Scar Poetry stages intimate reflection on adulthood and self-acceptance

Performance poet and cultural storyteller Scar Poetry, real name Priscar Njeri, staged her debut solo performance titled The Late 20s Are Upon Us on June 13 at Braeburn Gitanga Road’s theatre, Austin Room.

It is a one-woman poetry performance with a tender and rebellious edge that featured a guitarist and pianist. It explores the weight of feelings around early adulthood, the pressures of modern life, disillusionment with adulthood, and journeys of self-discovery and self-acceptance.

Scar Poetry says that the title The Late 20s Are Upon Us represents the societal pressure placed on young adults to meet expected life milestones.

“It signifies a canon event. There is this constant chatter from everywhere. Maybe you should be married; maybe you are running late in life, and it becomes overwhelming. I wanted the title to feel like something heavy on you,” she says.

The work came from a time of introspection spanning slightly more than a year on the intensity of adulthood, informed by personal, social, political and global circumstances.

As a young person coming from a humble background, she felt that adulthood was overwhelming as she tried to make ends meet in the midst of political and economic hurdles in the country and the world.

“It felt like everything was happening at once. When I spoke to people around me, they said they felt the same. That is what made me want to create a space for openness and vulnerability. I want people to be honest about how grievous adulthood is and that they are not alone,” she explains.

The writing was originally meant to delve into ageing and womanhood, but the more she penned the poems, the more they revealed themselves as human-centric reflections on ageing and adulthood and not solely on womanhood.

The final production consists of 14 poems that centre on burdening experiences and expectations of young people finding their way through adulthood, such as uncertainty, anxiety, disillusionment, and acceptance.

Her work also captures the constant grief of growing up and how in adulthood, death stops being something that is far but something that can happen to anyone at any point. She recalls a conversation where someone said that no one told them that adulthood will continuously demand that you show up even when you have lost someone.

The poems see her embrace challenges in adulthood and surrender to living life untethered from societal expectations. She describes this as a meeting of self, who she genuinely is when alone and is fully responsible for her life.

“One of the core feelings at the end is surrender, not giving up but accepting that this is what my life is. For my poems, the biggest act of love is I will take an ordinary life and make something out of it because these extraordinary pressures are breaking us,” she says.

She additionally challenges the idea that the late twenties should feel like a significant period in a person’s life.

“I think we are the ones making it significant by putting pressures on people. All of life should be significant. We should not force people to figure everything out at a specific age,” she says.

The performance then moves from personal experiences to civic awareness by engaging with themes of uncertainty around activism, the exhaustion in the face of social challenges, the heartbreak for caring about the world, individual impact in systems of slow change, and acceptance of what the world is.

Scar Poetry admits that after the 2024 anti-finance bill protests, she has felt that activism has become difficult for her even as people expect her generation to be on the front line to advocate for systemic changes.

“I have always been an activist, but lately it has been heavy. I was asking myself when change is coming or if I’m just shouting into the void. Should I give up on what I believe in because it has become heavy for me to carry?” she wonders.

The production setup for The Late 20s Are Upon Us is inspired by an intimate and communal live music performance by musician Ethan Muziki, which Scar Poetry attended. She decided that if she ever did her own show, she wanted it to have the same feel. Instead of it being a show that people just watch and leave, she wanted it to feel like a conversation they are having.

She single-handedly created, produced, directed, marketed and performed this one-woman show to get that desired intimate and honest experience with the audience. That was the first risk she took creatively, and she chose not to shy away from deeply and grievously exploring feelings in her poetry.

“There was a time I was writing, and I broke down. I could tangibly feel the weight, and it was more than I allowed myself to admit. Being vulnerable on stage is about holding myself and my art as the mirror for society to experience themselves,” she expresses.