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Raisedon Baya
A POST I saw on Facebook this past week made me sit up and think hard and deep. The post was from an American actress, Heather Massie, whom Intwasa, with support from the American Embassy, brought to Bulawayo last year during the September festival. Heather was part of the festival’s theatre programme with her one woman play Hedy — The life and inventions of Hedy Lammar.
As the title says the play is about the famous Austria-born American film actress who was also an inventor and was once described as the most beautiful woman in the world.
The critically acclaimed play is based on a true life story of Hedy Lammar. It featured at Intwasa 2017 and also came for this year’s edition of the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa).
Anyway, what had me thinking hard was not the play’s coming to Intwasa or making a return to Zimbabwe during Hifa.
What made me sit up and think hard was the play’s seemingly longevity. Since 2017 the play has been on the road and getting good reviews while at it.
Sometime in 2005 during Hifa I watched an incredible one-man piece in which this actor played 32 characters on stage. It was an incredible play. I remember seeing it twice at the festival and on both occasions the show was sold out!
I also remembered the show, not because it was sold out on both occasions, but because I remembered reading about it seven years later, and yes, it was still on the road.
The play is Doug Wright’s award-winning piece I am my own wife. Now talk about a play with a proper shelf life — first produced in 2003 and nine years later still showing.
More than five years doing the same play is called work. It’s employment! It speaks to actors making a living out of their creativity.
I posted my thoughts on Facebook the other day and got a response from Kurt Egelhof, a thespian who lives and works in Cape Town.
Kurt once brought his one-hander, For Generations, again to Intwasa courtesy of Nhimbe Trust and Africalia. He told me that his play has been alive for 10 years with regular performances!
He says he has been performing his play on different platforms like festivals, theatres, factories, and at different functions.
For Generations is about family lineage and the genetic burden of struggle for dignity.
Sitting down my first thoughts were which Zimbabwean plays had the longest run? How many times had they been performed and at which venues and towns?
Of my own plays the longest running must be Super Patriots and Morons, and maybe What they said and what they got.
Both plays were produced by Rooftop Promotions and the reasons for their long runs are probably to do with donor backing.
As far as I can remember there were no performances outside of what the donor had supported.
Unfortunately, we are not good, or keen, at keeping records as it would have been good to know the longest running play in the country and how many performances it has choked up.
A quick look at Google will tell you the three longest running plays or musicals in the world are Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, Les Miserables based on Victor Hugo’s historical novel and of course Sir Andrew Loyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera.
The play and the two musicals have each been performed over 25 000 times! That’s literally over twenty years each. Now that’s a career in theatre for both actors and crew.
It will be very myopic to compare what happens in UK at West End and in America on Broadway with the set-up we have in this country.
The conditions are worlds apart. West End and Braodway theatres are run professionally and their major objective is to make money for producers and everyone else.
Comparing would be insane, if not outright stupid. However, it is important to note that the goal of the Zimbabwean theatre actor, playwright, director and crew members is to make a living out of their creativity or art.
It is the same goal/objective as the actor, playwright, director and crew member who lives in either the UK or America or any part of the world for that matter.
So the big question is how do theatre artistes in this country make a living out of two or three shows — seeing most plays never get to four performances?
Our theatre shows are dying immediately after being launched and we haven’t seen proper theatre runs for a long time. Many reasons have been given.
Reasons like the sector is not ready for long runs. The plays are not good enough. There are no venues willing to put up long runs. There is no audience to sustain a proper theatre. Donor funding has killed theatre.
What exactly do we mean by the sector is not ready for long runs? Who exactly is not yet ready?
Is it the actor or the audience that is not ready? What do we mean the plays are not good enough?
When will they be good enough? Why are we not making them good enough? And what exactly do we mean by not good enough?
Which venues are not good enough? Good enough for which plays or what audience?
What does a venue need to be good enough?
Yes, there is no audience. But an audience is cultivated and audience building is a process. Have we been systematically cultivating this audience as a sector? And which donors have killed theatre?
In fact, which donors are supporting theatre to a point they have spoiled theatre artistes? So many questions and little answers.
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