have much to learn.
Suddenly in the middle of our conversation, we hear high pitched screeching, and out of the pitch darkness of the beach come a dozen Masai Warriors, in their striking red gear, pierced and be-decked, and they dance around us and so - this is my official birthday celebration (arranged by Deborah and Christopher). Of course – being the theatre nerds we are – we all join in. Their singing reverberates from a place that is akin, to my mind, to the purring of a cat – deep inside their bodies and souls. And they jump meters into the air, showing off for us, and for each other just how high they can jettison their bodies. These are the spiritual holders of Kenyan life. I think of the Hopi of Arizona who never made a pact with the United States government and so live a life of poverty in the windy rocky hills of the Arizona Mesas. These Masai have suffered tremendously due to recent drought and so the loss of their cattle, their livelihood. Many are here to raise funds to replenish their cows, and they sell their jewelry to us as a way to return home. I buy it up, convincing myself that I’ll look perfectly “cool” wearing it, on the IRT come September.
What a birthday. But the best part comes last, when Moise, our young Rwandan singer, stands with me at the Bar and without any prompting unfurls his gratitude for our finding for him a paradise (“an Eden” – meaning, a place of Innocence), here at this Sundance community. He is fairly breathless to express the profundity of what he discovers here, as an artist and among new friends. This makes turning 57 pretty great.
Today, warm ups followed by each project rehearsing. Judith has done a fairly large re-write of the first half of her play, incorporating notes we shared yesterday but with her own distinct manner of expressing the very individual manner she is compelled to unveil to us. After observing a staging of the very first new scene, we all gather to ask more questions, prodding her and her director to go even deeper. They are open and excited to talk, and a good healthy exchange of ideas occurs. (Would that all the Sundance Utah Lab participants be always this willing to engage!).
Lunch of giant Prawns awaits.
