Zur Entstehung des kollektiven Theaterprojekts „This Plot is not for Sale“ (II)
Das Projekt mit dem Arbeitstitel Land of Tropes entstand als ein kollektives, fünfsprachiges Theaterprojekt über Erinnerung, Zugehörigkeit, Postkolonialismus und Schuld. Es wird derzeit unter der Leitung des 
NMT (Netzwerk Münchner Theatertexter*innen) in Nairobi und München sowie im digitalen Raum realisiert und am 31. Oktober 2025 bei SPIELART unter dem Titel This Plot is not for Sale uraufgeführt. Das Literaturportal Bayern begleitet diese spannende herausfordernde Projektarbeit sowohl in Hinblick auf die Aufführung im Herbst berichtend als auch im Vorfeld fördernd, indem es die drei maßgeblich beteiligten Autorinnen und Autoren gebeten hat, über ihre Arbeit und die dazugehörigen sprachlich-kulturellen Bewusstseinsprozesse in essayistischer Form zu reflektieren.
Der zweite Beitrag stammt von der kenianischen Autorin Ursula Gisemba und wurde auf Englisch verfasst. Die Übersetzung auf Deutsch erfolgt hier in Kürze.
*
I. What is my mother tongue?
Is English my mother tongue? My mother spoke to me in Kiswahili, sometimes in English. But my mother's mother tongue is neither Kiswahili nor English – her mother spoke to her in Ekegusii which is what I have been told should be my mother tongue. But my grandmother spoke to me in Kiswahili.
Oxford Languages defines mother tongue as "the first language a person has been exposed to from birth." Merriam-Webster defines mother tongue as "one's native language." Upon investigating dictionaries, I find that they are not neutral repositories of meaning. A word's definition is dependent on ideology and cultural assumptions of its context.
Well, what was I exposed to from birth? That is complicated, I cannot remember. I am sure my vocabulary was a natural mixing of English and Kiswahili. The Oxford Languages definition disqualifies Ekegusii. I only know Ekegusii as the language of the grown-ups' gossip. The language became louder when I was not supposed to understand the conversation. The latter definition qualifies Ekegusii; in Kenya, this is the agreed definition of mother tongue.
What is this, buzzing in my brain? English.
I have a big secret. My dreams are in English. Dreams as in: the dissolving worlds of the subconscious, the speakable and unspeakable monsters, the unknown faces of sleep. Then, again, dreams as in: hopes for the future, what I imagine myself to be, what I see my environment to come would be. Just many Englishmen.
When I began discussions in late 2023 with writers from Netzwerk Münchener Theatertexter*innen (NMT), we searched for points of confluence between Nairobi and Munich. We quickly found ourselves questioning the language of theatre. My counterparts from Munich were surprised by the weak tradition of writing in so-called mother tongues and Kiswahili.
Many writers, especially playwrights, lean into English. Surely, the land and home of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who wrote Decolonising the Mind (1986), should have produced a long history of Kenyans writing in their mother tongues. In his essays, he rightfully questions the African literary scene which is typically classified into: Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone, with little recognition of our native tongues. He calls for a radical shift: embracing our mother tongues to resist the neocolonial state's ongoing cultural amnesia and its continuation of colonial legacies. I never met Ngũgĩ, but I have much to share with him.
Ngũgĩ, not much has changed.
Ngũgĩ speaks of leaving 'Afro-European' literature, in 1977, to write in his mother tongue Gikuyu.[1]
This genesis was marked by one of his most notable plays, Ngaahika Ndeda (I Will Marry When I Want), co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Miiri. The play was a response to a call from the community in Kamiirithu, who felt alienated from English-written theatre. To develop it, the two writers worked with the community, not only in using the local language but also allowing ongoing input influenced by the reality of the people's everyday lives. The play was shaped by the local voices, with the main source of qualification being the capability of one to embody life. This approach influenced the register, character, tone, and even an evolving, casting process. As a result developing drama which he praises as closer to the dialectics of life than poetry or fiction.[2]
Yet years later, English is still king. We mix in all our local tendencies, we improvise, but still… What else would a people educated in English resolve to? Many Kenyans will tell you about the 'disc'. This could be a small piece, or in other schools, a big piece of wood that you hang around your neck. The disc was given to the first person to speak any other language than English; they would then pass it around to the next person they heard and so on. At the end of the day, the train would be traced back and anyone who was handed the disc would be punished. Ngũgĩ wrote about this happening in the 1950s. I also experienced it in the 2000s and 2010s.
Ngũgĩ. Zeichnung von Alfred Wango mit freundlicher Genehmigung. © Alfred Wango
Ngũgĩ, this is still common practice.
Frantz Fanon mocks us in Black Skin, White Masks: "A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language."[3] Unfortunately, speaking English all your life doesn't guarantee the Kenyan students, once punished by the chain of the disc, unrestricted access to the United Kingdom. Their English 'A's from school still lead them to be subjected to language proficiency tests to enter a university in the UK.
My father often praised Queen Elizabeth II. Elizabeth, just like my mother's name. His allegiance to the crown is an indicator of diverging opinions of different generations. He says, she is elegant, I say, she is a coloniser. He remembers scholarships, I think gate-keeping. Elizabeth, as queen or mother, was someone in our minds. As I sat with writers from NMT, reflecting on this plight of mother tongues, I finally said in resignation, "English is my mother tongue, the Queen is my mother."
Language, mother tongues, was the first question.
II. A shape-shifting tongue garners allies
It is 2023. My first time in Munich as an artist in residence for three months; first time in Europe; and first time in a city where the main language of instruction is something I do not know. Munich is also in Bavaria where "Guten Morgen, Tag, Abend", is often switched for "Servus". Only one person on the S-Bahn has told me, "Auf Wiedersehen!" In its place, I have learnt to say, "Tschüss" or "Ciao" but to remember the German equivalent is actually spelled "Tschau"!
Around the beginning of my third month in Munich, I became homesick. But the symptoms were not longing for the land Kenya. While on the S-Bahn, the announcement goes, "Nächster Halt…" and as it repeats it again and again for multiple stops, I become irritated. This unexplainable ache was German consuming me:
The cashier speaks to a white man in English, but answers me in German yet he clearly notices that I do not understand him.
The S-Bahn stops on a rainy night, and it is difficult for me to catch a taxi, till the very last one. No cab driver has the patience to tell me their last stop. Somehow, the very last one to come was the kindest.
The man at the Vodafone shop refuses to serve me.
And yes! Someone had already told me, "This is Germany, speak German!"
What is this hostility from the tongue? I wanted to hear Kiswahili mixed with English, I wanted to hear the Kenyan accent, I was longing for the Kenyan tongue. The homesickness was a layered outburst of pain from lingering micro-aggressions. I had a price to pay as it pays to be more aligned with the language of the places where you want to be seen. No one is asking whether I have learnt my mother tongue. In fact, they are asking me to learn another European tongue. In defiance of this linguistic violence, I never learnt German. When I finally landed at the airport back home, there was a deep sense of relief.
Ngũgĩ, what do I have to tell this world that is pushing me further away from my tongue in order to exist in it?
In 2024, we finally started working on our international collaboration. In developing my character Pete, I poured into her the contradictions of the African in movement.
Pete's background is based on African migration in the search for opportunity. She shape-shifts and changes her strides to match what is needed. This African diligence that we are often reminded of before we leave home, "You must go there and work three times as hard to get the same opportunity." Pete, unlike me, doesn't waste time on defiance but instead swears on meritocracy. So when Pete meets the German character, Katharina, Pete speaks German.
Pete knows language is one key to the soul. Throughout the play, she shifts through English, Kiswahili, Ekegusii and Deutsch. Her intent, to seek out more and more opportunities in the world, to build wealth by any means possible. For Pete, learning a new language is a small inconvenience for a bigger reward. Whether it is code-switching or perfecting the right accent, Pete strives to be aligned with the world she moves in.
And in writing her, Pete taught me Deutsch.
Pete exemplifies an unfortunate truth: the tongue often precedes your perception.
Ngũgĩ, my tongue is fighting for my face to be seen.
The shape-shifting tongue that speaks not just different languages, but can apply different registers and present accordingly to different spheres of life is an armor well learnt. In a sense, acculturation, encouraging the split of the black African persona is happening. As Pete quotes from Achile Mbembe, "Like a kind of giant cage, Black reason is in truth a complicated network of doubling, uncertainty, and equivocation, built with race as its chassis."[4]
The settling and acceptance of the complications of language and the loss of multi-linguality always in preference to European tongues became a strong basis for the text we have developed. We chose a shift; allowing the characters to speak to each other in what they know. To ask the audience to reach into the texture of unknown languages.
This is a special case for Kenya where it is uncommon practice to have supertitles. I look forward to listening to the audience experience as many of them have not had theatre with supertitles. Usually, if you don't understand the language, you don't show up for the performance. Similarly, as it pertains to writing, if I don't speak it, I don't write it.
For the first time, I translate text to Ekegusii. For the first time, I speak Ekegusii in public.
Ngũgĩ, Pete has taught me a lost mother tongue.
III. This Plot is not for Sale
While moving around Kenya, to see the words 'THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE', splayed out on the side of a wall, or on a small placard next to a gate, is quite common. This is not a sign of due diligence by the landowner– it is a signal for traps previously laid out by con-men attempting to sell the land.
Our project started with the working title, 'Land of Tropes', with a focus on examining the stereotypes and clichés that we subject each other to in imagery. The characters Pete (from Kenya) and Kathi (from Germany) take the expected positions of colonisation. While the third, Stevan (from former Yugoslavia), develops an unlikely in-between shaped by the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), where Yugoslavia aligned itself with former colonised countries. Stevan, who is a photographer, is at the centre of the process of this image reproduction.
Through Stevan's absurd studio, satire builds as the contradictions of their world begin to surface. Pete and his German counterpart, Katharina, build an illogical world with their well-meaning cliché NGO. We see Pete negotiate for space and build on her multi-linguality. But it lives beyond her tongue, her body, her silence is always layered.
For Pete, owning black African responsibility implies a heaviness of stereotypes plastered on her persona that she must work to erase. Pete appears with these tropes as a shadow. She affects a difficult in-between that the middle class can, use the tropes imposed to take advantage of those who underestimate their knowledge.
Recognising these dilemmas, the title changed to 'THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE.' An Aha!-moment in the writer's room. It captured the actions of the characters who exemplified the position of continuously negotiating ideological space in the room. This tension forces them to hide their truths.
The heaviness of continued role-play is the ghost in Pete's life. Standing before Stevan's camera, she realises the truth is the only way for her to step out of the trope forced on her by this image reproduction. In a sense, Pete must stop shape-shifting, accept where she comes from and face the ails she perpetuates. Her truth is highlighted when she speaks Ekegusii. Pete reaches out to honour the post-colonial language arguments of Ngũgĩ.
Ngũgĩ, have I cleansed some of the tears of your neo-colonial lament?[5]
In the end, the play doesn't fully respond to Ngugi's perspective, but starts the journey. Investigating how language is used as a vehicle of legitimacy and the price to pay for it. 'THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE' asks its characters to drop the façade.
This journey of collaboration has opened a new door of questioning and an exciting avenue for my performance in Ekegusii, Deutsch, English and Kiswahili. The magic of this exploration and moving these languages to new spaces would only be possible within this unlikely constellation of authors.
Like Pete, I am ultimately plastered with many tongues, searching for meaning. At every moment, seeking voice. Picking, discarding, questioning.
[1] Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 1986), p. 27.
[2] Ngũgĩ, Decolonising the Mind, p. 54.
[3] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), p. 18.
[4] Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, trans. Laurent Dubois (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), p. 10.
[5] Decolonising the Mind, Preface, xii.
Zur Entstehung des kollektiven Theaterprojekts „This Plot is not for Sale“ (II)
Das Projekt mit dem Arbeitstitel Land of Tropes entstand als ein kollektives, fünfsprachiges Theaterprojekt über Erinnerung, Zugehörigkeit, Postkolonialismus und Schuld. Es wird derzeit unter der Leitung des NMT (Netzwerk Münchner Theatertexter*innen) in Nairobi und München sowie im digitalen Raum realisiert und am 31. Oktober 2025 bei SPIELART unter dem Titel This Plot is not for Sale uraufgeführt. Das Literaturportal Bayern begleitet diese spannende herausfordernde Projektarbeit sowohl in Hinblick auf die Aufführung im Herbst berichtend als auch im Vorfeld fördernd, indem es die drei maßgeblich beteiligten Autorinnen und Autoren gebeten hat, über ihre Arbeit und die dazugehörigen sprachlich-kulturellen Bewusstseinsprozesse in essayistischer Form zu reflektieren.
Der zweite Beitrag stammt von der kenianischen Autorin Ursula Gisemba und wurde auf Englisch verfasst. Die Übersetzung auf Deutsch erfolgt hier in Kürze.
*
I. What is my mother tongue?
Is English my mother tongue? My mother spoke to me in Kiswahili, sometimes in English. But my mother's mother tongue is neither Kiswahili nor English – her mother spoke to her in Ekegusii which is what I have been told should be my mother tongue. But my grandmother spoke to me in Kiswahili.
Oxford Languages defines mother tongue as "the first language a person has been exposed to from birth." Merriam-Webster defines mother tongue as "one's native language." Upon investigating dictionaries, I find that they are not neutral repositories of meaning. A word's definition is dependent on ideology and cultural assumptions of its context.
Well, what was I exposed to from birth? That is complicated, I cannot remember. I am sure my vocabulary was a natural mixing of English and Kiswahili. The Oxford Languages definition disqualifies Ekegusii. I only know Ekegusii as the language of the grown-ups' gossip. The language became louder when I was not supposed to understand the conversation. The latter definition qualifies Ekegusii; in Kenya, this is the agreed definition of mother tongue.
What is this, buzzing in my brain? English.
I have a big secret. My dreams are in English. Dreams as in: the dissolving worlds of the subconscious, the speakable and unspeakable monsters, the unknown faces of sleep. Then, again, dreams as in: hopes for the future, what I imagine myself to be, what I see my environment to come would be. Just many Englishmen.
When I began discussions in late 2023 with writers from Netzwerk Münchener Theatertexter*innen (NMT), we searched for points of confluence between Nairobi and Munich. We quickly found ourselves questioning the language of theatre. My counterparts from Munich were surprised by the weak tradition of writing in so-called mother tongues and Kiswahili.
Many writers, especially playwrights, lean into English. Surely, the land and home of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who wrote Decolonising the Mind (1986), should have produced a long history of Kenyans writing in their mother tongues. In his essays, he rightfully questions the African literary scene which is typically classified into: Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone, with little recognition of our native tongues. He calls for a radical shift: embracing our mother tongues to resist the neocolonial state's ongoing cultural amnesia and its continuation of colonial legacies. I never met Ngũgĩ, but I have much to share with him.
Ngũgĩ, not much has changed.
Ngũgĩ speaks of leaving 'Afro-European' literature, in 1977, to write in his mother tongue Gikuyu.[1]
This genesis was marked by one of his most notable plays, Ngaahika Ndeda (I Will Marry When I Want), co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Miiri. The play was a response to a call from the community in Kamiirithu, who felt alienated from English-written theatre. To develop it, the two writers worked with the community, not only in using the local language but also allowing ongoing input influenced by the reality of the people's everyday lives. The play was shaped by the local voices, with the main source of qualification being the capability of one to embody life. This approach influenced the register, character, tone, and even an evolving, casting process. As a result developing drama which he praises as closer to the dialectics of life than poetry or fiction.[2]
Yet years later, English is still king. We mix in all our local tendencies, we improvise, but still… What else would a people educated in English resolve to? Many Kenyans will tell you about the 'disc'. This could be a small piece, or in other schools, a big piece of wood that you hang around your neck. The disc was given to the first person to speak any other language than English; they would then pass it around to the next person they heard and so on. At the end of the day, the train would be traced back and anyone who was handed the disc would be punished. Ngũgĩ wrote about this happening in the 1950s. I also experienced it in the 2000s and 2010s.
Ngũgĩ. Zeichnung von Alfred Wango mit freundlicher Genehmigung. © Alfred Wango
Ngũgĩ, this is still common practice.
Frantz Fanon mocks us in Black Skin, White Masks: "A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language."[3] Unfortunately, speaking English all your life doesn't guarantee the Kenyan students, once punished by the chain of the disc, unrestricted access to the United Kingdom. Their English 'A's from school still lead them to be subjected to language proficiency tests to enter a university in the UK.
My father often praised Queen Elizabeth II. Elizabeth, just like my mother's name. His allegiance to the crown is an indicator of diverging opinions of different generations. He says, she is elegant, I say, she is a coloniser. He remembers scholarships, I think gate-keeping. Elizabeth, as queen or mother, was someone in our minds. As I sat with writers from NMT, reflecting on this plight of mother tongues, I finally said in resignation, "English is my mother tongue, the Queen is my mother."
Language, mother tongues, was the first question.
II. A shape-shifting tongue garners allies
It is 2023. My first time in Munich as an artist in residence for three months; first time in Europe; and first time in a city where the main language of instruction is something I do not know. Munich is also in Bavaria where "Guten Morgen, Tag, Abend", is often switched for "Servus". Only one person on the S-Bahn has told me, "Auf Wiedersehen!" In its place, I have learnt to say, "Tschüss" or "Ciao" but to remember the German equivalent is actually spelled "Tschau"!
Around the beginning of my third month in Munich, I became homesick. But the symptoms were not longing for the land Kenya. While on the S-Bahn, the announcement goes, "Nächster Halt…" and as it repeats it again and again for multiple stops, I become irritated. This unexplainable ache was German consuming me:
The cashier speaks to a white man in English, but answers me in German yet he clearly notices that I do not understand him.
The S-Bahn stops on a rainy night, and it is difficult for me to catch a taxi, till the very last one. No cab driver has the patience to tell me their last stop. Somehow, the very last one to come was the kindest.
The man at the Vodafone shop refuses to serve me.
And yes! Someone had already told me, "This is Germany, speak German!"
What is this hostility from the tongue? I wanted to hear Kiswahili mixed with English, I wanted to hear the Kenyan accent, I was longing for the Kenyan tongue. The homesickness was a layered outburst of pain from lingering micro-aggressions. I had a price to pay as it pays to be more aligned with the language of the places where you want to be seen. No one is asking whether I have learnt my mother tongue. In fact, they are asking me to learn another European tongue. In defiance of this linguistic violence, I never learnt German. When I finally landed at the airport back home, there was a deep sense of relief.
Ngũgĩ, what do I have to tell this world that is pushing me further away from my tongue in order to exist in it?
In 2024, we finally started working on our international collaboration. In developing my character Pete, I poured into her the contradictions of the African in movement.
Pete's background is based on African migration in the search for opportunity. She shape-shifts and changes her strides to match what is needed. This African diligence that we are often reminded of before we leave home, "You must go there and work three times as hard to get the same opportunity." Pete, unlike me, doesn't waste time on defiance but instead swears on meritocracy. So when Pete meets the German character, Katharina, Pete speaks German.
Pete knows language is one key to the soul. Throughout the play, she shifts through English, Kiswahili, Ekegusii and Deutsch. Her intent, to seek out more and more opportunities in the world, to build wealth by any means possible. For Pete, learning a new language is a small inconvenience for a bigger reward. Whether it is code-switching or perfecting the right accent, Pete strives to be aligned with the world she moves in.
And in writing her, Pete taught me Deutsch.
Pete exemplifies an unfortunate truth: the tongue often precedes your perception.
Ngũgĩ, my tongue is fighting for my face to be seen.
The shape-shifting tongue that speaks not just different languages, but can apply different registers and present accordingly to different spheres of life is an armor well learnt. In a sense, acculturation, encouraging the split of the black African persona is happening. As Pete quotes from Achile Mbembe, "Like a kind of giant cage, Black reason is in truth a complicated network of doubling, uncertainty, and equivocation, built with race as its chassis."[4]
The settling and acceptance of the complications of language and the loss of multi-linguality always in preference to European tongues became a strong basis for the text we have developed. We chose a shift; allowing the characters to speak to each other in what they know. To ask the audience to reach into the texture of unknown languages.
This is a special case for Kenya where it is uncommon practice to have supertitles. I look forward to listening to the audience experience as many of them have not had theatre with supertitles. Usually, if you don't understand the language, you don't show up for the performance. Similarly, as it pertains to writing, if I don't speak it, I don't write it.
For the first time, I translate text to Ekegusii. For the first time, I speak Ekegusii in public.
Ngũgĩ, Pete has taught me a lost mother tongue.
III. This Plot is not for Sale
While moving around Kenya, to see the words 'THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE', splayed out on the side of a wall, or on a small placard next to a gate, is quite common. This is not a sign of due diligence by the landowner– it is a signal for traps previously laid out by con-men attempting to sell the land.
Our project started with the working title, 'Land of Tropes', with a focus on examining the stereotypes and clichés that we subject each other to in imagery. The characters Pete (from Kenya) and Kathi (from Germany) take the expected positions of colonisation. While the third, Stevan (from former Yugoslavia), develops an unlikely in-between shaped by the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), where Yugoslavia aligned itself with former colonised countries. Stevan, who is a photographer, is at the centre of the process of this image reproduction.
Through Stevan's absurd studio, satire builds as the contradictions of their world begin to surface. Pete and his German counterpart, Katharina, build an illogical world with their well-meaning cliché NGO. We see Pete negotiate for space and build on her multi-linguality. But it lives beyond her tongue, her body, her silence is always layered.
For Pete, owning black African responsibility implies a heaviness of stereotypes plastered on her persona that she must work to erase. Pete appears with these tropes as a shadow. She affects a difficult in-between that the middle class can, use the tropes imposed to take advantage of those who underestimate their knowledge.
Recognising these dilemmas, the title changed to 'THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE.' An Aha!-moment in the writer's room. It captured the actions of the characters who exemplified the position of continuously negotiating ideological space in the room. This tension forces them to hide their truths.
The heaviness of continued role-play is the ghost in Pete's life. Standing before Stevan's camera, she realises the truth is the only way for her to step out of the trope forced on her by this image reproduction. In a sense, Pete must stop shape-shifting, accept where she comes from and face the ails she perpetuates. Her truth is highlighted when she speaks Ekegusii. Pete reaches out to honour the post-colonial language arguments of Ngũgĩ.
Ngũgĩ, have I cleansed some of the tears of your neo-colonial lament?[5]
In the end, the play doesn't fully respond to Ngugi's perspective, but starts the journey. Investigating how language is used as a vehicle of legitimacy and the price to pay for it. 'THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE' asks its characters to drop the façade.
This journey of collaboration has opened a new door of questioning and an exciting avenue for my performance in Ekegusii, Deutsch, English and Kiswahili. The magic of this exploration and moving these languages to new spaces would only be possible within this unlikely constellation of authors.
Like Pete, I am ultimately plastered with many tongues, searching for meaning. At every moment, seeking voice. Picking, discarding, questioning.
[1] Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 1986), p. 27.
[2] Ngũgĩ, Decolonising the Mind, p. 54.
[3] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), p. 18.
[4] Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, trans. Laurent Dubois (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), p. 10.
[5] Decolonising the Mind, Preface, xii.