Intwasa prepares 16 colour feast
THIS year’s edition of the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo will see the city’s longest running arts extravaganza try to highlight the country’s verse cultures through the celebration of all the 16 languages recognised in the constitution.
As it begins preparing for this year’s edition, Intwasa has settled on 16 Colours as its official theme, with each colour set to recognise each one of the dialects spoken in various parts of the country.
In its first preparatory meeting of the year in February, Intwasa indicated that it would be taking the fest to some of the city’s western townships as they tried to earn the buy-in of local arts lovers that might further from the city, the arts fete’s usual base of operations.
The announcement of this year’s theme followed that spirit of inclusivity.
“We chose 16 colours as a theme for this year because throughout the history of Intwasa we have been talking about diversity and we wanted to reinforce that with a festival that highlighted the importance of all the languages that are in the country’s constitution,” said festival director Raisedon Baya.
He added that they had chosen this particular theme because of their desire to see all of the country’s diverse cultures represented on prominent platforms.
“We’re basically saying all these colours translate into different colours and they each represent a tribe, culture or identity and that is what we’re trying to highlight and celebrate with this theme. We’re doing so in hope of showing that Zimbabwe is a diverse country with a multiplicity of languages and culture,” he said.
In a year which will probably see a lot of arts festivals fold or struggle, Baya said they expected the 16th edition of Intwasa to be a full feast.
“We also chose this particular theme for the festival this year because this is now also our 16th. When you look at special events in our culture, diners are always greeted with the so-called seven colour meal and we felt that we could do something in the same vein. If this was to be a feast, we want it to be a 16 coloured meal. All this is in keeping with our desire to use colour as a representative of culture and the diversity of Zimbabweans,” he said.
Baya said although they might not have enough resources to have all the languages represented by different productions, they would make sure that all would be showcased in different ways.
“While we would like all the languages represented with some sort of production at this year’s fest, that might not be possible given the state of the economy and how resources for just putting together the festival are already hard to come by. So that might be a bridge too far for this year although we have the desire to have some performers from Binga this year but that will depend on the availability of resources,” he said.
Baya said all their efforts were inspired by the desire to show that Zimbabwe had more than two official languages.
“We might not have performers doing pieces in all the languages but we want to make sure that there’s some sort of symbolic representation of the languages wherever the festival goes. All this would be in an effort to show that Zimbabwe is not just Shona and Ndebele,” he said.