A collection of theatre pieces from an open call titled I Speak My Father explores the various forms of fatherhood experiences.
Set to go on stage on Father’s Day, June 21, at the Terrace Arts Place in Kilifi, it is produced by actor Gitura-Kamau of Fly on the Wall Productions.
The one-day event will feature spoken-word, poetry, and musical pieces centred on fatherhood.
It is a public storytelling and reflection campaign that came from Tea With My Father, which is designed to reframe how we see, remember, and speak about fatherhood. It is a digital movement and a lived experience, inviting people to articulate the often unspoken truths about their fathers, such as the love, the absence, the contradictions, and the inheritance.
Through June, people will share short pieces like poems, voice notes, and monologues dedicated to their fathers in forms that speak best to them.
These submitted stories will come from online participants who are selected to be amplified through media partners, curated readings, radio features, and extend the campaign to cultural places.
Gitura-Kamau will read some of the submitted pieces, and contributors will also have a chance to perform alongside other actors.
The campaign culminates in a live Father’s Day experience as an intimate and hybrid gathering that brings voices into the room. Here, selected works are performed, and conversations are held, and fathers and their children sit together to listen.
I Speak My Father is a continuation from Tea With My Father, a one-man play starring Gitura-Kamau last year that came from the need to talk about masculinity, fatherhood, father and child relationships, and generational silences around fatherhood.
Tea With My Father is a fictional play that revolves around a middle-aged man who returns from South Africa to visit his bedridden dying father and gets things off his chest regarding their tumultuous relationship.
Whereas in I Speak My Father, Gitura-Kamau says that he is taking advantage of Father’s Month and Father’s Day to launch a series of events.
“Initially, it was meant to be a one-off event for Father’s Month, but after speaking to people and hearing what they had to say, it became clear that they wanted these conversations to continue,” he says.
However, it was fuelled by the need to talk about fatherhood. The play is anchored in the need to keep these conversations going so that fatherhood is not spoken about in a single play or moment.
He is creating a space where the subject of fatherhood and father figures becomes a sustained conversation. When he staged Tea With My Father in the UK, Gitura-Kamau realised that Kilifi holds a certain magic for him.
“I found it interesting because of its artistic vibrancy, something that I’m not seeing anywhere else. Even though it is a small town, it has a very cosmopolitan outlook,” he says.
He further explains that Kilifi is a very defiant town, just like himself in many ways, and the town has become a natural home to begin this journey and take it to Mombasa.
He observes that we are culturally hesitant to speak about fatherhood, a thing that he feels has to begin somewhere.
“I think it is time to become bold enough to say that we need to address it, and the sooner, the better,” he says.
Ibrahim Muchemi and Lolani Kalu will present traditional stories around fatherhood. Children will also be given paper to write stories about their fathers.
He has partnered with a continental organisation based here called Alkebulan Abroad, whose work centres on returning to African historical knowledge and identity.
