Cultural Director Artistic Director Creative Strategist
Architecting Cultural Diplomacy Across Continents
I serve as Cultural Director for the Consulate of the United Republic of Tanzania in Denmark, where my work is grounded in cultural diplomacy, institutional partnership, and public cultural strategy. Over the past decade, I have also built and led ACT: New Nordic Voices as founder, Artistic Director, playwright, producer, and actor. Through the company, I have engaged 169 artists from 46 countries across the Nordics and beyond, and led productions in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Kenya.
My work spans performance, spatial scenography, and long-horizon cultural collaboration—reimagining classic texts as theatre and immersive installations across the Nordics, East Africa, and North America.
“I take the heavy stone of Europe—cathedrals, Ibsen, Blixen, Strindberg, Canth—and liquefy it into sensory experience.”
ACT: New Nordic VoicesFlagship: THE DREAMERS — From Zanzibar to MilanReach: Nordic Region Africa North AmericaMethod: Immersive theatre Installation Scenography
About
What I do
I serve as Cultural Director for the Consulate of the United Republic of Tanzania in Denmark, and as Founder and Artistic Director of ACT: New Nordic Voices.
My work spans cultural diplomacy, theatre, and spatial scenography, with projects and collaborations across the Nordics, East Africa, and North America.
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In 2016, ACT debuted at Baltoppen LIVE with a Danish premiere of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare—produced by me, with me in the lead role as Shylock.
In summer 2025, I invited Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah to a private literary salon in Copenhagen, which he accepted and was then hosted by the Consulate. My later appointment in 2026 to a consular cultural position gave institutional shape to a decade of cultural work across the Nordic countries.
I’m also a retired DJ—though I can’t promise the remix is gone for good.
What I Bring
I bring the ability to make culture legible to diplomatic and public institutions, and to use the arts as a language of understanding across borders.
I build productions, immersive environments, and partnerships that deepen cultural understanding between people, institutions, and places.
“Here, literature is not only represented; it is spatialised and encountered—through scenography, sound, scent,
light, materials, and atmosphere.”
The lead work at present, with the surrounding slate held in quieter orbit.
A chapter from Seven Gothic Tales — The Global Project
An immersive passage carrying sea, fire, theatre, and memory.
A multisensory installation translating Karen Blixen’s The Dreamers into scent, sound, architecture, and staged atmosphere across Denmark, New York, and East Africa.
The Dreamers opens a longer sequence reimagining all seven tales as distinct sensory environments: literary, spatial, and diplomatic at once.
Flagship installationDenmark → USA → Zanzibar → KenyaLiterary adaptationSpatial scenography
Supported by Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs · Danish Ministry of Culture
Developed with Karen Blixen Museum, Rungstedlund · Consulate General of Denmark in New York
A long-term artistic sequence translating Karen Blixen’s seven tales into multisensory installations. The Dreamers serves as the opening chapter in a larger cycle moving between literature, space, and public encounter.
Current pathway
DenmarkA sensory return
USAA literary return
KenyaA sensory return
Current slate
Other current works
Presented with distinction, but kept in quieter orbit around the flagship.
Credits: Set design: Emilie Lykke Bisgaard · Photo: Anis Dhiman · Graphic design: Ida Marie Krog · Costume / styling: Mia Fasmer Schønemann
Production stillProduction stillProduction stillWorkshop / rehearsalPortrait — black & whiteWatch videoPortrait — Michael OmokePortraitNordic Culture Point / New Nordic Voices (video)Credits (program extract)Cast & team (program extract)Portrait still
Production stillProduction stillProduction stillTalk / audience engagementSilenced No More — Nairobi · Kisumu · Mombasa (Kenya). Photo: Saiba Sehmi.Production still▶Partnership / portrait
Silenced No More — Nairobi Kisumu Mombasa (Kenya). Photo: Saiba Sehmi.
New Nordic Voices — Helsinki Copenhagen Stockholm
Selected production stills and moments from the Nordic circuit.
Production stillProduction stillProduction stillProduction stillACT: New Nordic Voices — production still.ACT: New Nordic Voices — production still.ACT: New Nordic Voices — production still.Production still
New Nordic Voices — Helsinki Copenhagen Stockholm.
Selected works & milestones
A distilled chronology rather than a wall of proof.
Flagship installation within Seven Gothic Tales — The Global Project. Tri-continental installation pathway (Denmark → USA → Zanzibar → Kenya).
Work-in-Progress — première 2028
Hedda Gabler in France
A reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, set against a secretive, sealed world in France—the moment before exposure.
2026–2030
Seven Gothic Tales — The Global Project
A multi-sensory reimagining of Karen Blixen’s debut Seven Gothic Tales (1934), unfolding through installations, spatial works, and transcontinental artistic pathways. Including the strand:A Literary Return to America.
2024
Nordic Classics Reimagined
International platform supported by the Nordic Culture Fund — research, development, and partnerships across continents.
2025
Seven Gothic Tales — major public support secured
Awarded major support by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Danish Ministry of Culture for a large-scale, multi-year reimagining of Karen Blixen’s Seven Gothic Tales, unfolding across Denmark, the United States, and East Africa.
Developed in collaboration with the European Union, Danida, the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces, and the Embassy of Denmark in Kenya. Staged For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange across Nairobi, Kisumu, and Mombasa alongside public dialogue and youth engagement. The platform employed 40 Kenyan artists, partnered with 4 NGOs, and helped ignite vital public conversation.
after August Strindberg’sMiss Julie(1888). Premiered at Folketeatret in Copenhagen, where Michael Omoke became the first African playwright to present work at the historic venue, before travelling to the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki). Nordic Classics Reimagined.
By Ntozake Shange—first staged in the Nordic countries by ACT; premiered in Helsinki on International Women’s Day, then travelled across Denmark and Stockholm before being re-invited to Nordic Culture Point in Helsinki.
By Henrik Ibsen (adapted by Arthur Miller)—produced in Ballerup, in Nordic collaboration with Nordic Black Theatre (Oslo) and Södra Community (Malmö), alongside ACT’s Denmark-based ensemble. Nordic Classics Reimagined
By William Shakespeare — producer and lead actor (Shylock). ACT’s debut production at Baltoppen LIVE in Denmark, performed with a cast representing 11 nationalities.
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Earlier milestones and formative years.
2016
Founded ACT: New Nordic Voices
Company leadership and artistic direction. Debut production: The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare — staged with a cast representing 11 nationalities.
The Merchant of Venice — William Shakespeare (c. 1596–1598) ACT debut production · Baltoppen LIVE (2016)
2002
Professional debut as an actor Servant of Two Masters (Carlo Goldoni) — Phoenix Players, Nairobi · Role: Silvio.
Goldoni (1707–1793): an 18th-century commedia dell’arte landmark. Servant of Two Masters (1746).
Formative years under the mentorship of James Falkland
My professional debut came in Nairobi with Phoenix Players, where I played Silvio in Servant of Two Masters. It was an early entrance into repertory discipline, precision, and stage seriousness.
Between 2001 and 2003, my theatre education was profoundly shaped by James Falkland, founder of Phoenix Players in Nairobi. Under his leadership, the company became a place of rare discipline, rigor, and consistency — an apprenticeship in theatre at its most practical and exacting.
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Phoenix Players built an extraordinary theatrical engine: between 1983 and 2007, the company staged 394 productions — effectively a new play every three weeks, alongside an annual musical — inside an intimate thrust stage with an audience capacity of just 120. To be formed within that rhythm was nothing less than a serious theatrical apprenticeship.
I still recall, with deep fondness, that during the five-week run, Falkland paid for my taxi rides between Limuru and Hillcrest for the first two weeks, and between Limuru and the theatre for the following two weeks after each performance, making sure I got home safely. In those days, taxi travel was a real luxury, and the distance was no small hurdle.
I did whatever my hands could find in the company — acting, stage managing, collecting sets and costumes. Those early beginnings became my true autodidact training: practical, demanding, and formative.
Servant of Two Masters — archival production still, Nairobi (2002).Servant of Two Masters — archival production still, Nairobi (2002).
2001
First play written, directed & performed Sitting On Me — premiere at Nairobi Baptist Church, Nairobi (Kenya). (Later: 2002 — Kenya National Theatre, Nairobi — Mavuno Festival.)
2001–2016
The “gap years” are explored in the forthcoming memoir-poem Post Gothic Perfume.
Partners & Support
Hosts, collaborators, and the wider institutional ecology around the work.
Institutional hosts & collaborators
University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki) · Danish National School of Performing Arts · Folketeatret (Copenhagen) · Karen Blixen Museum Denmark · Icelandic House (Copenhagen) · Caisa — International Cultural Centre (Helsinki) · Intercult (Sweden) · CKI — The Danish Centre for Arts & Interculture · De Kreatives Kontor · KU.BE Frederiksberg · ACT Kenya
Premiere: 2001 — Nairobi Baptist Church, Nairobi (Kenya). Later: 2002 — Kenya National Theatre, Nairobi — Mavuno Festival.
A political satire set in Nairobi at the turn of the millennium. A young man makes a private bargain for power—and returns years later as a polished public figure on the edge of national leadership. But the higher he rises, the more he “sits on” everyone beneath him: staff, allies, truth, and finally his own home. As religion, patronage, and intimidation become tools of control, the cost lands where it always lands first—inside the family—until a public ambition becomes a private catastrophe.
World premiere: 25 Aug 2021 — Folketeatret, Copenhagen (Denmark). Also staged: Finland (in collaboration with Uniarts Helsinki).
August Strindberg’s Miss Julie reimagined through Kenya’s “Happy Valley”—the colonial settler enclave around Lake Naivasha. Over one night, Julie and Jean negotiate desire, class, and power inside a world built on land and labour, where intimacy becomes a weapon and escape is an illusion.
