I would like for just one moment, as Primo Levi once wrote, to be freed from the weight of my body. I would like for the world to stop, only momentarily, for me to catch my breath. In the past few weeks, my life has been relentless, with one failure following the next, like dominos falling, until now I’m immune to my suffering. 

It has reminded me of the first time I failed when I truly wanted something, how crushed I felt then which has made me think that there is no point to failure but getting used to it.

It happened in my first year of high school. The five streams of our form one class were all required to compete in theatre plays. In our school, theatre plays were valued, and the dramatic society was prestigious. They took part in the district, provincial and national competitions, often winning or coming second or third. They were allowed to stay after lights out for practice. They also went for outings, which was highly coveted in our boarding school.

Each of the five classes was assigned two dramatic society members in form three—a director and a scriptwriter. One evening in early May, after the opening of our second school term, our director and scriptwriter came to our class with the script. They stood at the front of the class and told us how special our class was and how we would win the competition at the end of the term. The director was a well-kempt boy while the scriptwriter was not, his shirt was unbuttoned, his tie was loose, and he was often involved in disciplinary issues. 

“It’s time for auditions,” they said.

I have forgotten what the name of our play was, however, it was about a delinquent student, an anti-hero, who starts a revolt in his high school and shoots six teachers.

We pushed back the desks and chairs to make space for an acting area. The play was to be practised in classrooms as there was no other space in the school. There was the school hall, but that could not be given to any class because it would be favouritism. We leaned on the wall around the blackboard as they explained what they wanted. We were amused, excited and afraid. It meant if we were cast in any of the roles, the whole school would see us perform. The casting was surprisingly quick and cliché. The boy who looked menacing and serious was cast as the principal; because our high school was an all-boys school, the boys who looked feminine and were yet to break their voices were cast as female teachers; and the shy boys were cast as crowds. When it came to casting the main character, they tried to cast a boy who raised his hand. He was asked to step forward and read lines. But he didn’t sound quite right.

“Kuna mwingine?” they asked.

I stepped forward and was asked to read the same lines. They entailed an explosion of emotions, projecting the voice, but more importantly to bring out the character as being entitled. When I finished my audition, I was cast in the role.

                                                

 

We practised five times a week after night preps for about an hour. The scriptwriter gave us handwritten lines. I rewrote mine on separate leaves of paper and recited them as often as I could. I wanted to give a devastatingly good performance. I wanted to be met with rapturous applause when the curtains fell. I was fourteen then. It was my first time acting, but I felt I was a natural. I could let go of myself and inhabit the character I played so simply as if I were only changing clothes. It was fascinating to become someone else, and the play offered a portal into a different consciousness. I was not afraid, at the time, for my performance to be seen and judged not good enough.

One evening, the scriptwriter came in alone. He said the director had abandoned the play. I forget now what the actual problem was, perhaps they had creative differences, but I do remember I no longer saw the director in school often. Therefore, it meant our practices acquired the personality of the scriptwriter. They started later than usual and sometimes, we would have to push on with practices on our own.

As the term neared the end, we were allowed to use the school hall for rehearsals. Each of the five classes was allocated a time slot over a week. In ours, our class went to the hall with the scriptwriter now also the director. We selected costumes and masks we would wear from an enormous collection backstage that the dramatic society had accrued over time. We also selected props. Our props motifs centred around the school environment and evil to represent the darkness of the anti-hero.

 

 

On the day of the competitions, the hall was full, brimming with excitement. The school hired external theatre experts as judges. They had chairs on the front row and a table with tea kettles, cups, bread and cakes.

The plays started. Whenever something funny was said, the audience laughed and shouted in approval, so much so that the play would pause into an extended lull filled with audience reaction.

Our turn arrived and we walked onto the stage. I was afraid of forgetting my lines, but I did not get stage fright. I wanted to win so much and we performed our hearts out, to the best we could. I thought we acted so well. However, our play did not get the reaction we wanted from the audience. We got a few laughs at some of our dialogue and when it was over, the applause was not thunderous.

At the end of the competition, during the awarding ceremony, our play came last with an extremely low score. The script of our play, most people told me afterwards, was so poor. The acting was alright, but the script didn’t make sense.

I was hurt by how badly we performed, I had put so much of myself into the play. I have thought about the play often, the script and the storyline for years now, and I have realised the fundamental flaw of the play was that the character never changes and school plays in those days were obsessed with redemptive arcs. Maybe, despite not knowing, the scriptwriter may have been writing a character like Meursault, but when I think of it in this way, I realise the play’s anti-hero never descends into Camus’ philosophy of absurdism. More appropriately, the scriptwriter was expressing teenage angst like Holden’s in The Catcher in the Rye. Still, the scriptwriter was sixteen years old trying to express complex ideas in a story, and we, the actors, were only fourteen years of age and neither of us had the language to arrange our world.

 

May the world be kind to you for the rest of the year.

 

Best,

Dennis Mugaa.