Who are we?
Joe and Lexas met online in 2024 during a collaboration between The National Youth Theatre and Youth Theatre Kenya. Since then, they have stayed friends, calling regularly and founding TukiwaiT. Funded by the British Council, they finally met in person in the summer of 2026 as participants of Challenge Lab in Sheffield Doc Fest.
Nzolo Muthama, aka Lexas Mshairi, is an award-winning Poet and multi-disciplinary Creative based in Nairobi, Kenya. Lexas has been actively involved in art since 2016, turning professional in 2018. His work tends to circle back to mental wellness and self-identity probably because he’s still figuring both out in real time. Lexas is also drawn to things that feel bigger than himself like social justice, climate change and gender based violence. But he’s less interested in explaining them and more interested in humanising them. Making it personal feels important. It’s how he understands the world and how he tries to stay connected to it.
Lexas holds a B.A in Psychology (minor in Sociology) and is the co-founder of Rafinki (literary organization), Jikite Studio (digital and print studio) and Sirnduku (showcase). Beyond this, he's also an alumnus of the I Am Not A Robot programme, where he and Joe first collaborated, building the early materials of what is now ‘TukiwaiT’.
Joe Harrington is a performer, writer, theatre maker and sound designer based in London. He is interested in combining live and digital forms of performance and his work frequently experiments with different technologies including sound loopers and live streams. He participated in the ‘I Am Not A Robot’ scheme, where, with Lexas, he explored the potential to connect creatively using new technologies such as 3d scanners.
Along with Lexas, Joe co-founded TukiwaiT, an artistic company that explores the possibility of long distance human connection through creative technology. Joe enjoys taking his work to venues all over London, creating stories for stages such as The Almeida Theatre, Stratford East, and most recently, The Roundhouse, as part of Daniel Kaluuya’s Centre 59.
Joe holds a first class degree in English from the University of Cambridge.