Thank you for joining us.
ArtsEmerson
and Octopus Theatricals
presents
Theatre For One:
We are here
(Nairobi Edition)
November 4-6 & 17-20, 2022
Theatre For One: We Are Here is a live digital theatrical experience that brings together one actor and one audience member, featuring Six new micro-plays.
Program Notes:
THEATRE FOR ONE was conceived nearly twenty years ago as an experiment to explore the reciprocal relationship between performer and audience member in a one on one purpose built space. LOT-EK architects designed our theatre booth and over the years we have collaborated with an astonishing group of artists and institutions to present free private performances in public spaces.During the pandemic we were invited to create an online platform. Until this time we had resisted digital diversions in order to maintain the intimate interdependence that is at the heart of what makes THEATRE FOR ONE unique.In the COVID-19 reality, during which our computers became our prosceniums, and we collectively redefined our understanding of what we consider as a live interaction, we decided to take on the challenge. Working with OpenEndedGroup, and Co-Artistic Director Jenny Koons, we created the online private performance space that now houses WE ARE HERE.When a production in the physical world has an audience for the first time we say that it has opened. When making THEATRE FOR ONE in the virtual world we find ourselves using terminology drawn from flight and space travel calling our stage managers air traffic controllers, and our opening a launch. It feels miraculous to be launching sophisticated digital technology intertwined with the fundamental elements of play making to bring an actor with a story to a global audience so that they can engage in the ancient and everlasting glorious exchange which we call theatre. When the audience is made up of one, performer and audiencer (our term), are equalized as the makers of what happens in that moment. They bear witness to each other as co-creators of the performance. This happens in person, and virtually, in New York, in Abu Dhabi, and now thanks to our distinguished collaborators, with these singularly eloquent artists in Nairobi, and audiencers anywhere and everywhere around the world. We are profoundly grateful to the many that have THEATRE FOR ONE: WE ARE HERE. Our mission is to distill theatre to its essence. The voices amplified here are essential, for the one, and for the we.Christine JonesCreator and Co-Artistic DirectorIt gives me great joy and pleasure to be a part of the production and curatorial team of this transnational, cross cultural collaboration in partnership with Octopus Theatricals and ArtsEmerson. Theatre For One: Nairobi Edition elevates a vibrant chorus of voices that are deeply resonant nationally and internationally, and creates deeply personal works that resonate in this shared moment. What is most exciting to me about this collaboration is that international audiences will have yet another opportunity to be privy to the excellent artistic work that takes place on a daily basis in our region. Theatre for One: We are Here (Nairobi Edition) brings to you 6 fierce and expressive artists, with groundbreaking and inspiring stories to share. Our team of six women comprises veteran thespian and storyteller, Sitawa Namwalie, the three powerful, brazen ladies that constitute the company LAM Sisterhood, Aleya Kassam, Laura Ekumbo and Anne Moraa, a new name and game-changer in the industry, Mercy Mutisya, and Mumbi Kaigwa, one of the founding mothers of contemporary Kenyan theatre. The backend of the production is a performance in itself, and our production team covers a broad geography, spanning between the USA and Kenya. This iteration of Theatre for One features works that question the liminal space between ancestry and civilization, the real and the surreal, the inner being, and our external existence. I hope you enjoy the performances.Karishma BhaganiCreative ProducerCredits:
Artistic Director and Creator: Christine Jones
Creative producer: Karishma Bhagani
Platform Programming and Design: OpenEndedGroup — Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser
Produced by Octopus Theatricals — Mara Isaacs, Executive/Creative Producer
Associate Producer/Production Supervisor: Bryan Hunt
Design consultant: Simon fraulo
Nairobi Production Stage Manager: Henry Wamai
production Stage managers: Madison tarchala and Grace hill
Nairobi Production Assistants: Essie noella and tosh herman
Producting associate: Kelly Letourneau
Theatre for One: We Are here was commissioned for Theatre For One by The arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi and produced by Octopus theatricals, with support from the nairobi musical theatre initiative and rainmaker limited with additional support from thomas m. neff.
Theatre For One: We Are Here (Nairobi Edition) is presented by ArtsEmerson.
Please click here for a list of their staff and supporters.
For more information please visit artsemerson.org
Plays:
Aging
Created and Performed by Laura Ekumbo
Directed by SRĐA
Associate Director: Esther Kamba
Songs shared by You: bit.ly/agingsongs
The Interview
Created and Performed by Aleya Kassam
Directed by Esther Kamba
Associate Director: SRĐA
The Beanie
Created and Performed by Mūmbi Kaigwa
Directed by SRĐA
Associate Director: Nyokabi Macharia
CUCU
Created and Performed by Anne Moraa
Directed by Nyokabi Macharia
Mentored by Kholoud Sawaf and SRĐA
Associate Director: Esther Kamba
Killer Cop Lives Fast Life
Created and Performed by Sitawa Namwalie
Directed by Kholoud Sawaf
Associate Director: Nyokabi Macharia
The Living Ghost
Created and Performed by Mercy Mutisya
Directed by Kholoud Sawaf
Associate Director: Nyokabi Macharia
Biographies:
Aleya Kassam (Writer/Performer - The Interview) is a Kenyan feminist, storyteller, writer and performer, who is wildly experimental and loves to play with how people experience story. She is the A in the LAM Sisterhood.
Anne Moraa (Writer/Performer - CUCU) is a Kenyan feminist, writer, editor, and performer. She is the M in the LAM Sisterhood.
Laura Ekumbo (Writer/Performer - Aging) is a Kenyan born, Nairobi based multimedia storyteller who finds delight in the journey of discovery, and the process of making. She is the L in the LAM Sisterhood.
Mercy Mutisya (Writer/Performer - The Living Ghost) is a Kenyan actor and writer, who has partnered with various production houses and personalities in the Kenyan entertainment industry.
Mūmbi Kaigwa (Writer/Performer - The Beanie) is an actor, writer, producer and director of theatre, film and TV.
Sitawa Namwalie (Writer/Performer - Killer Cop Lives Fast Life) is an award-winning Kenyan poet, playwright and performer known for her unique dramatized poetry performances which combine poetry and traditional Kenyan music.
Esther Kamba (Associate Director): Esther Kamba is a Kenyan- Canadian creative based in Kenya who operates on multilayered platforms as a director, dramaturge, cultural agitator, feminist provocateur, mentor and a mother.
Nyokabi Macharia (Associate Director): Nyokabi Macharia is an MA Music Theatre graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is a stage & screen performer and up and coming director whose style can be described as experimental.
Madison Tarchala (Stage Manager) is thrilled to be working on her first show with Theatre For One! Broadway credits include Script Supervisor (Mrs. Doubtfire), Production Management Assistant (Lackawanna Blues). Off-Broadway: Help (The Shed), Regional Credits include Our Town (Baltimore Center Stage), Always…Patsy Cline, Great Expectations, Cymbeline, No Child and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Great River Shakespeare Festival). Select events and television credits include New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2022 and PEN America Literary Awards. Madison holds a BFA in Stage Management from UNC School of the Arts.
Grace Hill (Stage Manager) is a NYC based stage manager and locations freelancer in television and film. She is excited to join Theatre for One as an assistant stage manager! Her recent Location credits include Netflix’s Manifest (season 4), Leave the World Behind, and Paramount’s Transformers 7. Her stage management credits for special event work include MET FEST at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 100 Years/100 Women at the Lincoln Center Restart Stages, and Skillshare with the Park Avenue Armory. Grace graduated from Ball State University with a degree in Stage Management and Video Production in 2019.
Karishma Bhagani (Creative Producer): Karishma Bhagani, from Mombasa, Kenya, is a producer, director and dramaturg and is keen on contributing to the development of a sustainable creative economy within East Africa. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and currently serves as the associate producing director of the Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative and the associate artistic director of the Tebere Arts Foundation and the Kampala International Theatre Festival.
Henry Wamai (Production Stage Manager): Henry is a Nairobi based stage manager and technical director for live events including musicals, plays, and live concerts.
Eric Wainaina (Founding Artistic Director for Rainmaker Limited and NBO MTI): Eric is a well-known musician and artist-activist in Kenya, Africa and worldwide. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music. He is the Artistic Director of Rainmaker Productions and the NBO Musical Theatre Initiative, which he runs in concert with his wife, Managing Director, Sheba Hirst. In 2004, Eric set another milestone on the Kenyan music scene when he premiered a 21-song musical theatre piece, Lwanda, Man of Stone, based on a local folk story and marrying traditional instruments and styles of the Luo people of Western Kenya with contemporary urban Kenyan sound. It was staged at the GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, in December 2006 before going on a national tour in 2007 and 2008 playing a total of 52 shows. Under the name Mo Faya it played at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2009. He is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program East Africa Initiative.
Sheba Hirst (Founding Producing Director for Rainmaker Limited and NBO MTI): Sheba is the co- owner and Managing Director of Rainmaker Productions. She is a long-time arts producer in Kenya and now serves as the Director of the Nairobi Film Festival. She has also directed and produced the Sawa Sawa Festival in Nairobi to celebrate Kenyan performing arts. From 2005-2008, she was the Director of the Sarakasi Trust, dedicated to the study and performance of acrobatic arts. She graduated from Wellesley College in 2002 with a B.A. in Political Science. She and her husband Eric Wainaina live in Nairobi with their two children Seben and Neo.
Christine Jones (Creator and Artistic Director) is the creator of Theatre for One. She is a Tony and Olivier award-winning set designer, experience creator and sometimes director having directed the immersive nightclub dining experience, Queen of the Night, which won a Drama Desk for Unique Theatrical Experience. Her award-winning scenography has been seen on Broadway and in the original London productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, as well as in the Broadway musical American Idiot. Other Broadway credits include: The Cher Show (co-designed with Brett J. Banakis); Old Times; Hands on a Hardbody; On a Clear Day; Spring Awakening (Tony Nomination); The Green Bird (Drama Desk Nomination); and Everyday Rapture. Off Bway highlights include Cyrano (The New Group); and The Book of Longing, based on the poems of Leonard Cohen, with music by Philip Glass (Lincoln Center Festival). Opera designs includeLa Traviata and Rigoletto (Metropolitan opera). Her work was featured in the 2008 exhibition Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designers at Lincoln Center Library. Along Brett J. Banakis, Jones redesigned The Lyric Theatre in NY, home to the production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. In 2015, she received an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Set Design. She has lectured at Princeton and teaches at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Kholoud Sawaf (director) was born and raised in Damascus, Syria and has worked and trained in theatre and television in Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the United States. Recent credits include The Suburbs (Thrown Stone Theatre Company, Much Ado About Nothing (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, T.Y.A.), Vietgone and 10,000 Balconies (TheatreSquared). 10,000 Balconies was conceived, written, and directed by Sawaf after having received a 250,000 grant from the Doris Duke Foundation Building Bridges Program.
Kholoud is currently collaborating with playwright Joe Calarco and actor Mohamad Al Rifaie on a new work, Rafiq (Olney Theatre Center). She is a recipient of O'Neill National Directing Fellowship (2020-2021), The Drama League Classical Fellowship (2017), and an Associate Member at Stage Directors & Chogroaghers.
SRĐA (Theatre For One Resident Director) is a genderqueer Yugoslavian-American creative/director. Centering queer + third-culture themes, SRĐA’s work includes theatrical productions, film, experiential events and has been seen on- and-off Broadway, around the country + globe and floating on international waters with Disney Cruise Lines. SRĐA has developed new and revived works with Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, Ford’s Theater, The Civilians and more. SRĐA has worked the resident director of the internationally-acclaimed Theatre for One since 2017, leading residencies at Lewis Center for the Arts, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Cork Midsummer Festival and Abbey Theatre in Dublin with the work being described as "creating an exhilarating sense of aliveness” by The Guardian. In the wake of the 2020 Election, SRĐA created the 20-episode Vote. PSA series garnering over 500,000 views online and recently directed the world premiere of the all-Black Drag Spectacular, NUBIA. SRĐA is currently in development for two unscripted television concepts and writing a first screenplay based on the life + death of Gavrilo Princip. www.sr-da.com
Mara Isaacs (Founder and Executive/Creative
Producer, Octopus Theatricals): is a Tony® and Grammy® Award-winning producer and founder of Octopus Theatricals, an independent production company dedicated fostering an expansive range of compelling theatrical works for local and global audiences. Recognized as a field leader in the development of new work, she has produced over 150 productions at theaters and performing arts centers around the US and the world including Hadestown (8 Tony Awards including Best Musical), The Inheritance, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Tony Award Best Play), Anna in the Tropics, Fiasco Theater’s Into The Woods, The Brother/Sister Plays, and Crowns. Mara is co-founder of Sing It Again Records, winning a Grammy award with their first release, the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Hadestown. She co-founded the Producer Hub, an online resource supporting independent producers in the experimental and performing arts sectors and is a founding member of CIPA (Creative and Independent Producer Alliance). Current projects include Social! Dance Club conceived by Steven Hoggett, Christine Jones & David Byrne; THEATRE FOR ONE, Dreaming Zenzile by Somi Kakoma, Iphigenia a new opera by Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding; And So We Walked by DeLanna Studi, An Iliad starring Denis O’Hare, and many others. Previously, she was Producing Director at McCarter Theater Center in Princeton, NJ and was an associate producer for Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.
OpenEndedGroup (Platform Programing and Design) comprises two digital artists, Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser, whose long collaboration dates back to 2001. Their pioneering approach to digital art frequently combines two signature elements: non-photorealistic 3D rendering and the autonomy of artworks directed or assisted by artificial intelligence. Their artworks span a wide range of forms and disciplines, including dance, music, installation, 3D film, public art, text, and virtual reality. Outside collaborators have included Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Ken Jacobs, Preeti Vasudevan, the Flux Quartet, Natasha Barrett, and Jaroslaw Kapuscinski. They have presented their work at MoMA, Lincoln Center, Pompidou Center, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the New York Film Festival, Barclay Center, Barbican Center, Sadler’s Wells, Festival d’Automne, BAM, Hayward Gallery, ICA Boston, Sundance, Detroit Institute of Art, Rome Film Festival, EMPAC, MASS MoCA, the MIT Media Lab, Jacobs Pillow, NY Live Arts, and many other venues.
Octopus Theatricals (Producer). Founded by creative producer Mara Isaacs, Octopus Theatricals collaborates with artists and organizations to foster an expansive range of compelling theatrical works for local, national and international audiences. They eschew boundaries – aesthetic, geopolitical, institutional—and thrive on a nimble and rigorous practice. Current projects: Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell (Broadway, eight Tony Awards including Best Musical; Grammy Award, Best Musical Theater Album); Iphigenia, a new opera by Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding (in development); Dreaming Zenzile by Somi Kakoma (in development) ; An Iliad by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare (Obie Award); the Ars Nova production of Underground Railroad Game; And So We Walked by DeLanna Studi; Bill Irwin’s On Beckett; Activist Songbook by Aaron Jafferis and Byron Au Yong; and Theatre for One. We are also proud to work with Fiasco Theatre, Phantom Limb Company, Ripe Time, Song of the Goat Theatre and many more. The Octopus Theatricals team includes Michael Francis, Taneisha Duggan, Kendra Holloway, Bryan Hunt, Adam Hyndman and Kelly Letourneau. www.octopustheatricals.com
ABOUT THEATRE FOR ONE
Theatre for One was originally conceived as a mobile state-of-the-art performance space for one actor and one audience member. Conceived by Artistic Director Christine Jones and designed by LOT-EK architects, Theatre for One commissions new work created specifically for each venue's one-to-one relationship. Embracing serendipity, Theatre for One is presented in public spaces in which audience members are invited to enter into an intimate theatrical exchange in which actor and audience member encounter each other as strangers and are equally dependent on each other. Theatre for One is produced by Octopus Theatricals and was originally produced by True Love Productions.
Theatre for One residencies have been seen in Times Square, Brookfield Place’s Winter Garden, Zuccotti Park, Grace Plaza, Signature Theatre, Fairfield University, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, University of Arkansas, and the Cork Midsummer Festival. This October a residency will take place at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Theatre For One: Here We Are marks Theater for One’s first ever virtual residency.
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Theatre For One online was originally commissioned by Arts Brookfield with additional support from Thomas M. Neff.