Mumbi Kaigwa

Mumbi Kaigwa is an actor whose journey in the performing arts began long before she was born. What with her paternal grandmother having been a traditional dancer.

Mumbi remembers striding on the primary school stage at the age of 12. But it was her winning the Best Actress title at the 1978 Kenya Schools Drama Festival that first led her to think her lot might have been cast among artists. Without knowing, her dabbling in verse-speaking in which she won awards at the Kenya Schools Music Festival had prepared her for what would become her lifetime obsession, hobby and career - acting.

For a while, Mumbi veered towards television and video, helping to make the soap opera. Heart and Soul, which took on the large issues of poverty, AIDS, gender, governance, environment, and even taboos like incest, adolescent sex, abortion, and illicit alcohol within the soap opera format. Television programs in Mexico had led the way towards the marriage of the light-hearted soap medium with socially driven subjects.

In 2001 she returned to the theatre and scripted, produced and directed her first play, The Voice of a Dream, a mixture of music, dance, mime, and storytelling, first seen at the inaugural Theatre Extravaganza at Nairobi's Alliance Francaise's (formerly Maison Francaise). 

"My love for African ways has grown out of my life journey. We have to create things that are genuinely ours. Our West and South African brothers and sisters seem to have made great strides in this direction," she says. "If we are going to have respect for ourselves, we must celebrate our being. We don't have to look for answers outside ourselves."

As a writer, she's shared her skills in neighboring countries, traveling to South Sudan to work with teenage girls picking up their lives after the country’s long civil war. The result was three short stories based on their lives. In addition, she's worked as a trainer and voice coach for actors in Uganda, Tanzania, Zanzibar, and Kenya.

Her work as a producer includes the V-Day Worldwide Campaign, staging performances of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler between 2003 and 2005. In an environment hostile to women’s sexual and human rights, the events raised over US$20,000 for local organizations working to end violence against women and girls.

In an attempt to bring culturally relevant stories to audiences outside of the traditional spaces, she has created, written and co-directed the following: The SANND Festival of Storytelling and Dance, The Voice of a Dream, Githaa and KigeziNdoto (plays), and Heart and Soul, and Cry Foul! (television dramas).

Most recently her play KigeziNdoto has traveled throughout Kenya and Tanzania, generating discussion amongst youth about East Africa’s post-colonial history and sharing ideas regarding the citizen’s individual and mutual roles in the future of their communities. This, within the context of the ethnic violence that followed the 2007/2008 national elections in Kenya.

Mumbi is a board member of Media Development for Africa (MEDEVA Ltd.), the Sarakasi Trust and the Maisha Film Lab. She served as President (2003-2005) and as a panellist/keynote speaker (the Philippines 2003 and Indonesia 2006) of Women Playwrights International. Currently she is the Managing and Artistic Director of The Arts Canvas, in Kenya.

Residencies include Sundance Theater Institute (2007), the McCarter Theater Centre (2008), Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (2008), the Martin E. Segal Theater Centre at CUNY, and the Urban Bush Women, Brooklyn (2008).

She is currently finishing work on her third play, They Call Me Wanjiku, and developing a networking website for artists in East Africa and beyond.