adminduring this month of February.
Stanley Make, the Zimbabwean playwright based in New Zealand, has announced an ambitious theatre project called “24-Hour Theatre Challenge” scheduled for the Harare International Festival of the Arts in May.
Make describes this ambitious project as follows:
“Within 24 hours six plays will be written, rehearsed, acted, produced and staged.
“The gruelling and adrenaline-fuelled process begins on a Friday evening when six playwrights meet to draw actors’ names out of a hat. Armed with their casts, the playwrights have 12 hours to create a 10-minute play.
“In the morning they hand over their scripts to six directors who gather casts and spend the next 10 hours rehearsing. At the same time production teams scramble to find props, scenery and costumes for each play.
“Dramaturges or script doctors roam the rehearsals pointing out problems and helping with revision.
“By the time the lights go down for the first show at 7pm on Saturday the cast have had a technical rehearsal and a full production rehearsal.”
Those interested should contact him on [email protected]
It is very pleasing to note that theatre houses, organisations and institutions are determined to make 2012 a successful theatre year.
The Bulawayo-based Siyaya Arts Ensemble – Zimbabwe’s most travelled performing arts company – has announced another international performance tour of its highly popular 30- member cast musical “Zimbabwe Express” which is a magnificent “celebration of African culture”. The play which “centres on the life of a young Zimbabwean man, Zili, who pursues his dream of becoming a footballer in South Africa during the Fifa World Cup” was last year taken on a performance tour of six Southern African countries.
In February, it will be performed in different cities of Spain while in the month of September the play will be performed in different cities of Holland.
Siyaya Arts Ensemble was founded in Makokoba Township in 1989 as Nostalgia Actors and Singers Alliance (Nasa).
It has since 1993 performed at 30 international festivals in 10 countries including appearing at the WOMAD Festival in England and the United Arab Emirates.
The ensemble has also performed at more than 50 theatre venues in different countries and has participated in 11 special events as well as collaborated in producing plays with seven theatre companies in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany and England.
Rooftop Promotions of Harare have unveiled a schedule of theatre performances that includes Makuwe’s play “The Coup” and a theatrical production by Vhitori Entertainment of Silvanos Mudzova’s play whose title is yet to be released.
A play from Amakhosi Theatre Productions’ “The Burrow” will occupy the theatre until when it closes for HIFA 2012.
Immediately after Hifa Rooftop Promotions will present Takura Zhangazha’s play “A Changing of the Guard”.
In the spoken word sector, the first major event is the performance poetry evening by the Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights on the official launch of the Black History Month in Harare.
February will also see the beginning of monthly poetry performance and reading sessions the new Book Café in Harare and of the Bulawayo Poetry at National Gallery or Bulawayo Theatre Club.Other poetry performance and readings will be a the monthly of Acoustic Night of the Zimbabwe German Society’s Wildfire Events in Harare.
Girl Child Creative Project will host on March 21 the World Poetry Day, a poetry reading and performance festival featuring poets from schools, hip-hop poets, slam poets and Zimbabwe’s most travelled performance poets at a yet to be named venue in Harare.
Meanwhile, Tsungai Garise – that prolific Zimbabwean playwright and director based in Zambia – will tomorrow present at Alliance Francaise in Harare his latest play “Reflecting Women”.
The play will feature a cast comprising the highly accomplished sisters, Chitalu Kaibele and Luse Kaibele who mesmerised Harare audiences last year with their mouth-watering performance in Garise’s “The Blonde, the Main and the Millionaire”. The show opens at 20 hours.
The stand-up comedy sector starts its session tomorrow at the 7Arts Theatre in Avondale with “Laugh Out Cancer” – a comedy special featuring the award winner Daliso Chaponda – a Malawian based in London who had three sold out 7 Arts Theatre shows during Hifa 2011.
Three shows are scheduled for 15 hours, 18.30 hours and 20.00 hours as the international super comedian’s contribution to the Shabani Mashaba Cancer Campaign of 2012. This is a comedy show not to miss.
Red Bar in Newlands, Harare, has already begun hosting monthly comedy nights which are complementing Simuka Comedy monthly shows to be held at the new Book Café in Harare. At the end of this month, Harare will host a mammoth comedy show featuring the “godfather” of Zimbabwean comedy Edgar Langeveldt and America’s star comedian Greer Barnes.
Simuka Comedy has scheduled twocomedy festivals, one in Harare and one in Bulawayo, in September. Still on comedy, sometime this week Zimbabwean comedy Carl Joshua Ncube is taking his World Comedy Tour to “some of the hot comedy spots of Cape Town”.
He recently signed with Podium – the Comedy Merchants of South Africa – who are now handling his bookings. This year therefore promises to be Zimbabwe’s successful stand-up comedy year at home and abroad.
Online Reporter