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CHIPAWO, an arts education organisation, will this week première a play titled ‘‘Rudo neRunyararo,’’ which was adapted from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
The organisation will also be launching a professional youth theatre with a play on peace and reconciliation in Zimbabwe.
The organisation’s director, Chipo Basopo, said:
“We will be holding three important events at the Theatre in the Park, including the launch of a full-time professional youth theatre company, the New Horizon Youth Theatre, the premiere of the company’s first play, Rudo neRunyararo, by Peter Churu and Robert Mshengu Kavanagh.
“The launch is CHIPAWO’s involvement in the international CUSP project (Culture for Sustainable and Inclusive Peace)
“The play will run from March 22 to April 1 at Theatre in the Park, Harare Gardens.”
According to the synopsis of the play, Rudo Neruyamuro, is in a small town in Zimbabwe and acted in Shona. The play features the feud between the mayor and the local bus company owner and their families, as well as their domestic conflicts, leading to inevitable tragedy, which opens their eyes of the community to the futility of their enmity and the need for reconciliation.
“New Horizon Youth Theatre Company has been in existence since 2003, with performances in a number of venues in Harare, including the Reps Theatre, and in cities and towns all over Zimbabwe.
“With the New Horizon Youth Theatre Centre [NHYTC] as a hub, four organisations will devise ways and means of using arts to discuss and help reconcile conflict in the community.
“It aims to explore ways of resolving conflicts and initiating reconciliation and transformation through the arts,” she said.
According to Basopo, some of the plays from New Horizon include Vicious (2003), S J Chifunyise’s masterpiece about middle class poverty; Soul Sister Comes to Africa (2004), also by Chifunyise; The Little Man of Murewa (2005), adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s story, ‘Little Claus and Big Claus’, premièred at the Harare International Festival of the Arts and in Denmark.
Some of their plays include A Journey to Yourself, adapted from Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen; a dramatisation of Charles Mungoshi’s classic novel, Waiting for the Rain; Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office (2010); The Most Wonderful Thing of All, based on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House [2010], premièred in Lusaka, and later performed at the International Ibsen Conference in Norway, with theatre group, Zambuko/Izibuko, The Gaza Monologues(2011) with Ashtar Theatre in Palestine; Calderon della Barca’s The Dream of Life, translated in Shona as Mutambo Wepanyika; and more recently Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q (2019), which ran for a week at the Jason Mpepo Little Theatre in Harare.
CUSP is an international programme, hosted by the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
Other participants include Litfest in Harare, Ghana, Mexico, Morocco, Palestine and Scotland.
Online Reporter