JIKA INTERNATIONAL THEATRE DANCE FESTIVAL 25
A satirical play based on the events that led to JAKOB’s ascendance to presidency, his demise to corruption charges and final 15 months prison term handed down by the Constitutional Court on the 07 July 2021. Comrade MAGEE one o the close allies and friends of Jaco pays him a visit in jail.
"Earth opened up and swallowed me. Perhaps, I may meet my forebears and they may wipe my tears"
PEDRO is a road traffic controller for the Road Works. He has always been expecting the Great Black Gods. When they finally arrive and seek accommodation PEDRO starts saying dangerous things about dangerous people and that is what got him shot.
One in three women in Kenya reports at least a case of abuse by the age of 18, largely from their male family members, or other males known to them. In 2021, one month after breaking the world record , world champion Agnes Tirop was found murdered in her home in Iten. Running for my life is a one woman play that follows her life journey, her pain, her joy, her talent, up until when she was murdered. This is a story about her, about me, about the women before me and a story about every victim of gender based violence and femicide in Kenya.
The production is based on the journey of a Man who struggles to make the ends meet due to the pressure he get from his wife ending up doing bad decisions which led him to worse circumstances
Set in the community of Delft, Lidinga Aba pursues a girl he sees as his soulmate. He wakes up every day to sit in a circle, in windy, rainy and sunny days, to just wait for this beautiful girl. His pursuit is disrupted by ancestral visions. His unfathomable love this girl turns him blind to the messages he receives from his haunting dreams. He becomes emotionally tormented when he realises that the metaphysical overpowers the romantic. Whilst spending an intimate moment with his soulmate, he sees the red-smeared face of his late grandmother. The circle turns to time, unlimited time. It turns to a scared place, a river. It becomes a liminal place. His life changes drastically.
Dana, a celebrated British author born to a half-Indian, half- Kenyan father and a half-Irish, half-Jamaican mother, has spent her life navigating the fractured landscapes of culture, identity, and belonging. Her acclaimed novels have given voice to countless others, yet her own truth has remained buried—hidden beneath the surface of family dysfunction, intergenerational trauma, and unrelenting grief. On the anniversary of her young son's death, Dana is scheduled to speak to a hall full of eager students—young minds ready to draw inspiration from her literary success. But as she prepares for her presentation, something cracks. What begins as a rehearsal quickly unravels into a raw, unfiltered outpouring of sorrow, rage, and long-silenced pain. Before an imaginary audience, Dana breaks open—layer by layer, memory by memory— revealing the darkness she has long kept at bay. Part confessional, part performance, Elements is a searing exploration of loss, identity, and the fragile boundary between choosing death and choosing to live. With haunting lyricism and devastating honesty, this piece invites the audience to witness a woman confronting the ghosts that have shaped her—and asking, in real time, whether healing is still possible.
MARIO was not supposed to answer a telephone in his own house when he was not supposed to be there.
This play was inspired by The Red on the Rainbow written by Vice Monageng Motshabi. It is the result of thoughts and emotions—an unflinching confrontation with racial injustice, a cry against the continuous killing of Black farmworkers, and the silence that follows. Justice remains a ghost, and we are left to question: How long will the blood on the soil be ignored? About the Play: On the boundary of Limpopo, hidden in the vast, peaceful fields whose horizons extend infinitely, stands Van Vieren’s farm,one filled with heritage, full of blood, and filled with horror. It is not a farm in any conventional manner. It is a malevolent playground for the doomed, a hunting ground for men who introduce themselves as farmers but make a living through brutality, mastery, and willful erasure of workers under them. This intense drama unfolds the life of a Black family, a mother, a father, and a son, who live and labor under the shadow of Van Vieren’s farm. Having arrived in search of survival, survival here is a cruel illusion. Here, white hands tightly clutch the land and the law, and hope is a faint whisper lost in the cacophony of oppression. The mother, a strong and sharp,thinking woman, believed in books. She saw books as a path to freedom, but her search for freedom earned her a deadly fate at the hands of oppressors who attempted to muffle her voice. Her demise leaves a broken family: a son clinging to the pieces of her aspirations and a husband broken with grief and madness.