‘High theatre charges keep us away’

not publicity. The charges are too high considering that the customer base Theatre in the Park should be targeting is the middle class.
“Charging US$5,00 for a play is expensive considering that in most case one has to bring a wife or a friend. Because of traffic jam that has become a daily occurrence between 5 and 7pm in Harare, many people would want to find a place where they can kill time waiting for the rush hour madness to subside, and the appropriate would be at the theatre.
“The price of US$5,00 then becomes prohibitive and the same person would then opt for a movie, which costs US$2.
“I would like to suggest that the entrance fee for theatre should be US$ 2,00 and we have 100 people attending rather than charge US$5,00 and only 20 people pay unless the theatre industry wants to cater for a certain class.”
We will continue to feature the responses.
Meanwhile, in Bulawayo, Homegrown Theatre Productions has scheduled to celebrate the World Theatre Day with a play on national healing efforts. The play, “Say Forgiveness” was written by Raisedon Baya, who is the director of Homegrown Theatre Productions.
The play will be taken on an extensive national performance after its premier on March 27.
From the middle of the year Homegrown Theatre Productions will embark on an ambitious project where various theatre artists in Bulawayo will collaborate in making, producing and performing a play tentatively entitled “Women Without Husbands.” Baya, the director of the Intwasa Festival koBulawayo said the festival has commissioned the production of two plays – Henrik Ibsen’s “The Dolls House” and Wole Soyinka’s “The Lion and the Jewel” which are this year’s Ordinary Level English literature textbooks.
Also to be featured in the festival is a children’s play based on a folktale from Pathisa Nyathi’s “Kolobeja”. Intwasa also plans to host “one major local play, another one from Southern African region and outside Africa”.
On the other hand, Peter Churu has indicated that this year his Complete Arts Project will concentrate on collaborations with the Walter Mparutsa-led Global Arts Trust which will take “The Father” on a national , regional and international performance tour”. Nationally the tour of the play will be through the Zimbabwe Theatre Association’s clusters where the cast and crew of the production will run theatre skills workshops at cluster centres before presenting the play.
Complete Arts Project and Global Arts Trust will collaborate with the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture and the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe in a theatre-in-education programme which will feature the dramatisation of setbooks in Shona and English. This ambitious project is aimed at consolidating the tour of schools with theatre production based on prescribed set books.

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