Writer: Tina Tieno
Director: Gabrielle Moleta
Tina Tieno’s one-woman show about a 14-year-old girl escaping an arranged marriage in 1960s’ Kenya has some good moments but overall Sacrifice pivots awkwardly between storytelling and theatre, with neither genre fully succeeding. The story, although personal to Tieno, lacks drama too.
Although playing a range of characters, Tieno is mainly Aneno who lives in rural Kenya. She is married and has one daughter, Hera, who has mobility issues caused by polio. The effects of the disease, however, have not slowed Hera down. She is doing well at school, and has plans to go to the city’s university to study medicine.
But these are not her father’s plans. He negotiates her marriage to a 70-year old man in exchange for some cows. He looks forward to future grandsons. His beliefs are mired in patriarchy and tradition. Aneno struggles to challenge her husband’s decision and instead strives to engineer her daughter’s escape before the wedding day.
That is the crux of the story, but it’s not enough to fill the hour running time. Instead, Tieno’s story meanders and we’re introduced to other family members and neighbours, a confusing moneymaking scheme, a parable about a tortoise and the chaos of market day. Oddly, Tieno plays Hera only once, and that is right at the start when she comes home from school. Otherwise the daughter is missing from the narrative, giving it a slightly hollow core.
Only using three small wooden boxes as props, this is a scaled back performance and Avery Elliott’s lights remain high for most of it. However, if there were more music and a more evocative light design, Sacrifice might have a better sense of time and space. Tieno’s show tells an important story but it suffers within the rather unimaginative set and is sidelined by the character studies of Hera’s father and grandmother.
Tieno is a talented actor, and she fully embodies her characters, but perhaps there is another way for her to tell her story, a way that would bring us closer to this battle between female liberation and male tradition.
Runs until 10 March 2023
