I have always described myself as a very religious person. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and he died on the cross to save us and he left us the Church to continue to give us spiritual nourishment as we face the challenges of life.
If the Church were on trial, I would have no hesitation in taking the second chair to defend it. But nothing prepared me for the raw reaction I had after watching two minutes of the cast of The Anointed Cartel during rehearsals.
Simply put, I was ready to become an atheist. Written and directed by Martin Abuya, the play reveals not only some of the evil within the church walls, but also the unholy relationship between politicians and the religious sector.
Abuya, not a new name on the theatre scene, uses satire and humour so eloquently that you will find yourself laughing and angry at the same time.
Who is Martin Abuya?
I am a creative writer and director at Igiza Arts Production. I am an IT guy by day and an actor by night. It is an unusual combination, I know, because IT guys are usually introverts and thespians are very expressive. But my interest in the arts started in high school at Moi Kabarak, where I participated in drama festivals. I used to get requests to write scripts for plays and that piqued my interest.
One of my plays, Without a Consciousness, did so well and that's when I knew that this was what I wanted to do as a career. I had a lot of support from my parents, to the point where they wanted me to study arts at university, but I refused because I thought at the time that theatre and the arts would not give me the quality of life that I wanted for myself.
But drama continued to follow me, even at university at Strathmore, which has a very active drama club, so I ended up being involved in the theatre scene.
Then what happened?
I got sucked into the eight to five rat race and took a break, then Covid-19 happened until Igiza approached me, I was out of the game for five years. The producer of Igiza, Wreiner Mandu, is a high school friend of mine and the rest, as they say, is history.
What inspires your plays?
A lot of things but what remains constant is that I am biased toward current affairs. I write plays to address something that affects society and that is why one of my plays, Flight 1963, won the Kenya Theatre Awards 2025 in the Best Original Play category. It is a political satire.
The passengers on the plane are Kenyan citizens and the airport is symbolic of the country and through the play we have different captains taking charge, from the founding President Jomo Kenyatta to our current President William Ruto. The play delves deeper into the leadership, the hits and misses, and the legacy of each president.
Another play we did last year is called Severed Justice. This addresses the youth protests we had last year. Then there is The Waiting Room, which is about the state of healthcare in Kenya.
Based on your plays, can people surmise that you are an activist?
(Laughs) Like millions of Kenyans, I just want services from the government. Does that make me an activist? I don't know. I believe that you do not criticise something you do not love, I love my country, and I want it to be better.
Why The Anointed Cartel?
We did Flight 1963, Severed Justice, The Waiting Room, and now The Anointed Cartel is about the hypocrisy we see in the Church and the clergy. Religion has become the opium of the people, and the Church has a role to play in society.
We saw during the Gen Z protests that the Church was very quiet. They were nowhere to be found when society needed them most. We also see many churches mushrooming now.
In fact, we have more churches than schools or hospitals and it's an open secret that some of the people behind these churches are just businessmen.
The play looks at how some of the miracles and prophecies are actually designed to fit a theme that will pull on the emotional strings of worship. The end goal is to get the worshippers to give all their money to the Church.
Is theatre easier to do than film?
Not at all, theatre is hard, in film you have the luxury of doing as many takes as possible to get the perfect scene or shot, but in theatre it is live, if something goes wrong everyone sees it, including the audience. Everything is in real time.
Let's talk about the money aspect, is there money in theatre?
There are two ways of looking at it. Let me take Igiza as an example, most of us have other things we do from Monday to Friday, and the weekend is for theatre.
But there are groups that do this daily and consistently and have plays every month and people come to see their shows probably every weekend and pay Sh1,500 for a ticket, then yes, they make good money.
Any parting shot?
Let me talk to the scriptwriters. Always be authentic, develop the characters properly, do a proper story board from the beginning to the end. If you keep all that in mind, you will come up with a potentially good script.
