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

Autobiographical work Free Me aims to encourage victims to speak out in country where violence against women is rising

There 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.