Play puts spotlight on Kenya’s crisis of gender-based violence

The play was restaged this month at the Chandaria Jain Social Group auditorium in Nairobi. Photograph: Esther Sweeney/The Guardian Autobiographical work Free Me aims to encourage victims to speak out in country where violence against women is rising By Carlos Mureithi in Nairobi. Photographs by Esther Sweeney T here are audible gasps in the auditorium in Nairobi as a husband launches a volley of blows and slaps on his wife and pushes her to the floor. “I wish I could spare you this,” the wife tells the audience. “My husband beat me up as if we were in a bar fight. Except, in a bar someone fights back.” The scene comes from Free Me, an autobiographical play by Gathoni Kimuyu, a Kenyan theatre and TV producer who lived through an abusive marriage. The success of the production, which was first performed in November and returned this month for a rerun, reflects a public outcry over gender-based violence (GBV) in Kenya, where already high rates of femicide and abuse have risen further in recent years . View image in fullscreen A scene from Free Me. This month, hundreds of women marched in Nairobi to protest against violence against women and to call on the government to declare GBV a national crisis. In January 2025, after a series of marches across the country in 2024 and the supporting online campaigns #StopKillingUs, #EndFemicideKe and #TotalShutDownKe, the government formed a technical working group to identify trends, hotspots and causes of GBV and femicide. It released a report citing a mix of factors behind GBV, including social and cultural factors such as patriarchal structures and gender inequality. The document made recommendations such as amending the law to define and codify femicide as a distinct offence from murder and for the president to declare GBV a national crisis. The government has yet to implement the recommendations, and GBV cases continue to make headlines. View image in fullscreen Gathoni Kimuyu is the producer of the autobiographical play. “When we look at the numbers in Kenya right now, cases of femicide, sexual abuse, physical abuse – any type of abuse against women – are very high,” said Kimuyu, who is also the producer and head of marketing for the play. “And the numbers just keep rising and rising.” She added: “One of the reasons why we’re restaging this show is because of how important it is to the conversations that we’re having now and for the change that we’re looking for as women and as a country.” Popularly known as Queen Gathoni, the 41-year-old writer-producer has worked on some of Kenya’s defining TV and theatre productions, including the children’s TV drama Machachari and the historical play series Too Early for Birds . View image in fullscreen Mugambi Nthiga: ‘This is not just a story. This is someone’s true story.’ F ree Me covers her life from her teenage years living with her family in Nairobi’s eastern outskirts in the early 2000s to the present day. It tells her story in different stages of her life, pl