Theatre of the absurd takes root as Kenya Kwanza's manifesto

Never mind the smoke and mirrors—smoke from the teargas lobbed at the Butere Girls students in their performance at the ongoing national drama festivals in Nakuru— and the mirrors evoked by politician-cum-playwright, Cleophas Malala. The performances of the year were delivered elsewhere around Mt Kenya, and Nairobi.

Start with the former, and the sight of hundreds of boda boda riders racing against time to get to the next destination in Prezzo Bill Ruto’s recent forays in “Murima” region. I understand Prezzo Ruto’s performance was within a tight radius of a kilometre in the Nanyuki township, where the Equator cuts through, calling to mind Theatre Near The Equator, a biography that documents the eventful life of thespian Annabel Maule, who was recently deceased.

Prezzo Ruto’s fabled tour of Mt Kenya was a well curated and scripted performance in a tradition called theatre of the absurd, which is associated with the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s evergreen play, Waiting for Godot.

We need not know any more about this theatre tradition—our Prezzo has scoffed the arts as “useless,” and his summation is apt as nothing really happens on the stage in this famous play. Yet, this seemingly pointless endeavour has transformative power for the two actors on the stage: one goes blind and the other becomes mute.

Deprived of their basic human functions of sight and hearing, the actors intimate powerful metaphors for life. One could substitute Beckett’s actors in Godot with our citizens’ long wait for Kenya Kwanza’s election pledges to be delivered, amidst a national paralysis of a State riven with corruption and ineptitude.

Such dubiously deep ways of thinking about Prezzo Ruto’s sermon on the mountain will make no sense to his uneducated handlers, if you believe the words of two other actors, namely former Attorney General Justin Muturi and former Deputy Prezzo Rigathi Gachagua aka Riggy G.

Twice in as many weeks, the former AG has said those seeking to silence him are “dialling the wrong number,” a colloquialism that bears a certain dare as if to say: if you think you are such a toughie, try messing with me!

Muturi, whose name means tinsmith, then delivered a billion-dollar question: who in the world would expect the nation’s Attorney General to sign billion-dollar deals in airport lobbies? Riggy G, who was rigged out of power for allegedly soliciting some 10-billion shillings from Prezzo Ruto, stepped onto the stage, where more billions were on offer.

“You know the kind of money I am into,” Riggy G gloated, before delivering a pantomime of the masked men that offered to chaperone his guests in and out of the office, before he discovered the guided tours were an extortion racket. For every guest allowed in, some tidy sums were demanded by these faceless hoodlums.

Yet others tele-directed where Prezzo Ruto would go and when, and the message that he should deliver, to whom, and how.

Still, nothing was as exciting as the visage of helmeted riders hurtling down the road, their windbreakers puffed out like a puff adder, guiding their contraption to the next venue where Prezzo Ruto was delivering the next performance. The riders then produced a much-needed cheer at rehearsed intervals, for a fee.

Multiply this transaction by several thousands and the outcome could cause a micro-inflation by circulating too much cash in a very small locale. But the more positive outcomes are the narratives, real and imagined, that will circulate and re-circulate about the presidential performance at the mountain.

There is no way of knowing who among these three powerful actors had most resonance with their massive audiences, and perhaps that’s not important. Audience change, after all, is personal, and it could be delivered at the secret ballot that will make or unmake our political landscape and its absurdist theatre.