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 risingThere 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 th