The women of the Bible like you’ve never seen them before! Spread Your Garment Over Me makes a bold statement about the monologues which depict 12 women mentioned in the Bible, including Eve, Sarah, Mary and the woman who had been brought before Jesus after being cited for adultery.
With a single show every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from February 11 to 20, the show that is titled after Ruth 3:9, where Ruth signals that she is willing to become Boaz’s wife in the Bible, is being staged at Kenya National Theatre’s Cheche Gallery.
The content of this show by Chemi Chemi Players is monologues and songs about women in the Bible based on a script done originally by Gillette Elvgren with music by Christopher Malendoski and produced by special arrangement with Blue Moon Plays. Elvgren’s script is written as a series of fifteen monologues and songs for a solo performance but Chemi Chemi Players’ rendition is done by eight women and portrays only 12. The cast includes Joyce Musoka, Tina Nduba-Banja, Nyokabi Macharia, Sakina Mirichii and Lucy Wache.
“When you read the Bible, you have the named disciples, Nicodemus the Pharisee. But then you have Peter’s mother, the woman at the well; we know their actions but we don’t really pay attention to them. It’s a chance to explore who these women might have been, based on what we know of them from the Bible and what we imagine; what would they as three-dimensional, real life women, have been feeling based on the culture around the at the time that was very patriarchal,” says Julisa Rowe, the producer, director and one of the actors in the show, citing that even when Jesus fed the 5, 000 men, the women and children weren’t in that count.
She says a lot of women in Kenya can also relate to the Middle Eastern culture that was also an enlightened feminist environment. There were women in power as well as those who had no control over situations they found themselves in and we don’t really think about that outside of the familiar stories. They endured tragedy, rape and wars while still holding families together, feeding the disciples, taking care of Jesus in the tomb while Deborah was a judge.
“In the last year or two, I came across a Bible study book called Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs. She wrote a very contemporary book about them and they were very American. I thought about what would be the equivalent of them as a Kenyan woman. We had an online group discussing it online and we wanted to begin Chemi Chemi Players with it, but we haven’t gotten it written yet,” says Julisa.
Instead of waiting for that script to be done, they decided to go for a script that was already there. Though she has done many monologues over the years, she didn’t want to do this by herself and handpicked her “dream cast”. Most of them met through their church acting group Word To Life.
Lucy Wache says after the initial read through, the cast chose the characters they are portraying in the women they heard their voices in most. As a mother of three boys, she picked the character of Rizpah, concubine of Saul.
“She went through so much trauma. Her two sons were executed even though they were innocent. You never think about what a mother goes through. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions for me but her journey has to be told. She has been in the mountains for five months, watching over her children’s bodies so that they don’t get eaten by birds or the animals because she is not allowed to bury them. I borrow from her motherly instincts but her story just makes me become someone else; crazy.”
You can see in Lucy’s eyes and in the shaking of her voice, just how connected she is to the character. She has been a professional theatre actress since 2000 with companies such as Heartstings Ensemble, Phoenix Players and Sterling Quality Entertainment Company.
On stage, you see the actors all get so much in character that you get lost in the monologues as the lights and performances take you deep into what were just names or female pronouns in the Bible previously.
Aspects of Kenyan culture
Nyokabi’s portrayal of a witch at a time that witches have been banned in Israel after David’s ascension to the throne is so spell-binding. If you thought she was a powerhouse before she went to Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London for her Master’s in Arts, she is an astronomic actress now.
Sakina has seen a lot of background work in stage and film management and is back on stage for the first time since she acted in The Money That Made Him Poor in 2018 that also had Sean Andrews, Ann Mwaura and Barbara Nyambura in the cast. She plays Eve and Claudia, Pilate’s wife.
“There’s a portion where she passed him a letter that said ‘Have nothing to do with this man, I have suffered many things in a dream because of him’. I have a chance to explore her as a rich girl, maybe a little bit spoiled, but then she meets Jesus and her perspective changes. The interesting thing about the show is we’re all going to be on stage all through, responding to what’s happening and helping each other in transitions and singing,” says Sakina.
“Women have survived over the centuries because of other women, supporting each other through their joys and heartbreaks. We’re kind of doing that with this too: everyone except Nyokabi is a mother, others are full-time actors or have office jobs, but when we get together online we have energy, enthusiasm and joy. So we thought we’d bring this on stage,” adds Julisa.
The script injects aspects of Kenyan culture, not wanting the audience feeling like it’s very removed from their reality, but maintains the core of the playwright's work.
“I would not be comfortable with having children in the audience. Sarah is not only dealing with barrenness but also with having to give her maid to her husband, and you can imagine how those conversations go. In Kenya, two years after the wedding couples are pressured to have babies so you can understand what she was going through. We’re not shy about it and though it may not be termed pornographic there’s adult content. These were fully-fledged human beings and not just moral lessons,” says Julisa.
