About
Wanjiku Mwawuganga is a Kenyan writer, director, and performing artist whose work sits at the intersection of memoir, social portraiture, and live form. Based in Nairobi, she is drawn to the stories communities carry but rarely stage — particularly the interior lives of women caught between worlds.
Her solo performance ROOTS — tracing mother-daughter relationships across five generations — toured festivals across Europe, Africa, and coastal Kenya, and was a finalist for the HEVA HII Stage Tour Grant 2024. She is an alumna of the DAH Theatre International Summer School (2019), a scholarship holder of Zürcher Theater Spektakel's Watch and Talk (2020) and TheaterFestival Basel's Festival LAB XChange (2024), and a member of the 4th cohort of Georgetown Global Lab Fellows (2024–2026).
She is currently in the first year of a five-year practice-based study — The Disheveled Woman — asking how an African female theatremaker builds a practice that is formally intentional, emotionally survivable, and legible within the East African theatre ecology.
Photo Credit; @_pichad
We Won't Forget
A Multidisciplinary Theatre Production
In 2015, with the help of Ngartia, Laura Ekumbo, Alice Wangui, Gladys of the GQ Dancers, William Mwangi, Vanessa Ombura and Mbace Ngugi and later on Abu Sense, Code Inc and StoryZetu; I was able to bring to life a multidisplinary production. We Won't Forget was an excavation of domestic and foreign terrorism. Through the show we were able to tell stories of victims of the 2008 Post Election Violence in Kenya and the West Gate and Garissa terror attacks. We Won't Forget had a successful run after being showcased at the National Theatre in Nairobi, The Jalada Literature Festival, The Kampala International Festival and Ubumuntu Festival in Rwanda.
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Too Early For Birds Nanyuki Edition
Dramaturg and Director
Too Early for Birds; a brain child of Abu Sense and Ngartia is a popular storytelling show that sort to retell the history of Kenya from the predominantly white gaze it has been cemented in. Together with an amazing team of people we worked to bring the dream to life. I directed 4 editions of the show as well as a showing at Storymoja Hay Festival and the Nanyuki Edition.
The Nanyuki Edition of the show remains to be my favourite of all the editions of the show. It was highly experimental, pushed the cast and crew to approach a show that was mostly grand and spectacular to be minimalist and intimate. This show also allowed the cast to dig deeper into themselves and explore patriarchy within the team and what it meant to the franchise as a whole. This was done through an infusion of improvised conversations and performed storytelling.
TEFB BRAZEN EDITION
Dramaturg and Director
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In 2017 I got an opportunity to direct the Too Early for Birds Brazen edition. A co-produced show between the LAM Sisterhood and StoryZetu production company. Brazen was a theatre production dedicated to uninvisibling invisibled women in Kenyan History. Together we unearthed stories about freedom fighters, politicians, activists and even rewrote myths. Brazen was the brain child of Aleya Kassam, Laura Ekumbo and Anne Moraa; now known as The LAM Sisterhood.
Roots
Creator and Performer
Roots is an autobiographical solo performance based on my experience with postpartum depression. Roots seeks to explore the historical impact of colonialism on motherhood. Through conversations with my grandmother, mother and children I seek healing and a bridge between my children and I. Roots has been staged at The National Theatre in Nairobi, The Little Theatre in Mombasa, The Food Movement in Kilifi, Zurcher Theatre Skeptakel 2022 and Speilart Festival Muchen 2021,The Internationalen Figuren Theater Festival 2023, Kampala Theatre Festival 2023, Natioal Arts Festival South Africa 2023. Roots was selected for the HEVA HII STAGE Tour Fund 2024 which allowed the work to be showcased in Nairobi, Kisumu and Lamu.
Photo credits in order layout: _pichad, Tobia Zangl, Njoroge Muthoni, Altrofer, Kimani Wandaka
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Ingredients of Pretty
Creator and Performer
INGREDIENTS OF PRETTY, a finalist for the Goethe Nafasi Fund Nairobi 2024, is a performance installation I made out of an overwhelming need to free myself from body shame. It deconstructs what society, media, and I myself have placed on the body through life modelling, broken glass art, and movement.
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