Humanity Hallows Issue 5 Out Now
Pick up your copy on campus or read online
By Pierangelly del Rio
The 2017 SICK! Festival brought a performance of Fractured Memory to Manchester’s HOME last week. The play explores the questions surrounding how we deal with a complex inherited history and is a combination of video projections, text extracts and storytelling. It re-imagines the American novelist James Baldwin’s Princes and Powers, an essay which describes the Congress of Afro-intellectuals, writers, artists, philosophers and theorists held at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1956.
Fractured Memory is written by and stars Ogutu Muraya, a Kenyan writer, theatre-maker and storyteller. Muraya is currently the Creative Director of the Theatre Company of Kenya and has produced works such as Are We Here Yet?, Four Strings in a Maze, and What Are the Odds? Like his previous works, Fractured Memory explores and examines the cultural, social and political issues within Kenya.
The play opens with a projection of a man cutting paper strings full of sentences, separating them into individual words, followed by a silent narrator who promises to tell many stories. This sets the tone of the play, which becomes a set of disjointed narratives and shifting perspectives throughout multiple years.
During the 60 minute performance, the audience explores the legacy of the Congress at the Sorbonne, learns about the socialist party of Kenya (KPU) and its eventual ban by the government, as well as childhood memories marked by violence and the distress caused by the social climate in the country. The topics of politics, race, colonisation and violence weigh heavily throughout the play, portrayed in a disjointed spectacle which plays with the boundaries between visual and oral narrative.
Despite the unconventional nature of Fractured Memory and the simplicity of the performance, its real value is transmitted by powerful images and Muraya’s voice. The audience finds themselves submerged in the diverse stories and captured by every word of the diverse narrations. The poetic language evidences Muraya’s talent as a story teller and serves as a tool to transmit the realities of a culture that might be unknown for some.
As James Baldwin himself said, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do… And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to assess the history that has placed one where one is, and formed one’s point of view.”
For more information about upcoming theatre events at HOME, visit the website.
Featured image: Mexican Pets, Nobody’s Working Title – Blunt Records Pinning down a genre as sprawling as indie-rock is as futile as painting your living room with gravy instead of emulsion. However, we can at least set some boundaries. We can drill down through layers of subgenres and microgenres, but ultimately, a broad definition of…
Punk Rock Factory have gained a growing following over the years for their punky covers of well-known Disney songs. The lovingly named ‘Sausage Army’ turn up en-masse, clad in Motörhead and Ramones merch for a night of silly, classic rock and roll. Bringing the pop back to the punk, Bronnie brings the warm-up stretches in…
Featured image: Jackie Lee Young / Shorefire Media Houston trio, Khruangbin, headed to the Apollo on Monday to play a double set, starting with running through their latest, more stripped-back album A La Sala in full. From the first hum of Mark Speer’s guitar, the swarming audience prepared to be baptised with a night of…
Featured image: Sonic PR Ahead of their three-night residency at the Apollo in December, music journalist Leah Small takes a look at the evolution of IDLES across their five studio albums. With fists raised and a rambunctious energy like no other, self-proclaimed ‘angry’ ensemble IDLES burst forth from Bristol in 2009, possessing a raw and…
Leave a reply