 Good afternoon. Good evening everybody. Really, really wonderful to reconnect with you here again. It's Monday. I've been looking forward to these phone calls for the last four weeks because we've been having some wonderful panelists here with us from both Kenya and Uganda, speaking about their creative experience. My name is Karishma Bagani. I am the question asker as I like to call myself of the series and it is my pleasure today in our penultimate one to introduce the Lamb Sisterhood. Lamb stands for Laura Aleya Mura who are three wonderful women that you can see on this panel with us today. So I actually first came in in contact in touch with the Lamb Sisterhood because while I was in the States I had learned about the show that was happening at the Kenyan National Theatre. Juan Jiku who was a previous panelist of ours, directed it, the brazen, two little brazen edition and I thought to myself, oh my god, how am I in America and missing this work of art on stage? And lo and behold, a few months later I had the opportunity to meet these wonderful ladies at the Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative who are actually co-producers of this series. So the rest they say is history. So I will actually take this moment to just introduce Laura Aleya Mura. Hi ladies, so good to see you. Hello everyone. You too. Hi. Good to see you too. It's so lovely to see Lucy too. She interpreted the brazen edition. She was the sign language interpreter. That's how we first met her so we're so grateful to have her here too. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here Lucy. Also just a special shout out to Julia. Thank you both of you for being our sign interpreters for this series through and through. This is the first series that Halroun has had that has both Kenyan and American Sign Language Interpretation. So it really is breaking through the accessibility channels and very exciting that we could be the stage that could present that. So yeah, thank you also to Halroun and the Tabariats Foundation for being co-producers of the series with us. So before we jump into our topic today, Collaborative Theatre Making, our lamb ladies tell us about yourself. Who are you? Tell the world a little bit about you. Shall we go in a different order? Shall we start with Aleya instead of Laura? Sure. We are the lamb sisterhood and we fill the world with stories for African women to feel seen, heard and beloved. That's what we do. And we came together in 20, actually, oh my gosh, is it three years? This is three years. How incredible that is. So three years ago, almost to the month, we came together to discover the women who came before us, their lives, to understand the texture of what made them who they were. It was a moment where, and still is, being an African woman in the world, there's a sense of, it's difficult. And women have done this before us and it was like, how do we reach into the past and kind of tap into their ferocity and their wisdom and their beauty. And so that's what brought us together at three years ago. And then we fell in love with working with each other. Why don't you tell us a little bit about all of your backgrounds? So who's Laura? Who's Alaya? Laura, you want to go? Since we're not going in lamb order. You can just let me get the tea, but it's fine. That's fine. Okay, backgrounds. So, Laura, I am a writer, editor, occasional performer, an African feminist. Yeah, I just have just explored story in many different forms, like most actually, like most Kenyan artists, to be honest, kind of multi-disciplinary, play different art forms, and all of them tend to center around questions of otherness and what it means to kind of being on the edge or on the outside of something. And yeah, so this is the worst art question. It's the thing. I'm like, Karishma, please tell me my bio. I think whatever interpretation of me you have is so much better than my own. But who wants to go next? Laura, because you threw it at me, back to you. Okay, hi, my name is Laura Kumbul, and I'm the Ellen the Lamb sisterhood. What is my background? I'm a performing artist and a writer. As always, the label I run towards when I'm asked this question. But as Anne said, as creatives in this country, and I guess across the world, there's a sense that you have to be multi-disciplinary and discover other ways, first of all, to make money. And also just to discover different ways to do the thing that you love doing. So I love being on stage. I love performing so, so much. And performing is a big part of my background. I've been a theater actor for most of my life. And I've explored different forms of acting, whether that's film or voice acting. I've enjoyed discovering new ways to become new people and discover new feelings and new ways of thinking and new ways of being in a world that I myself, I'm trying to figure out. I lean a lot into feeling, feeling dictates a lot of my work. And I'm a Kenyan feminist, and I'm based in Nairobi. I think, yeah, cool stuff. I am Alaya and also exhausted. So please forgive any ramblings. We were doing a recording of a show yesterday and the development of it and all of that was just it took a lot out. So we're in recovery mode. I am a Kenyan feminist as well. I am a maker. I make things. My first expression, my first artistic expression was writing and primarily creative nonfiction. But I love to experiment with the ways that people tell stories. So from short form flash pros on Instagram to Twitter threads to essays. And then of course, when I discovered the stage, I just, I realized where home was. And so I had to keep returning home. And one of the things that I love so much about working as the Lambs sisterhood is this ability of the straddling. I don't even know if straddling is the right word, but the straddling of these two loves of mine, which is writing and performance, and just being able to be curious and experiment with all kinds of forms and genres, from audio storytelling with our podcast, to cabrisons, which is a children's storytelling show, to the Weaverbird, which is the musical inspired by Field Marshall with Aniwa Kirima, to the Brazen Edition, which was, you know, it's been called kind of a documentary theater show, which was unenviensibly in the lives of invisible Kenyan women from our history. And so yeah, I guess I am, I'm kind of flaky. So I'm always jumping into different forms and I'm like, oh, shiny, let me try that. And I love that this is the kind of industry and infrastructure where you can do that. And I feel very lucky. Oh, and also I make jewelry. Yes. Yes. These are my wonderful models. And ambassadors. I should be paying them, actually. This is like marketing, complete digital marketing. I only take 10%. Just 10%. They wear it so beautifully. I've been looking at Laura like, whoa, what are those earrings? Koume, they are mine. I just have to say, I think, you know, I just love how I notice the use of the fact that you use the word flaky, and I thought to myself, you're not flaky, but then I thought, actually, you'll always use words that have sometimes, or to the external world, a negative connotation to them, but you're reinventing what it actually means, because actually you're flaky. And that's amazing. And that's not like, like, no, not got a negative connotation to it. And I think that just describes the Lam family, the sisterhood, so well, to me at least, because you're just taking everything that exists in the world and reinventing it and turning it around. And then we're seeing that, oh, this is actually something so much more beautiful than we thought it was. So this is my experience of having worked with you and interacted with you in individual and collective rights. So our topic today, collaborative theater making. Let's jump in. What's your process like? I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about where you start from. You know, you've come from, you've described a bit of your background and we'll dive deeper into that as we move forward. But tell us about, you know, where this process starts from, regardless of whether it's an interdisciplinary piece you're working on or a musical or a children's book or a podcast. What's the beginning? I mean, the beginning is always consistently visioning. I wonder if Ananya was going to say either lady though. Ah, that's interesting. I was actually waiting for Laura to say visioning, but I actually think you, interesting. Yeah, summer along the way. So I'm excited. I like this thinking. Let's go. Okay, cool. Okay, fine. Okay, cool. So we start with you relating. And that's, I mean, calling out to the people we want to collaborate with, the people we want to imbue the energy in the work we want to create. So we might you relate to Zarina Patel. We might you relate to Fields Masha Modaniwa Kirima. We might you relate to Celagas Matai, alive or dead. We're relating to the people whose energies we need to create this piece of work. And then together we vision. So we create a visual representation of what we want that work to do, be and become. And that's sometimes in sometimes most times there's words involved, because we are writers. And sometimes it's that very practically it's on a Google doc, and we'll play with fonts and we'll have multiple colors on there. And we'll say words or we will say sentences. Like I want this work to be fun. And that goes on the visioning document. So by the end of that process, we wind up with a thing that kind of charts the way moving forward. And then after visioning, I have forgotten what comes next. And to add to visioning, the reason that that's become so important to us is that it sets our intention for the work. And collaboratively, it gets us very clear that it shows us how to arrive at the same page, both literally and figuratively. And it reveals when there are discrepancies or frictions. Or if this is a collaboration in which our visions are too different, that's the first kind of warning signal, where either this is something that's not going to work. Or how do we make it, how do we work towards making it work? Because the things will pop up in that visioning document. And then it's also a way for us to hold what's important to each other. So if I know this is important for Laura, then I know that this is something that I have to be aware of. And then Maura knows this is something that's important for Aleah. And so it's come to become one of our most valuable tools before, as we begin. Yeah. Go on. Go on. Next is creating, right? I mean, after we vision that we, because our process is very iterative, we're always kind of going back and forth. So we'll elate vision. We might find that we need to elate again, and find more people to bring in. And then we'll start to create. Aleah, you wanted to say something. Well, lately, I've discovered that one of the steps that we've begun doing more is the planning of it. Because we've gotten, now we're a company, and we've got so many projects that we're undertaking that the planning of it has become really kind of central. So then we kind of go into budgets and gant charts and work plans and get that stuff out of the way, which then frees us for now the research and the creation element of it. Because if we don't do that step, then we've learned it just will come and bite us in the tail. Yeah. And to add to that specifically, something that's been such a useful and powerful lesson, shifting from, you know, kind of working for other people, and then now working for myself, or working for us as a company, and also as people who want to produce and are producing work. So shifting from just, you know, the right to perform into that kind of more production space. It's been a really powerful tool to be able to see what is worth focusing on when, and to really understand what it costs. Because sometimes, you know, you love the work, so you just want to do it. And you just, and then at the end of the month, you've gotten some money, you've put things in, and then you look and you're like, how come we're all broke? What's happening? And then you realize it's because you didn't do that step of like, what does it actually cost? How much time is it actually taking? Every packet of chips you have to buy to get through it like has a cost. So like that step, getting that done, as Alaya said, really, really frees you. And I'm also finding it's becoming freeing on a creative level. Because when I look at the time plan, I'm able to know like, oh, I can see that this is two weeks well, I'm likely to burn out because that's really intense. So let me make sure I plan it in some rest time for myself. Or like, oh, I'm deeply introverted, like on any scale of introversion, my energy is kind of low now, because I'm both menstruating and have extroverted for a week. So I just really want to like, not talk to anyone for about a month. And so just seeing that makes me want to go like, oh, this is the time when I'll be putting all my energy outwards into the world. Let me make sure I plan the time for me to gather inwards. It's made it a lot easier to keep collaborating. And to sustain the energy, you cannot collaborate if you do not maintain the energy within yourself. And if you don't have partners who are willing to make sure you maintain the energy within yourself, who you can message and say, guys, today I can't. And they can support you. And who you know that, okay, I know I can't today, but I'm going to pull through for them because they need me. So if you don't have, if you're not really self protective, and not selfish in a negative way, but selfish in the way of, you must take care of yourself. You can't do the work and you must do the planning in order to at least try and mitigate that and try and like, account for your needs. If you need to be their family, if you need to do other work, like how planning that in really frees the work to exist. And then yeah, you go, you create, you reach, we do a lot of research for everything, lots of research, lots of creating. Then we write the negative one draft, which is terrible, and is horrendous. And you just want to burn it every time. And you rework it, rework it, rework it and edit and show it to people. We always test the work. We always show it to people whether it's a small circle or live performances with MTI, the never ending musical, like the constant performances and checking in, like constantly testing to see if it feels good. And then eventually, hopefully with support getting into the production and actually releasing it out into the world. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah. Just you brought up MTI, and I want us to talk a little bit more about that, just so I can hear from your perspective of what the feedback in process looks like. So if you were to give us an example of a piece that is not, that you were not developing at the musical theater initiative, how did feedback work within yourself in that context versus what's the process like, been like with the musical theater initiative where there's mentors and peer-to-peer feedback as well? That's a good question. It's interesting because you asking that question kind of made me realize that feedback has been part of our process from the very beginning. So we wrote the Brazen edition and our work is for African women. So the first people that we will ever ask to share their views will always be African women. And so when we did the Brazen edition, our first draft, which was horrendous, it was just awful. We eulilated out to a group of African women, and we wanted to hear what their thoughts were on the script. What are the things that made them feel seen and heard? What are the things that made them uncomfortable? What did we get wrong? What are the things? Where were our blind spots? How did this piece make them feel? And so we gathered in the garden and we read the script and we did a reading and that feedback was really instrumental in getting to the next iteration and the final draft, which we again did various feedback sessions. We did another reading with a group of women. We did a feedback with Wanjiku, who actually was acting as a dramaturg, not acting, she was dramaturging. Even though she was our director, she was dramaturging in that process and got us. It was so instrumental in getting us to the final beautiful script that we're so proud of. And then workshopping, even her comments and edits was fundamental to that process. So that's become part of our process now, which is a slightly different feedback model from a mentor model. Maybe Laura Moran wants to talk about the mentor model, our experience. I think the biggest difference I'd say with MTI has been, for us, because as Lea mentioned, feedback is something we always do, even with the lamb letter, which is maybe the least thought out thing we do. And untypical lamb fashion is very heavily designed to be the least thought out thing we do. Sorry, I have to interrupt and ask you, tell us a little bit about the lamb letter before you move on. So our audience is not here, what you're talking about? Yeah, every month we send out a newsletter, our love letter to the world and to African women. Once a month we sit, the last Tuesday of every month, we sit together, get up in the morning, talk about just what we are feeling, explore, we write, sometimes draw, sometimes share pictures, sometimes record, whatever feels good, put it together, do a little bit of design and release it out into the world. It's produced the day you see it is the day we made it. So it's always a fresh kind of feeling and piece of work that goes out into the world. Yeah, and even that, as much as it's at least designed, we also are like, please let us know what you think and we take a lot of feedback from people and on who writes back to us at Hello at Lamb Sisterhood, we're always like, this is so insightful, this is so powerful, thank you, it's always so good hearing from the audience. So it's just our way to kind of be honest about where we are and about our art and about our lives and to have a little space that's free, that can contain whatever it needs to contain in that moment, and that hopefully resonates with the people because you're tapping into a present energy, hopefully it resonates with even one person on the other side see something that like, yeah, that's something I felt, or that's something I needed to see. Yeah, so that's the lamb letter. You can subscribe if you visit www.lamsisterhood.com and click the little bell button, you can subscribe to the lamb letter, it's beautiful. And a product placement. Now what was also powerful about MTI I think was we have not, what is a musical, I still don't know, two years later, and having people who are so deep professionals who know exactly what they're doing and have done this work and understand the craft and the structure of it, I'm obsessed, we're all obsessed with structure, I'm like extra obsessed with structure, I'm always like, oh, what's the shape of the story. So getting like, people who know that and who can speak to that and who can train us in this brand new medium that we had not done was something that's was really powerful and really new. I have a master's in creative writing, so learning writing, learning art wasn't new, but learning it in that way where you're not just learning to get your degree and it's powerful and whatever, but in the process of making and then while surrounded by other makers, especially musicians who I have such deep envy and hate and love towards because they just go and then they make a thing. It's like, yeah, we're just hanging out and here's three songs and I just can't fathom that my mind is always blown. It takes like 18 years to figure out half a chapter. So yeah, I've been surrounded by people who are so different, who are in an art form that I'm not used to and who really, really understand what they're doing and have done it and could kind of guide us and who saw that what we were doing, even though we didn't know what we're doing ourselves, was valid and kind of could validate that on a professional level. It's a lot of why I think we've been able to continue. I think if we tried this alone, I think I would have definitely given up halfway, but having this kind of every six months, hey, where are you at? Send the script to Fred and Deb and I'm like, okay, I'm so stressed, but then it kind of keeps us going. So that's been really, it's been really, really powerful. It's kept us moving and given us this professional support that we needed to get this, to understand this new art form. I think the other thing that's great about the NBO, MTI feedback, I see, I feel like we all agree that we understand what NBO, MTI means, right? Yeah. Cool. Okay. Just in case, the Nairobi Musical Theater Initiative co-producers of the series, you can check it out on the how long page. Yeah, I feel like because we work together collaboratively so many times, we've gotten used to acronyms that I just said, and it's like, maybe people don't know what that means. The other thing I really enjoy about the feedback in the initiative is the communal feedback, is we share our work with one another, people who are making musicals themselves, and we get to hear our own feedback. People who have been through the same process, who have gone to the same classes, who have been in the same mentorship program, who are more often than not at the same point of development as we are. And hearing from somebody who's in the same boat as you is very different from hearing from a teacher who's like, do this and do that. It's like, okay, cool, you say that, but here in this corner where I'm trying to do this thing, that's not possible. And so to hear from like a sitauer, sitauer namale, my gosh, the woman who has basically made us possible to hear feedback about our musical from her, where she says, you're writing a memory poem, and her feedback is so true in that moment. But we're just not ready for that truth. It lands, I don't know, it landed what, a year later. It took us a year to absorb that. She could see before we did. And most of that is because she's brilliant. And it's also because she's in that process, creating her own musical. And also seeing different forms of musicals come to life before your eyes and seeing how they're creating those musicals and providing feedback for them. So watching have a second, which is a brilliant musical about a brilliant musician, watching that musical and providing feedback for that. Then you can reflect on your own musical in a new and different way with the compassion, with the same kind of compassion that you extend to your peers, because there's also that thing of you can be really hard on your own work. And when you're surrounded by people and providing feedback for people who you care about and you care about that work succeeding, you extend that compassion to yourself when you are reflecting on your own piece of work. Such a profound way of putting it. And I think it really speaks to that community or the communal nature of the community, our environment, something that is visible within the three of you when you work together in your own process, but then also in this larger community that is there to support and guide and nurture whatever is to move forward. I have so many questions. Damn, man. It's like, whoa, which one do I ask next? I'm looking at my list. I mean, I'd love to hear about Field Marshal Moudoni and that process specifically, particularly because, yeah, I'm just curious. But before that, you spoke about being very specific about writing for African women. So from your experience with Brazen and the experience with the Lamb Letter and all of the other wonderful work you do and the podcast about Bikidude and all of the other wonderful women and just so many things. How have you found the reception of your work by non-African women, so African men, non-Africans at all? What's that been like? And how have you navigated the relationship with audiences that are not the ones you're writing for? I suspect we all have really different answers to this question. I love that. Let's start with you, Mara. Go ahead. Yeah. So the thing is, I view it. You know, when you're growing up and you watch Friends and it's set in New York and they're having coffee and it's Central Perk and it's a pun about Central Perk. What is that? You know, I gathered it. I figured it out. I'm not in it. I'm not in the space. But I gathered it because it was, you know, a well-riched show. And if you are working the same way, that show had its audience and that audience was not me. And the work I do is for my audience, African women like me. And I'm certain people, I have heard people who are not African women and to actually be a little bit more clear, African women and non-binary peoples. And that's something we're going to work deeper on our language around that. But African women and non-binary people are the people I think of as our key audience. And I've heard lots of great feedback from white men, from Americans, from, you know, I've heard feedback from the unexpected corners and people who enjoy it, who are not the people who my audience, my work. And I'm not even necessarily speaking for the Lam sister, I'm speaking for myself, for the people who my work is for. And that's always welcome and that's appreciated, sure. And I'm also quite unconcerned with it because that's not the person I'm here for. In the way I do not imagine the writers or friends were sitting thinking what is a Kenyan girl in Nairobi going to think about this work, I don't think about not African women in the same way. If you love it, fantastic, and you're welcome. But my hope is to make, even with Brazen, the goal of the Brazen universe is to make African women the center of the universe. And I really fundamentally believe that if the story is good, and you're speaking to the right person, you know, like when you're reading Jennifer McCombie's Chintu, that book is not for even Kenyan women, that book is for Uganda. It has no interest in me as a Kenyan woman. And it is gorgeous, gorgeous because of it. Like because of who I know I care about, I have, that's, that's where I sit. So I don't have, I'm terrible at gauging what everyone else is thinking, because I don't pay as much attention to it. Because I hope you like it, but also, okay, if you don't, you're not the person I'm here for in my work. Yeah, I have nothing more to add. Oh, damn. Who are you? I mean, but also we discussed this at length. It's not. True. Full stop right there. What you think you may have disagreed on actually is something that you see eye to eye on. So that's great. So then in that case, tell us, tell us about Field Marshal Malvani. Markirima, tell us about this process, this musical, where it started from, what the journey has been like. You know, you spoke about Brazen being documentary theater because it archived in many ways the stories of living in dead African women. So tell us about this musical. You know, it's interesting. I have actually have a follow up question on top of that question for Adler and Mora. Because I just, I just now realized that we always trace it back to Brazen. But why, so with Brazen, we had that list of women, whose stories we wanted to tell, and we did that list down to six women. And Field Marshal Malvani was one of those women. But I don't know how she wound up on that list. I know. Okay. So the first thing we did was we urinated. So back when one of the, even to, so, so Brazen was to unenviable the lives of extraordinary Kenyan women who had been invisible. Now, if they have, because they have been invisible, they are not here, right? And one of the first things we did was ululate out through social media to ask other women, who are the women and the people you know, that we, that the, whose stories must be told. And the outpouring was incredible. And this took place over several months. And that's how we ended up with a long list. I did not know about Field Marshal Madani Wakerema before we began. I did not know she was, I did not know she existed. I did not know she was alive. I, you know, I knew about some of the women of the stories that we told, but I did not know about all of them. And I mean, also to be, to be very clear that Kenya as everywhere in the world has its problematic nature about who it is that gets seen. And then the same way that men get seen more, there are certain communities in Kenya who's also get seen more. And that's something that we've been really trying to actively kind of work against. And so hence the utilization upwards to say, we can't rely on the ways in which the histories have been captured because they're already skewed, you know. And so we went to meet Field Marshal Madani Wakerema that we got her number from social media, and Gatia from Journey for Birds called her. She gave him a long lecture about how Kenya has forgotten her and how she was really angry. And he requested if we could go and meet her. And she, for, she, we ended up, we traveled to go and see her to Nyeri. And the first time, because we had to request permission also, you know, before we can even think about telling your story, maybe that's the first step. And then would you, once you say yes, can you tell us your story? And so that happened over several different occasions where we would meet and we would listen to her. And she gave us permission. And we wrote Brazen and she came and she was in the theater. And she started to leave. And then she saw Satawa. Satawa was playing, at one point was playing her. And she unwrapped her dread, she unwrapped her locks. And Field Marshal Madani Wakerema stopped and she looked on stage and she saw herself. And she sat back down again. And the thing actually that we're going to, but I'll see that part for later for the intro. And then she's always said, I will, she has, she has long locks down to her ankles from, for many decades. And she's always said, I will only cut these when I see real freedom. And outside the Kenyan National Theater, which is opposite Norfolk, which when the, when we were colonized, the colonizers would sit on the balcony and shoot at random Kenyans walking by. Okay. So the National Theater would have been in that line of bullets. She unwrapped her locks in front of the women who made Brazen, because the show was everything to my women. And she said, I have said before that I will only cut these when I see real freedom. And when I do, it will be in front of these women. She amended her promise. And I just realized that I skipped over the part of the musical because I got so excited about that. And maybe when somebody, Laura Mora would like to talk about the madness at 3 a.m. when we decided. Yeah, I mean, so, so every, so even in, I mean, theater has a time limit, right? You can't be, you know, I know there's some plays that you're like eight hours, you can't be there for 78 hours. Like there's no way you're going to cover every woman's history with every piece of detail over a long time. So even when we're kind of whittling down the list, a lot of the considerations were nothing to do with the incredibleness these women were and a lot to do with just like geographical considerations, age, like trying to really get a spectrum, right? And so, you know, we got our list of six and we worked on each of the stories and we'd set up the story, this play structure. We didn't want it to go over two hours maximum or aiming for an hour and a half. And so we had set up, you know, this is the first story, the second had a beautiful story structure and outline working, you know, we'd meet every like Thursday night, work through Monday morning. And it was slow, but moving and kept moving. And then we got to field martial story. And by this point, we've done five. She was the last story in the show. And so it was like, this should be, we've got this, there's a system. We know what to do. We did not. It was the worst. We could not agree what the hell that story was going to be about. There was so much. And even having culled all these other stories to like a fine point that suited that particular showcase, that story refused. It just said, no, he will not, there's no way you can shrink me down. And so after like, I think this went over two weekends, most of the time we'd write a story in a weekend. Over like the second weekend is like, we are behind on our deadline. We're working with stories that to who on 12th for birth. So it was going to be a co-production between us and them. And we're doing the creative side and they were doing the production side. So it was like, as the production side was like, guys, where's our script? Where's the script? And so we were like, okay, we're kind of behind. We've also, we don't feel like we're going ahead. What are we going to do? And we started realizing that each of us held were really attached to different parts of her. And I'd fallen in love with different elements of the story. And so what was a beautiful kind of slightly like tense, like, oh, it should be this became like a straight up fight. Like people are like, you don't even know what you're talking about kind of like thing. And we're so frustrated. And then at like three in the morning, having, you know, called a couple of hours of sleep for the whole weekend. I think it was such dead silence and stress. And those just a moment of we need to get something out. So we kind of fell back into what happens if we just peel away everything, we just try something, anything as a writing exercise. So I got up and I just started kind of being like, okay, guys, I'm entering teacher mode. Let's write stuff. What do you think of what smell do you smell when you think of Field Martial Moodoni? Write it down. What did I'm just like, I can't remember all the questions just throwing out questions. And at this point, the questions came from me and the words came from them. But I honestly feel like the energy was something beyond all of us. Because we wrote all of these different things down, put them all on sticky notes and kind of lay them out. And like read through this whole list. And then took each sticky notes, one by one, dead silence. This is now four in the morning, complete silence in the middle of the night, just a light on a balcony and us on this like old table, one by one, looking at the sticky notes, I think on the floor on the chair or something, picking one and placing it, then picking another and placing it in order, just one by one by one until the sticky notes were done. And then we typed that up. And we had a poem. And we're like, okay, so that's the story of Field Martial. And we went to bed. Like that's, that's what it is. So cool. And soon after that, even during the show, soon after it was very clear that that particular story needed its own setting, like it needed its own thing. And I think then, or when that thing is happening, Eric reached out to a layer like, oh, there's this musical thing we're going to try and do. And she was like, Field Martial has to be a musical. And it just, the idea sprang up very, very early, and just kind of grew in the process of making the showcase itself. Because right from then, it was just too big. It was just too big. And that doesn't happen that often where there's a story which you know, is seeking another form. And I've been saying it from the beginning that this particular musical has known itself long before we knew it. So we're just kind of slowly starting to see the full shape of it. Yeah. I just, I really can't, oh, sorry, Alea, are you going to say something? No. Oh, sorry. I just, yeah, I really, there's so much admiration for your process. And this specific story also, and how it's kind of morphed and evolved from a previous project of yours. So I'm really keen on seeing, you know, what the next steps are going to look like, and what the, what the new draft is. And, you know, when it's on stage, how it's going to manifest and bring spirits and lives and souls into the room that haven't been called before, you know. I think that is really the power of all these women that you are relating bring into the space because it's not just the woman. It's her entire legacy. It's her entire generation. It's her entire family, all the men, all the children, all the, you know, distant relatives. So yeah, it's truly, truly inspiring. Alea, just going off of your lead there, you were going to say that you have something to share with us. So I thought maybe I'd open this space up for you to tell us a little bit about it. Folks, we have, we're going to shift gears a little bit. So instead of me asking some questions, we have a little gift that the Lambs sisterhood would like to share with us. So I'll pass it over to you to tell us what this special present is because no time like the present, right? Well, we actually wanted to share the poem with you. The poem that we wrote for Field Marshal Madani Wakirema, which we had five, I think, four or five stagings of brazen. And before Field Marshal Madani Wakirema attended, the three of us, Laura, Alea, and Laura would get some, some of the words somewhere wrong. We just were never able to get it word perfect. And then when she was sitting in the audience in front of us was the first time we ever got it perfectly word for word. And it's because it was for her. And there she was. And this poem we have discovered is such an important part of the musical that we're writing, which we only just discovered is actually the shape of the musical. And the musical has been through so many iterations. And we've come back to this poem with new eyes and, and listened to it. It's been as Wanja, our musical collaborator says Wanja Wahoro, whose music you must check out. She's incredible. She says, use the poem as your guiding light. And that's exactly what it's been. And it's such a pleasure to share this with you again, because we've also discovered it again. Field Marshal Madani Wakirema is ours. Nature, greenery, the forest, muddy and earth to trees, smell wood trees, for warmth, for tricks, for safety, a bomb is coming. Field Marshal Madani Wakirema is tenderness, cloaking ferocity. She is before and now and what I wish I could be. Her eyes remind me of womaness. My grandmother, yours. Find who else. Smoky, earthy, milky tea. She welcomed me home because she built it with her own hands. She pulled me in a tangle, a weave not crochet, never crochet. A weaver bed's nest and told me, you are home. She made me laugh when she said, I pinched myself. I'm scared I'll never be as fully free as she is to live fully, to love fully, to not be shy about her anger. I'm scared I'll let her down. I think Field Marshal Madani Wakirema would tell my daughter that her mother is strong, everything I could ever hope to be. It's not that hard physically losing a child. This is bigger than you. You are bigger than this. Be brave, my child. You are stronger than you think you are. I saw the rods, what they put up with a boot. Wrap your mouth with your scarf. They can't hear you. That on this woman's body, she wore the history of Kenya, the scars, the wounds, the trauma, the hope, the beauty. Know what I did. Don't just take it and go. I want her to be remembered for being fiercely emotional, for kicking ass, for being skilled. I want her to be remembered for being everything a woman can be measured, territorial, proud, surprising, spiritual, home. She is everything I could ever hope to be. Intensely beautiful, awe, reverence, fear. I couldn't look her in her eyes until she invited me in, allowed me to. I couldn't stop giggling at her sugarcane chewed only on the left side of her mouth, at the irrepressible joy, at the memory of a girl, myself. Let's give him a round of applause. I'm sorry. Can you hear me now? Second hearing now. Let me continue. Apology. I'll begin my lines again. That was her chair. Beneath the photos and posters of every president with the shawl gifted by a woman, before the cups, it was home, hers. Her movement in the space was very deliberate, but also very free. I looked at her like she was my shocho. I almost was scared of looking at her though, but I looked at her with deep awe. My great grandmother lived with her at her age, older. She cursed God for keeping her alive. Will I? That she will be forgotten. That I will be forgotten. That we will all be forgotten. Her British accent, mocking their oppressors, laughing at them, showing that they were not as powerful as they thought they were. Everything about her is beautiful. The fact that her love is from the inside out, how she cares for people and fiercely protects that. She, 80, stood up. What are you doing here? Then turned and posed for the picture. She is beautiful. She never hesitated. What hurts Field Marshal Moudoni the most is that we not done our part. Every time she got tired, she called on Guy for strength. I love her connection with nature the most, a spiritual, free spirit, hippie, deep mother earth connection. Losing her children. Her children were eaten by the soil that the white people were trying to steal and claim as their own. Gross. That we have forgotten her. We don't value her work, her heart, her kindness. That she is unapologetically who she is. No. Remember. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you for this gift. Thank you for sharing that with us. I feel like we all need to take a collective breath in this moment because I'm one of the African women that are very affected. This feels like a natural place to come to an end without for our time together. I wanted to give you an opportunity to say any sort of closing remarks that you may have. And also if you can tell us how we can get in touch with you, how we can follow you, if you prefer that people reach out to me so I can connect them to you, that also works. But just let us know. Thank you, Karishma. We have a lot of exciting projects that we're working on. We're right now building the Brazen universe, which as Moran mentioned, is making African women at the center of the universe. You can check us out at our website, lancestor.com. Subscribe for our love letter that comes once a month. We are not as active on social media, on the Twitter and Instagram, but much more so individually. So we'll go around and we can all share the things that we are interested in sharing in terms of handles. We've got our Brazen podcast that we're so excited that we will be producing in 2021 that we want to be fully funded in its entirety by African women. So if you are an African woman who wants to contribute to this legacy, please reach out to us. We will be looking at Cup Brazins. We've got some, of course, the Weaverbird musical. You can reach out to me or follow me on Twitter and Instagram. My handles are at Aleya Kaston. Laura and Maura. Mine is at Laura underscore akumbo everywhere. Mine is most at tweet, Maura. I'm mostly of socials. And as you can see, I'm technologically challenged. So you can also reach out to us on email. Hello, at lamb sisterhood.com. If you send that to us, all of us have access and will happily respond in a few days. And if there is an African woman whose story you think really needs to be told, this is a eululation to you. As we develop the Brazen podcast over the next year, we're moving beyond just Kenya. And so we eululate out to you, please write us, share, and hopefully we can create magnificence together and make African women the center of the universe. Aleya, thank you so much for saying that. Please, please do it. And please don't be shy. Please send us messages about your shows, about your grandmothers, about people who you would not, who you know are incredible Brazen women, but you might be a little scared to think that they are like, there's so many, and there's so many stories and they deserve to exist. And if only for us to hear them, hopefully we'll get stopped out. But there's nothing that gives us more joy than seeing how incredible you all are, honestly. So yes, send, send, send. I will say even the name Brazen, just to add on to that conversation, the name Brazen was Janet Aloha, who was a member of our marketing team for the Brazen edition, created a PDF. A PDF describing why the show, the theater show that we did in 2018 should be called Brazen. And that definition, the second that PDF showed up, I mean, I saw a PDF and I was like, it has to be Brazen first of all, because you've done a whole PDF. That's what it is. You're so invested in this vision that I don't know how to not match your energy. What that definition did is it freed up the idea of the women whose stories we could tell. So even with, because theater is local and the Brazen edition was being performed to a Kenyan audience, we focused on Kenyan women, but the podcast has global reach. It is for African women in Africa and in the diaspora. And there are so many stories across the world. Just to add on to the sense of like any story, any story about an African woman, our pilot episode is about Vicky Dudier's Karishma mentioned. We have written a story about Dr. Nendomwangi, who was the first female physician in Kenya. What business do a doctor and a musician have being on the same podcast? They are both Brazen. So yeah, that's it. I'll stop because now I'll begin to ramble. I'm excited to see what you guys send us. I'm very excited. It could be like, I don't know, a scientist, a discoverer or whatever. I'm very excited. Laura, please send me that PDF knowing Janet that is so, the minute you said that I was like, yeah, nobody else would do something like that. Janet is also a colleague of ours in various other capacities. So for those that are listening. But thank you for sharing that with us. And thank you all viewers, audience members for tuning in. Thank you again to Lucy and to Raphael and to Julia for being our amazing sign language interpreters. And thank you mostly to our land sisterhood, really, really appreciate you being here, sharing the space, sharing the gift of the work with us and being so open to channels of communication. I really hope that folks do take you up on this opportunity and reach out and share stories of their grandmas and their great grandmas and their entire legacy. Yeah, thank you really. Thank you so much for inviting us and sharing such a wonderful space. And Julia and Lucy and Raphael and how round it's always such a pleasure to share. I miss you. Yes. I miss you so much. I hope you can learn sign language soon. Love you. Love you, Mama. Raphael was one of the, with Lucy was the sign language interpreter for Brazen and Cabrazen. So we've been working together for several years now. Well, folks, thank you so much for tuning in. We will call it a wrap here. Next week, please do tune in at the same time, same place, 8pm. This is the, as a tear rolls down my eye, the last episode of this series, we're going to be speaking with a wonderful long time arts producer, Sheba Hurst, about creative producing on the continent and internationally and, you know, really, really engaging in a conversation about what she thinks the future of the industry looks like for women and just generally for the African arts scene. So if you're interested, please do tune in tomorrow, next week on Monday. These are flying by so fast, so it does feel like tomorrow. But 8pm East Africa time, that is, I believe 12pm California time and 7, no, 9am California time, 12pm New York time. Thank you all so much. Have a wonderful, wonderful morning, afternoon, evening. $2.