Silvia Cassini is an award-winning stage director, but you would be surprised that she has also been on the other side, as an actor, her most outstanding project – featuring in the famous two-hander play, The Constellation.
In Speak their Names, Cassini wields her mighty pen to present us a powerful tale set in the summer of 1587, in Triora, a rich district at the border of France and Italy. After two years of drought, Triora’s council of elders and the church believe that a handful of “spiritual” women who openly call themselves witches have colluded with the devil to befall this unfortunate fate on the people.
Speak their Names takes an interesting angle as its plot is driven by one Federico Taverio (Brian Ogola), a playwright who decides to write about the false accusations, torture, and banishing of the witches of Triora. Through Federico’s dreams and nightmares, we learn about his counter with the last witch, a housemaid named Giovanina (Nixsha Shah) with whom he shared hearty conversations, fears, and imminent suffering at the hands of men who strongly believed that women are weak and are susceptible to the devil’s way. The events in Triora have several resemblances to the contemporary world, especially its take on the oppression of women, greed, and the church’s double standards on matters of spirituality and witchcraft.
Speak their Names was staged twice at the Muthaiga Country Club, on 18 and 19 November, and the show was later taken to Peponi Preparatory school’s auditorium. I watched the show at Peponi (meaning paradise) because I wanted the “paradise” feeling while experiencing a show about witches.
Walking into the auditorium, what greets you is an otherworldly feeling, and it is evident in the design of the sitting arrangement. The audience sits on all three sides of the stage, which is a minimal setup, with only one simple couch on the right side and a home office desk on the left. At the beginning of the play, we are totally oblivious to the fact that this minimal set is functioning as multiple environments in which several events in Triora occur. The choice of having large black curtains separating the stage from the backstage is subtle but as the plot progresses, one realises that the black curtains demarcate Triora, which is the world we see on stage, from the world of the witches, which is abyssal, lifeless, and frightening.
There is an interesting intersection between the costumes, set, props, and the actions of Ogola’s Federico. He has this special monk hooded robe, and he can only experience dreams and visions while wearing it. Every time Federico attempts to write a sentence or two while wearing his robe, he falls asleep, and from there, the characters in his dreams come alive and he is either dancing with Giovanina in the forest or she is crying in his arms. Other times, Federico’s dreams are nightmares featuring Scribani (Martin Kigondu), a corrupt investigator and a misogynist, and Del Pozzo (Ondiege Mathiew), the oppressive bishop.
Something that seriously needed some serious thought was the choice to have Federico experience numerous dream sequences. In fact, you could argue that the whole play is a collection of dream sequences. Federico’s dreams start to become monotonous and easily predictable, and this reduces the stakes in the story, because anytime he wears the robe and starts dozing off, we begin to expect a dream and his encounter with Giovanni, Scribani, Del Pozzo, or Franchetta Borelli (Nini Wacera). It could also work for the good of the story as the dreams prepare the audience and give them a clear difference between Federico’s current world where he is living in an urban house with his wife Lily Taverio (also played by Wacera) and the past we see in his dream world.
The character’s entries and exits are also too many and they instead, act as a barrier to a smooth plot progression. Why would the director make the choice of bringing a character to speak only a word and then exit? The whole time frozen to allow a character to walk onto the stage, say a line then walk back is such a distraction and can easily take the viewer out of the story world for some minutes, especially in this case where these entries and exits were just too many.
For music and lighting design, you can feel the deliberate intention from the start. The music is so ethereal, right from the moment you walk into the dark auditorium. Anytime the scene changes from Federico’s home office to the hoods where he meets Giovanina, the music becomes ominous and the lighting changes from daylight to blue lighting. This is the only area where I felt there was communication between the director and the lighting designer and technician, Ntome Alacoque.
Telling an ancient story of witches borrowed from early culture and contextualising it to fit contemporary society requires deep research and artistic quality. In the case of Speak their Names, the big question is why a director would choose to centre the narrative on a male character in a patriarchal medieval society. Is the man the saviour of oppressed women?
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