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Mitambo Festival lives to its billing

BY BRiDgET WaDzaNai MavhiMiRa

The Mitambo International Theatre Festival (MITF) lived to its theme for this year, which was ‘Upturn’.

This year’s edition which took place from September 20-24 encapsulated theatre performances as it expanded to performance art, music, dance, theatre film and poetry.

Theatre enthusiasts were astonished by a performance titled 1894 by the Midlands State University (MSU) in conjunction with Amakhosi Theatre Arts, where all the girls came braless on the stage in the first scene.

The play showed the performer’s passion for art as they went all the way. If they had not done it in one accord there was no way one lady would have done it alone but the fact that they came on stage without anything on and as a team, they fed each other confidence and energy making the performance flawless and outstanding

The assistant director for 1894 Nomvhiyiso Mabi said the biggest hurdle in directing the play was a scene where the ladies had to remove bras.

“The worst challenge we faced was in convincing the girls to remove their bras in front of the audience, but when we explained to them that no virgin was supposed to cover their bosom to signify one’s purity at the time, they agreed,” Mabi said.

“During rehearsals we never removed our bras, we only did it just for the show and it turned out just like we wanted as the ladies were really confident.”

The script writer Scrum Dalla, who is also a lecturer at MSU, said the play is based on a historic event of the disappearance of Lobengula and that the braless scene is a reed dance which was done by virgins at that time. “Demystification of bosom made them asexual”.

“The disappearance of King Lobengula has always been a mystery to many and the same year that he disappeared there was an outbreak of small pox,” Dalla said.

“So, I decided to use that part of history as my focus and tried to simplify why he varnished.

“1894 is the only play one can see a woman’s breasts and not think about sex because it is a culture.”

Many excellent performances were delivered at the five-day festival. Among them was a played titled Rising Bones: The Spirit of Nehanda written and directed by Luckymore Magaya, which focuses on the instrumental spirit mediums during the First and Second Chimurenga with Nehanda Nyakasikana as the main focus?

“Our play does not talk about politics, rather it speaks on history and how the carders were heroic in as they recuperated and became one after the bombing of Chimoio,” said Magaya.

“It preserves our history and how instrumental our ‘masvikiro’ were especially the spirit of Nehanda, which has always been there.”

There was a theatre film play titled Nzara by Klara Ana Rosa which depicts that hunger is the rout of all corruption. She said she got her inspiration from Great Zimbabwe which is evident by the geographical location seen in the play.

“It is not just the hunger of the body, but spiritual hunger as well. It tells on how the creative spirit of a woman is being treated, the spirit that makes everything grow, the respect of life carriers and life givers versus the way how humans respects those in power who in turn destroy life,” said Klara.

All the way from Chicago was Jasmin Cardenas who performed a solo show called disposable. It was a five character show about working people, both low wage factory workers and professional workers.

“I think we forget about people’s humanity when they are workers and we do not recognize the dignity that workers require. So my play is all about bringing up that awareness,” said Cardenas.

The programme manager for Zimbabwe Theatre Academy Tedy Mangawa said that they faced a lot of challenges from the beginning of this year’s MITF festival as they received more than 200 applications of people who wanted to perform. The main challenge was putting resources together especially financially.

“We had a challenge in selecting the plays as we received more than 200 applications whereas we only wanted 15-20 plays. So it was a hard process to let all those other applicants down. For the past three-four years we have been a festival that a lot of performers look up to and we wanted to deliver but putting the necessary resources together was our biggest challenge.

“Mitambo avail opportunity for theatre performers and putting such an event together require a lot of resources be it financially even human power,” said Mangwana.

For this to work we also need partners and bringing all those people together was not easy as people are still trying to adjust and recover from Covid-19.”

People, Arts & Places

en-zw

2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

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