What do you call justice, when it comes bearing a badge and leaves carrying a body? Who decides who deserves a bullet or a trial?
Those were questions posed by the cast of the show Badassery, curated by Too Early for Birds at the Jain Bhavan auditorium last weekend. Three hours of storytelling with an intermission and Java-induced coffee (because sponsorship is becoming a thing in theatre these days) connected audiences over five shows.
The evening is set in 1988 but revisits the crime scene in Kenya in the 70s 80s and 90s. It opens with the headline announcing the death of police reservist Patrick D. Shaw, and from here, details the man and his victims, who also become stories in themselves.
There’s history and hindsight, and no easy answers, as the audience is left to consider some uncomfortable truths about justice.
That in-between world of the role of the hunter and the hunted, his methods, the forms of justice employed, with the question of who is truly liberated, was on trial on stage. Does the police system protect, or are they predators in a system where there is no victor and no vanquished?
Characters like Daniel Kiptum Cheruiyot, Nicodemus Arudhi, the footballer by day and robber by night, and Charles Odhiambo, most of them Shaw’s victims and the circumstances around which they interacted with Shaw’s guns and handcuffs were detailed in monologue and dialogue from the very able cast.
We were reminded of the importance of Shauri Moyo, Kaloleni, Kariobangi, Zimmerman, all famed Nairobi hideouts for gangsters in those years and places the police squads loved to stalk.
Starehe Boys got its mention; Shaw’s role as an administrator and his dalliance and friendship with its late director posed the question of whether he used some boys there as informants for his work.
It was bold of the scriptwriters to confront the question of white privilege around Shaw. How is it that he always showed up just in time to pull the trigger on the bad boys while the rest of the police squad had done the preliminary work? Why did he always get the glory in these killings? Was it a mere coincidence?
There were a few familiar faces on screen for this edition, William Mwangi (Katana) and Mercy Mutisya (Kamene) and new additions to the Badassery cast like Foi Wambui (Liv) and Tobit Tom (Oti) who joins the cast from the show Mo Faya. Then there was Justin Mrichi (Hamisi), the wise collected cop and Kiptoo Kirwa (Abdul) who represented his name artfully in the play.
The characterisation of each storyteller, Liv, the journalist who wants to write a book at the end of her time, Kamene, an angry former police officer with a penchant for swearing, Hamisi, our moral cop and then Abdul, who plays dalliances with politicians, aptly make up the quorum seen even today around crime and justice.
Indeed, it takes two or more to tango, and the mysterious file that Oti should be safeguarding is the ticket for everyone’s survival. It carries many memories, many names and landing in the wrong hands will prove fatal.
There’s a lesson for the police, and I hope some of them watched this show. Shaw’s story and the flying squad as crime busters forces us to examine the current climate around our policing, only that now the focus is on extra-judicial executions and very little of crime busting.
The wheels of justice grind slowly, both for the criminal gunned down without trial and the Gen Z gunned in the limelight but with no recourse for his fate.
There’s also a lesson for the citizens; it can only be in unity that we build this country, alone we cannot tear the walls built on impunity.
Following the last Badassery edition in 2017, the team has taken things a notch higher. The production is more refined, the acting better. Producer Gathoni Kimuyu, Kola Agnes as production manager and Wanjiku Mwawuganga as director, are all seasoned hands and well aware of their craft.
Daisy Temba took time with the stage creating Brass Bullets Bar. The invisible division of the stage into 3 spaces, two bar settings on the side and a middle portion for ‘revelers seating’, was clever to avoid movement of items and yet give the stage the desired proportions.
The work of scripting these shows is important. A lot of history is presented with credits to the excellent work done by Hellen Masido, Kagichu Maina, Mercy Mutisya, Ngartia, Oyamo Richard, Abu Nuuman, and Keith Ang’ana.
We are all here for inclusivity and sign language interpreters Raphael Mbalo and Aggrey Akaranga were a welcome addition on the side-lines.
Transferring this information from our archives to each actor, then to the audience, enriches knowledge in a way no newspaper can. Too Early for Birds also has a formidable social media team, which keeps information running, not only on the subject of the show but general Kenyan history.
In a poll earlier this year, they asked whether audiences want to see Kifo Kisimani. Well, Kithaka wa Mberia was there signing autographs on Sunday, a great teaser to this show that will be staged in August.
