Kenya Cultural Centre

This guide to the Kenya Cultural Centre in Nairobi begins with the theatre's opening in 1951 as a whites-only playhouse, built for British and Indian settlers away from where Africans lived and gathered. It follows independence-era change, the arrival of African actors in the 1960s, and a 1982 production of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii's banned play I Will Marry When I Want, staged here under director Conrad Makeni after an earlier village staging had already cost its writers a year in prison. Stand in the lobby and picture the argument that played out here, five hundred actors crowding a stage built for far fewer seats.