'Silvia': an Italian name that originates from the Latin word for forest, 

meaning 'Spirit of the Woods'.

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When Silvia was growing up in Nairobi in the 70s and 80s there were no mobile phones, no Google searches, no Uber rides and no kids’ programmes on TV. Kids played outside with ‘steelies’ and ‘bombie bloods’, and jumped the river at the bottom of Hillcrest Preparatory School during break times. Even then, there was one place Silvia was most at home in, and it wasn’t on the hockey field. It was on stage, magnetised by the power and wonder of an audience.

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Hillcrest Secondary followed, in the era of big hair, leg-warmers, Sno-Cream and Bubbles disco. Silvia found she loved Shakespeare and inter-house debating, and loathed cross-country and organic chemistry. Her love-affair with the stage was well underway and luckily, her teachers noticed. She had her first taste of set designing and even directing. At the end of it, Silvia asked her parents if she could apply to Drama School. ‘In your dreams,’ they said.

 

So she shipped herself off to Oxford University, to study Human Sciences in between doing plays. It would open her horizons, and blow her mind. A stint in advertising in London followed, before the call of home brought her back to Nairobi, and a job with Fast Forward Productions, making TV commercials that mostly seemed to be about soap. Silvia became the bubble-making queen of Nairobi for a while, her tools an electric whisk and a surplus of imported Fairy liquid.

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In 1994, with a hankering to work for herself, Silvia opened Jigsaw Limited, a design company that manufactured and retailed wrought-iron furniture. Her business empire grew to two retail outlets in Sarit Centre and a factory in Industrial Area, but truth be told, it didn’t make her either rich or happy. When her focus was further diverted by a couple of kids, she closed shop. She did some illustration here and there: maps, posters, greeting cards, which was fun, and renovated a couple of old houses. The idea that she was saving pockets of Nairobi's history tickled her, so she did a few more.

 

But something was missing. Nothing filled her with the sense of exhilaration she’d felt on stage and in 2014, after 23 years of being away, she finally made it back. She also, at last, started writing. Her first finished work, a play entitled ‘A Man Like You’ was about 2 men trapped in a windowless concrete room in Somalia, and led her on a whirlwind of adventure following its premier in Nairobi in March of 2016. It won 2 Sanaa Awards, for Best Actor and Best Tragedy, and in July 2016 opened off-Broadway, in New York. 2017 saw an AMLY World Tour on 3 continents. The play continues to be performed and generate heated discussion about who is and who isn’t a terrorist.

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In July of 2014, Silvia started writing a novel. It proved to be a tortuous challenge of dedication and diligence, and she trudged through rounds of submission that taught her just how unforgiving the publishing industry is. So she learned her lesson, put her novel away and… started another. She briefly diverted from it to write another play, ‘Speak Their Names’, about a witch-hunt in 16th century Italy. It premiered in Nairobi in November of 2022 and was nominated at the Kenya Theatre Awards 2022 for Best Supporting Actress, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Production. 2023 was taken up with Silvia’s second novel - The Goatherd. She will be seeking representation to the publishing industry in 2024.