Wakio Mzenge has been a busy woman over the last few weeks and months, creating works that only got disclosed last month at the Goethe Institute.
That’s where she also announced the formation of her new production company, BTM, short for Beyond the Mainstream. Its first production was the play Ujumbe, which she told BDLife shortly before the show’s opening that it was just a ‘small’ two-hander, almost as if it were an incidental feature of the new company’s launch rather than the centrepiece of the evening’s programme.
In fact, Ujumbe is a marvellously revealing story about childhood trauma and the reverberating effects it can have on the families of those involved, including those left behind trying to understand what went wrong.
Wakio admitted to BDLife that Ujumbe is semi-autobiographical. It is also an incredibly innovative piece of literature that she wrote, produced, and directed herself. And while she co-starred with Sam Psenjen, several more invisible cast members lent their voices to fill out the storyline.
Marrianne Nungo, Mary Mwakali, and Daniel Orenge each spoke briefly, one playing the heavy-handed judge, one the harsh school principal (and MC), and the other the announcer, respectively.
Then Wakio brought in Liboi to provide just the right delicate touch of soulful sounds. She shared the musical voice of an angel, hands that played the finger piano and percussive sticks, and occasionally, a West African talking drum.
Wakio Mzenge with her full cast of Ujumbe at Goethe Institute on June 15, 2023. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU
Wakio plays an impressionistic version of herself in this exquisitely experimental play. She starts the show by asking her audience to write something if they had ever been traumatised in secondary school. That question and the responses she gets open the way for the drama to begin.
That is when we first meet her as a humble secondary school girl whose teacher accuses her of starting a school strike. Meanwhile, her father, also an innocent man (played by Psenjen) has been accused of extorting money and looking just as helpless in prison as she does in school.
The girl tries to defend herself, going to her school principal but she is blamed nonetheless and booted out of school for several weeks. Formerly a grade-A student, her grades steadily descend until she nearly flunks out of school altogether.
Healing notes
The thing that saves her from giving up is the mysterious letters that she receives, which are filled with comfort and consoling advice. It is only after she gets out of that school that she learns the letters were actually from her father who had managed to smuggle them out to her through a kind of underground railway line that enabled him to send her his healing notes.
Meanwhile, Psenjen’s story is largely revealed through mime combined with the accusing voices of his sentencing judge in a way comparable to how Wakio’s principal accused and sentenced her falsely.
His miming is particularly powerful as we can almost feel the blows from his fellow inmates as they take their frustrations out on this humble man.
Rita aka Wakio has also endured a sort of physical torture. She had been forced to walk on her knees across the school compound, suffering not just the physical pain but the shame she felt as her classmates watched with horror as that level of corporal punishment was rare.
It is after that that her grades plummet and she briefly even contemplated suicide. But then the scrappy letters start coming and she manages to regroup and graduate.
It is only then that Rita learns of her father’s incarceration and the charges made against him. But she doesn’t care. She must go see him. But this proves to be an even more disturbing experience. Reaching the prison gate, she sees him in the crowd, being pushed, shoved, and looking helpless and unwell.
Just before he gets pulled away as if by a tsunami undertow, her father sees her and somehow, he struggles to connect with her, even for a brief moment. The play ends with Wakio crying out for her father. And this is when we wonder, how much of this double story reflects the actual life of the father and his child? How autobiographical is this highly emotional and deeply revealing play?
Whether fully or partially autobiographical, Wakio has chosen to show a side of herself that we haven’t seen before. It’s still captivating as all of her performances tend to be. But it’s also a call to forgive, otherwise, one is damaged for life. And this Wakio is definitely a whole-souled woman.
