2063
Kaari Njeru & Jacob Sibi-Okumu – Book
Jason & Jacob Sibi-Okumu – Music and Lyrics
John Sibi Okumu - Dramaturgy & Additional Contributions
The year is 2063 and, one hundred years after independence, a shrunken Kenya is preparing for elections to replace a visionary ruler, making for bitter rivalries and questionable allegiances. This allegorical musical reveals an imagined future for the country.
Writer & Composer Profiles
Jacob Sibi Okumu, Writer & Composer
Jacob Sibi-Okumu is a Kenyan musician based in Los Angeles, California.
A graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music in 2017 with a degree in Contemporary Writing & Production, Jacob diversifies his music career as a professional guitarist, educator, composer, producer and arranger across a wide variety of genres and styles that range from pop, to musicals and much more in between.
Jason Sibi Okumu, Writer & Composer
Born and raised in Kenya, Jason Sibi-Okumu is a soulful singer songwriter , whose timeless melodies and expressive lyrics captivate his audience. Exposed to a wide rage of music, Jason’s influences include Eric Wainaina, John Mayer, Michael Jackson, Queen, Sam Cooke, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Diagnosed with chronic kidney failure at the age of fifteen, Jason turned to songwriting as a way to process the experience.
After two years of dialysis, Jason had a successful kidney transplant in 2007. Sibi-Okumu credits the experience for adding depth, purpose and identity to his songwriting.
After graduating from high school in 2008, Jason received a partial scholarship to Berklee College of Music as part of their African Scholars Program, and in August of 2010 left Nairobi for Boston to pursue a professional diploma in Songwriting. Since graduating from Berklee, Jason has continued to develop his skills as a performer and songwriter.
Although relatively new to the music industry, Jason’s fan base is steadily growing as his dynamic performances, unique voice and honest writing continues to win him fans across around the world.
John Sibi Okumu , Writer & Dramaturg
John Sibi-Okumu has appeared in over 40 stage roles, among them Romeo, Lysander, Shylock, Creon, Theseus & Oberon, Oedipus, Krapp and Vladimir. In 2016, he was Lion in Tinga Tinga Tales-The Musical.
In 2018, he took part in Lest We Forget, to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. He directed Eric Wainaina’s Mo Faya! for the New York Festival of Musical Theatre in 2009; Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing in 2017 and Nick Payne’s Constellations in 2018.
He has been credited in local and international films, including The Constant Gardener, Shake Hands with the Devil, The First Grader and The Rugged Priest.
He has recently narrated Peter and the Wolf for the Nairobi Orchestra and the audio books of Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani and Blossoms of the Savannah by Henry ole Kulet.
He has written six original plays. ‘JSO’ has peripheral profiles as a teacher of French, as a print and broadcast journalist and as a writer of prose fiction and poetry.
Kaari Njeru, Writer
With a BFA in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design from - what was then - Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles, California. However, with one 'actor-director-playwright' and two Berklee College of Music alumni in her household Kaari, the quintessential sounding board, has been led - by turns - to critiquing, proof reading, editing, researching and designing.
In her first foray into theatre Kaari has gone from "quintessential sounding board" to "emergent lead book writer", collaborating with both her director husband and their musical sons in an NBO Musical Theatre Initiative all-family affair.