Theatre alive in Hurungwe
“Artistes use Chikangwe Community Hall and sometimes schools for their rehearsals. We have appealed to Karoi town council to give us land to develop a culture village so that we create theatre spaces but we have not received any feedback yet.”
FOR the past 27 years Hurungwe-based drama group, Baptism of Fire (BOF), has been making strides in community development, especially in areas affecting rural areas in Mashonaland West province, despite the acute financial challenges it faces.
Since inception, the organisation has participated in and undertaken a number of programmes, which include community outreach projects, theatre festivals, workshops, and they are the brains behind the Hurungwe Arts Festival.
“We are a community-based group focusing on sustainable development and empowerment on socio-economic issues, education, health, and human rights to the underprivileged by communicating effectively through drama, music, dances, poetry, community meetings, workshops and festivals,” said BOF director, Skumbuzo Sibanda.
He adds that the goal of capacity building is to tackle problems related to policy and methods of development while considering the potential and limits of the society concerned.
“We also do advocacy as a continuous and adaptive process of gathering, organising and formulating information into argument, to be communicated through theatre.
“Over the years, we have also been doing social mobilisation. In this pro- cess we try to bring together all feasible and political inter-sectorial partners and allies to determine felt needs and raise awareness of demand for a particular development objective.
“It involves enlisting the participation of such actors, including institutions, groups, networks and communities, identifying, raising and managing human and material resources, thereby increasing and strengthening self-reliance and sustainability of achievement,” added Sibanda.
However, despite all the achievements they have made, the group still struggles to get basic facilities to showcase their theatre productions and have resorted to using church auditoriums.
Recently when they partnered with Rooftop promotions on the tour of the emotional production “Lamentations @12” in Karoi, they had to use the premises of Baptist Church as the local hall has no electricity and no chairs.
“There is no theatre space out here, that’s why we prefer using the church. Although there is a community hall, it is not suitable for theatre. There is no furniture nor changing room and lighting,” said BOF programmes officer, Joel Zilala.
“Artistes use Chikangwe Community Hall and sometimes schools for their rehearsals. We have appealed to Karoi town council to give us land to develop a culture village so that we create theatre spaces but we have not received any feedback yet.
“The other challenge we have is growing our paying audience — we have realised that though people love our work, they are not prepared to pay,” revealed Zilala.
Through the Hurungwe Arts Festival, Zilala and crew have developed systems to groom future playwrights and actors.
“The Hurungwe Arts Festival now runs an annual competition to encourage school children to make their unique contribution to the evolving world of theatre. We ask schools in Hurungwe to write their own short play for the stage. This is an opportunity for all budding playwrights to show off their imagination and creativity.
“Creating their own characters and telling their story in a brand new way. This is our junior mentorship programme, which seeks excellent standards of spoken language, excellent acting skills, communication skills, creativity and liveliness of the play,” says Zilala.
Zilala also spoke about their new production “Caged”, which he is producing and will premiere next month saying, “Caged is a production that explores the future Zimbabwe based on current events. It’s a prophecy of how ugly it can be if Government, cooperate laws and people’s current behaviour do not change now. Therefore, this production is relevant as it shapes our dreams and ambitions.