Film category comes to drama fete for first time

Moi Equator Girls Nanyuki presents their choral verse during the Central Province Drama Festival at Alliance High School. The Kenya Schools and Colleges National Drama Festival started on Tuesday with a film category being introduced for the first time. Photo/FILE

What you need to know:

  • Disappointment as promised bull-fight postponed to closing day of extravaganza

The Kenya Schools and Colleges National Drama Festival started on Tuesday with a film category being introduced for the first time.

However, participants were disappointed when a promised bull-fight set for the opening ceremony was postponed to the final day.

“There was a technical hitch,” provincial drama secretary Otati Etemesi said on Tuesday.

Kenya Polytechnic University were first on the stage at the Kakamega High School with an oral narrative Samson wa Papa, which featured five performers and a narrator.

Explores homosexuality

The story explores homosexuality and features Samson, who is not attracted to the opposite sex when he comes of age. To the dismay of the community, he marries a man.

The narrator puts up a fairly good show, with a variety of mood changes that aptly captures the story.

KCA University presented a five-minute choral verse Makurubunji that castigates parents who forbid their children to marry from other communities.

Masinde Muliro presented a six-minute verse Panda Shuka. The verse explores demolitions, the poor in the slums and those living in such places.

The University of Nairobi thrilled the audience with a choral verse Deadly Bite that explores drug abuse among the youth.

They also presented a dramatised solo verse The Mugumo Tree in memory of Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Maathai, who died last year.

In the film category introduced this year, the highlights of the day were State House Girls’ one-hour movie The show must go on produced by Mrs Joan Muoti.

The film is about two girls who survive a tribal carnage. One of them saw her parents slaughtered.

One of the killers is the father of the girl she is now living with in a camp, setting the stage for a gripping story.

Other films screened on Tuesday included Karima Girls’ Flashback and Kayole Primary’s We are the children.