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Langalakhe Mabena
Savanna Trust has launched the ACCEL ZW Theatre Festival, which will offer theatre fanatics an immersing experience into the world of stage creativity, knowledge generation and sharing, as well as live theatre performances from some of the finest up and coming performers in the region.
The festival running under the theme” Inspire”, will be held from 4 to 6 April at Jasen Mphepo Little Theatre in Harare, where various artistic activities have been lined up.
The festival comes after Savanna Trust, under their ACCEL ZW project, trained four community theatre groups and over 80 artistes in playmaking and performance over a period of seven months. These groups came from marginalised communities including Hwange, Gwanda, Chimanimani and Bulawayo.
They received intense training as the projects were facilitated by renowned award-winning theatre practitioners such as Memory Kumbota, Daniel Maposa, Teddy Mangwa and the youthful Ronald Sigeca and Cadrick Msongelwa of the Zandezi fame.
The theatre groups will be the main performers as Savanna Trust launches ACCEL ZW Theatre Festival. All the festivities at the theatre extravaganza are made possible through the generous support of the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe and the European Union Delegation to Zimbabwe, the University of Zimbabwe and Jasen Mphepo Little Theatre.
Sebastian Muza from Savanna Trust, said ACCEL ZW Festival was created after they equipped marginalised theatre creatives on a training project ,which enhanced them with creative capabilities, entrepreneur skills and ideas, on how to create and maintain a functioning theatre group.
He said after the creatives graduated, they saw it fit to proceed with the festival, where the artistes will get a chance to perform and showcase skills they acquired from the training.
“We mainly targeted community theatre groups from marginalised communities and those led by women and young people. Through the training, the groups and artistes have gained relevant artistic skills and knowledge that increases their ability to produce and perform high quality and professional theatre plays.
“On 9 and 10 February at Bulawayo Theatre, we hosted these theatre groups and they performed their plays. The event was a litmus test – which they passed, hence we saw it fit to create the festival, which will be annually held, to be used for the groups we train to perform their plays,” said Muza.
Online Reporter