The Dying Need No Shoes: Play explores disturbing fatherhood, generational trauma

The Dying Need No Shoes, a play by Dr Fred Mbogo, is one of the most haunting portrayals of fatherhood. It follows Prof Jairus Munanda, a father who is an academic severely obsessed with researching death.

Having spent much of his life looking for the meaning of life as the head of a university’s department of religion, he starts being consumed by a desire to know what happens before someone dies. This leads him to plan his daughter Purity’s death as a staged suicide.

It is revealed that he has been repeatedly abusing his daughter, who is now pregnant, and that Prof. Munanda’s father also committed the same abuse on his mother.

Themed around disturbing experimentations, psychological control, violence, obsession, and unresolved generational wounds, the play will be restaged in South Africa this year and is produced by the Kenya International Theatre Festival Trust.

Dr Emmanuel Shikuku, a theatre scholar and actor, plays the role of Prof. Munanda, and Ann Kiveli plays Purity. He admits telling the director Alacoque Ntome that it took him a while to immerse himself in the role because he didn’t see himself in it.

Dr Shikuku, who served as a Kenya Theatre Awards juror in 2023 and 2024, says that almost all the plays portrayed fathers in negative, one-dimensional ways of drunkenness and parental neglect.

“As a primary caregiver to my twin daughters, I don’t see myself represented in art in terms of fatherhood. I’m yet to see productions that depict fatherhood positively, especially in one-woman shows,” he says.

He adds that while theatre should show reality, it should also see more fair representations.

“Art is not just a mirror. It is a corrective mirror. If it is a mirror, I should also be able to see myself in it. I can’t dispute the stories; I just don’t recognise myself or my friends in them,” he says.

He refers to classical writers who depicted fatherhood in a positive light out of respect for family, such as the late Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s I Will Marry When I Want and the works of the late Prof. David Mulwa, which centre on reconciliation.

Playwright and theatre scholar Dr Fred Mbogo also shares this view that earlier playwrights portrayed fathers as custodians of family dignity and social order, while the theme of fatherhood is overshadowed by neocolonialism and bad governance in works of Ngũgĩ.

“Francis Imbuga’s works like Betrayal in the City and Aminata show fathers protect future generations and choose acceptance over rigid traditions,” he says.

Role Play by playwright and actor John Sibi-Okumu has the character Mzee depicted as having betrayed the very people he meant to guide and protect. Dr Mbogo sees his writing as Sibi-Okumu’s.

He refers to his play, The Dying Need No Shoes, which shows Prof. Munanda as a respected academic and father who fails those under his care at home and in school.

“He is supposed to be leading people. He is supposed to be a model in society, but because he has been oppressed elsewhere, his victims are the people he should be caring for,” Dr Mbogo says.

As a main theme or a minor one, theatre has staged fatherhood through stories of absent fathers, family trauma, strained relationships, and the consequences of fatherly absence. Theatre makers are torn on how fatherhood should be portrayed. While some see it as a necessary critique, others express that theatre under-represents present, caring fathers.

Recent productions in the last year such as Ujumbe, Man Needs Therapy, Tea with My Father, and It’s Such a Good Time revolve around fatherhood. 

A recently staged Man Needs Therapy is about a widowed father craves companionship with a younger woman, which his daughter strongly opposes. The Will by Doqflix Production is about a wrangling family prepares to read their dead father’s last wishes.   

Ujumbe, a two-hander which starred Wakio Mzenge and Sam Psenjen, is based on a true story of a father who is present in his child’s life despite being in prison. 

Faiz Ouma’s It’s Such a Good Time is a 2025 biographical play written by Sanchez Ombasa and Emmanuel Chindia, and directed by Gilbert Lukalia. It portrays Ouma as a young, loving father who stays involved in his child’s upbringing even after his relationship with the child’s mother breaks down and as he struggles with expectations that come with fame as an actor.

Other works examine strained paternal relationships, such as Tea with My Father, a one-man play by Gitura-Kamau, which follows a man who comes back from South Africa to bid farewell to his dying father, and he confronts the trauma of an absentee parent. Gitura-Kamau’s later work I Speak My Father is a compilation piece of his experiences and those of the public on fatherhood and father figures.

“In theatre, fathers are portrayed in a very melodramatic way. They are strong, wise, all-knowing figures. Rarely do we see them as normal men with fears and insecurities,” he notes.

Gitura-Kamau adds that this limits the range of male characters and pushes for rigid ideas of masculinity.

“We draw ideas of fatherhood from masculinity, yet those are two different entities. This is why we portray men only as strong protectors. We need more human characters,” he says.

Comedy has also contributed to the conversation. Till Age Do Us Part, a stand-up comedy staged by Larry Asego in December 2025, explore the generational differences in fatherhood; of older generation of fathers as strict while modern fathers such as himself as emotionally present fathers and husbands.

Director Dennis Ndeng’a of Crony Productions notes that many contemporary stories don’t portray present fathers.

“When we tell stories about fathers, if you’re not careful, you find yourself preaching. You have to craft the story carefully. For us, it is entertainment first,” he says.

Producer Tash Mitambo of Renegade Ventures says that many productions present fathers as people burdened by responsibility.

“I want to see a father who is enjoying being a father. Not only someone who is always suffering and unappreciated, but someone who is happy with his family and is having fun,” he says.

Igiza Arts Production has staged productions such as The Anointed Cartel, Fractured Ties, The Last Confession, and Last Seen in 2025 and 2026 and earlier works such as Shadows of the Soul and The Miser that have engaged with family dynamics and paternal relationships.

Playwright, director and producer Wreiner Arnold says that they intend to tell all manners of stories with varied portrayals of fatherhood.

“A father is an indispensable parent, even though some people have to do without them because of absence or death. Art is supposed to comfort the disturbed. If we focus on showing the positive side of fatherhood, we won’t be addressing a problem,” Arnold says.

Even so, Dr Mbogo believes theatre should do more to stage positive models of fatherhood.

“We need to showcase plays that model an image of a father that people can look up to. Sometimes playwrights are just telling stories, and fatherhood is incidental. But there is room for stories that intentionally present fathers positively,” he says.