Of Festivals, Preparations, Winning and Losing

Last Saturday September 26^th, my team and I attended Catholic senior youth Nairobi West Deanery festivals at St. Michael’s Otiende Church, Langata. We were thoroughly beaten. Thoroughly beaten! My solo verse ranked the last. My narrative only managed a position two. Thanks God, even the runners up were to proceed to the zonal levels at St Johns Kangemi on 10^th October. Were it not for this runners up narrative, I would been roasted alive in that bus that we traveled back home in. Hard stares were fixed at me by my team. I had failed them.  I was like a Kenyan Harambee Stars football coach who even after training and coaching his team diligently was beaten by another team.  Would they impeach me, I wondered.

Festivals and their preparations are moments that I look forward to with anxiety especially if I have a team performing on stage. Anything can go wrong in that short time-frame that the actors are given to do a rendition of how they understood your item. One might sneeze where they were not to. Another might sweat or develop a fever at the most weird time. Even after rehearsing and perfecting the lines during the preparations, things might go awry at the last minute.

Final preparations before the festivals also taught me the value of improvisation. We were to have our backdrops designed by an artist. However, the team leader announced a week before the D-day that their budget could not cater for the artist’s fees. I became tongue-tied. Designs of what needed to be artistically drawn had been in my mind all along.... Here were the festivals quickly coming… Here was the team leader saying that we would have to make do with sketches… What do you get from that? Confusion.

Luckily, an elder theatre director came to our rescue. He had an artistic talent and volunteered to draw for us. All I needed to do was to tell him the designs that I wanted on the backdrops. He carefully sketched most of them and left us to do the paintwork. You should have seen me with a team of Mary Queen of Apostles youth members painting!  Never before had I held a paintbrush in my hand. But I did paint well anyway. At some point, our artist was so tired that he asked us to finish up the drawings. We had no alternative. Again, pencil in hand, I painstakingly drew. The experience taught me the essence of improvising as well as taking control when things go awry since they will always go.  

During the festivals day, I could not help but notice the essence of color. Most of the winning items apart from having great storylines employed color and beautiful productions. Their teams had to go out of their ways to get the best backdrops designs, best costume, good scripts and powerful actors. All these factors led to their success.  From my solo verse loss, I learnt the importance of following instructions to the letter.

Faint Setting of my Narrative Stage

I was surprised to note that most actors do not watch other stage performances once they done with theirs. I wondered how they would learn. They were haughty. How dare you be so content with your work that you never pay attention to what others have to offer? Do you think that they are less creative?

I hope and pray that our narrative will outsmart the others on 10^th October. We hope to win all the way till we showcase it to the Pope when he arrives in Kenya in November. [Hint: Our narrative is about how the disabled (walemavus), are hidden anytime a visiting head of state or dignitary is set to touch down in Nairobi, Kenya. You saw it when US President Obama visited us, didn’t you? I just pray they will not hide them when Pope comes] For those who will be able to attend the festivals, let’s meet there for the Zone B competitions. Pray for us too.