Film

In 1970s Kenya, villagers build a people’s theatre that is violently shut down by the authoritarian government.

Decades later, the film follows the original actors and a new generation of activists as they reclaim a silenced history to imagine a collective future in the afterlife of colonialism.

Synopsis
Kamĩrĩĩthũ Afterlives is a documentary about Kenya’s most influential and controversial people’s theatre, told through the voices of the workers, peasants and organisers who built it. After African independence—when new nations confronted enduring colonialism, deepening inequality, and unmet promises of liberation—villagers in Kamĩrĩĩthũ designed an open-air theatre and staged “I Will Marry When I Want.” The play was written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ngũgĩ wa Mĩriĩ specifically for this insurgent stage. Its extraordinary popular reach and political charge triggered severe state repression: the theatre was demolished, the authors forced into exile, and the collective shut down.

The film resists the familiar narrative of a heroic cultural moment crushed by authoritarianism. Filmed in close collaboration with the original actors and a younger generation of performers and activists, it shows how the history of Kamĩrĩĩthũ theatre continues to shape everyday lives, ongoing struggles, and contested landscapes. Rather than treating this history as a closed past, the film approaches it as an active force in the present. Through rehearsals, conversations, and everyday scenes, participants reflect on their past as a guide for action.

The 77-minute documentary links Kamĩrĩĩthũ’s legacy to contemporary conflicts around land grabbing, toxic industry, state and gendered violence, and precarious work in Kenya. It shows how confronting the unfinished business of colonialism and the deferred promise of freedom opens space for new cultural practices and solidarities. At once a close portrait of a community and an inquiry into political arts, the film examines how storytelling and collective action unsettle colonial inheritances and enable decolonial futures.

Directors’ Statement
Kamĩrĩĩthũ Afterlives emerges from a collaborative process that mirrors the ethos of the Kamĩrĩĩthũ experiment itself. Just as the theatre was built and staged through shared labour and decision-making, the film is shaped by complementary forms of expertise that no single filmmaker could provide.

While I Will Marry When I Want is internationally known through censorship and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s own accounts, it has never been narrated from the perspective of those whose work, risk, and imagination sustained it. Our aim was not to illustrate an established narrative, but to work with community members to articulate how their histories matter now.

Formally, the film privileges embodiment and voice over didactic narration. It interweaves everyday scenes, collaborative re-staging and rehearsals, and oral testimonies with historic photographs, personal memorabilia, and previously inaccessible archival material. This approach allows for multiple registers of memory, interpretation, and emotion.

Filming in and around an architectural object lost to history, it evokes the theatre experiment through observation, performance, and the material presence of archives. We sought a sensorial, performative mode of storytelling that reflects intergenerational encounter and collective reflection, inviting audiences to consider how suppressed histories return as tools for imagining futures beyond extraction or neglect.

Research and Production Process
Before its actual production in January 2025, we spent four years building relationships of trust through workshops, interviews, archival research, site visits, and sustained discussions about representation. The film’s structure and aesthetic emerged from this engagement.

The Kamĩrĩĩthũ theatre group enters the Kamĩrĩĩthũ polytechnic on 20 May 2022, to watch a first compilation of video interviews.
In this short excerpt, the group discusses where the open-air theatre one stood.
The structure offered seating for 3000 people, and kids would climb nearby trees to watch the performances.
Place: Kamĩrĩĩthũ Polytechnic
Date: 20 May 2022

During one of the interview sessions, Mbothu shows one of the few remaining photographs of the play,
with him as a young man performing the role of Kioi (Photo: Cupers & Kitata, 2022)

Interviewing George Kabonyi (Photo: Gitonga Mwangi, 2022)

David Njaramba Kaguura walking the filming team to the tea plantations (Photo: Gitonga Mwangi, 2022)

︎︎ Executive Producer: Kenny Cupers
Producers: Alexandria Majalla, Kenny Cupers, Makau Kitata
Directors: Alexandria Majalla, Kenny Cupers
Research and Concept: Kenny Cupers, Makau Kitata
Script: Kenny Cupers, Alexandria Majalla
Interviewees: David Njaramba Kaguura, Geoffrey Mbothu Wachira, George Kabonyi, Lucy Wangui Ng’ang’a, Salome Njeri Njane, Wangari Wa Hinga, Margaret Wairimu Ngũgĩ, Fred Karanja, Dr. Kawive Wambua, Dr. Kimani Gecau, Dr. Kenneth Ombongi, Wanjira Wanjiru

Reenactment, by Social Justice Centres Traveling Theatre:
Cast: Samuel Ochieng (Gicaamba), Laurin Awuor (Gathoni), Ann Wanjiku (Wangeci), Newton Ouma Ombaka (Ndugĩre), Wilfred Kuya (Ikuua), Diana Kinyua (Jezebel), Michelle Blessing Franklyne (Njooki), Kennedy Mbogo Ngechu (Kĩgũũnda), Mercy Mutheu Ngala (Helen), Peter Victor Ndolo (Kĩoi), Ann Juuk, Said Hassan (waiter), ⁠Kennedy Kimani (watchman). Technical Team: Christine Mary Elizabeth Ochieng Stage Directors: Anthony Meya, Davis Tafari. Secretariat: Minoo Kyaa, Brian Mathenge.

Community Liaison: Makau Kitata, Kenny Cupers, Alexandria Majalla
Camerawork: George Kinyanjui, Bemnet Goitom, Samuel Mugo
Production Assistant: Hassan Masika, Peter Mulandi Kiamba, Brenda Muthoni Wamburu, Ben Wanjiru

Editors: Mambo Nduati, Cliff Kotange, Brian Fairbairn
Associate Editors: Bemnet Goitom, Samuel Mugo

Financial Support by the University of Basel

Film

In 1970s Kenya, villagers build a people’s theatre that is violently shut down by the authoritarian government. Decades later, the film follows the original actors and a new generation of activists as they reclaim a silenced history to imagine a collective future in the afterlife of colonialism.

︎

In 1970s Kenya, villagers build a people’s theatre that is violently shut down by the authoritarian government.

Decades later, the film follows the original actors and a new generation of activists as they reclaim a silenced history to imagine a collective future in the afterlife of colonialism.