Kimani quietly moves mountains in Kenyan theatre

The quiet, behind-the-scenes dynamism that assembled the First Performing Arts Conference held this past week at Kenya National Theatre also happens to be the new Principle Creative Production Officer (PCPO) at the Kenya Cultural Centre.

Kevin Kimani Kahuro has a number of other claims to fame under his theatre belt which he also doesn’t boast about. 

He founded the Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) in 2016 when few people could figure out how he was single-handedly going to set up an ‘international’ festival when he seemed to have no big bundle of funds backing him and few believers in his international ambitions. 

But he has managed to pull it off annually ever since. He has operated on a shoestring, but has managed to bring global theatre groups from as far Scandinavia, the USA, and Senegal and as near as Uganda, Egypt, and South Africa.

KITFEST has grown and prospered gradually up until November 2021 when he and his team held the most successful festival yet. 

The intrepid Kimani didn’t even miss a festival during the darkest days of COVID-19 when in 2020, a portion of it went online and another part was staged in five regional counties.

He was even able to produce the first edition of the Journal of East African Theatre containing scholarly papers from a KITFEST Conference that was held in 2018.

Then, right after KITFEST 2021, the Kenya Theatre Awards were announced and the public was invited to participate in the awards-selection process. 

Kimani had already brought together a team of theatre-minded Kenyans to serve as members of the KTA jury. 

But for the sake of democracy, transparency, and interactivity, the process of voting was digitalized with the public gaining 40 percent of the decision-making power. 

The awards were also the brain-child of Kimani, assisted by his team. So one can now see that this man has had a vision from the beginning.

His obtaining a senior position at the Kenya Cultural Centre may have come as a surprise, especially as he is still a doctoral candidate, writing his Ph.D dissertation at Kenyatta University where he got his Bachelor of Arts in 2013 and Masters in Theatre Arts in 2019.

But his desire to build a thriving theatre culture in Kenya has its own history. Starting with his performing in Church productions from age 10, Kimani, as Chairman of the Drama Club, went on to act in the Kenya Schools Drama Festival during his days at Komothai Boys School in Githunguri

By then, his destiny was pretty well set as he joined Jicho 4 Players following secondary where he went all over the country staging set texts and performing in plays like Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Kifo Kisimani, Utengano, and Ngugi’s River Between.

By the time he joined Kenyatta University, the Department of Film Technology and Theatre Arts had been established, but he had to set up the Drama Club in order to take shows to the Schools and Colleges Drama Festival. Surprisingly, that hadn’t happened before.

“I wasn’t just chair of the Drama Club,” he tells BDLife. “I did everything from logistics to ticketing to acting,” he adds.

Kimani can’t identify exactly when he developed the vision of building a thriving theatre scene in Kenya. “I’ve always had a passion for theatre, since I was very young,” he says.

But by the time he entered the Masters program in theatre at KU, he already saw the way forward.

“I had two career paths ahead of me. I could have opted for film, as most of my classmates were doing. Or I could go into theatre which is where I could see there were limitless possibilities,” he says

It has been a long road to finally hosting the first Performing Arts Conference at the Kenya National Theatre. The three-day conference featured mainly scholars like Professors Christopher Odhiambo, Frederick Ngala and Emily Akuno as well as Dr Mshai Mwangola-Githongo, Fred Mbogo, Mbugua Njoroge, Zippy Okoth, Emmanuel Shikuku, Kahithe Kiiru, and Mukasa Situma Wafula.

All of them addressed the three-pronged theme of ‘Decolonization, Intercultural Collaboration, and Social Disruption’ from one angle or other.

One of the major issues that various scholars addressed, especially Dr Mshai and Dr Mbogo, was the site of the conference, Kenya National Theatre itself. Established in 1952 by the British colonial power, it was a no-go zone for Africans for more than a decade.

But has it been fully decolonized today? The same issue applies to the School Drama Festival since it was also launched during colonial times. 

These and many other topics were discussed during the conference.

But the most inspiring presentation was given, not by a scholar but by the renowned singer-songwriter Eric Wainaina who encouraged young artists to be courageous, adventurous, and fearless in the pursuit of their passion.

It was a message that resonated widely among academics and artists alike, including Kimani who is already at work on his next theatre project, the KTA 2022.