Local play to tour Spain
WHILE most local musicians struggle to get international attention, that is not the case with theatre artistes.
HEAVENS seem to be always smiling on them as they keep getting opportunities to tour foreign lands. Unlike their music counterparts, they do not perform for a handful of Zimbabweans who are based outside the country.
Theatre may be “small” in Zimbabwe but when our local artistes fly abroad, they perform for multitudes, who are not even Zimbabwean.
Plays such as “Lamentations @12” have been touring the continent since mid-last year and the dance queens, Mambokadzi, who are now specialising in theatrical productions, rocked Europe for the greater part of 2016.
Come 2017, another local production, “Born Free” from Masvingo, is set to tour Spain between June and July.
“We are very thrilled to have the play touring Spain this winter and we are just finalising with the team that side on the specific venues and dates but we will definitely be going there to perform between June and July,” said Masvingo’s Charles Austin theatre artistic director, Khetani Banda.
Banda also revealed that the play will be going on a national tour starting this March.
“Not only will the play be touring Spain but it will also be staged in local theatres. It has already been staged in Masvingo and should be headed to Harare next towards the end of March and from there we take it to the other towns and cities,” revealed Banda.
Directed by two-time National Arts Merit Awards nominee, Charles Munganasa, “Born Free” is a Zimbabwean story focusing on the essence of freedom, told through the eyes of a young man, Bornfree Nyika.
Nyika is born of a Ndebele mother and a Shona father whose Chimurenga name was Cde Dzinorira Nyika, who is still traumatised by his war experiences.
Despite his wife Senzeni’s meek character, Cde Nyika suspects that she cheated on him with the church priest who is also Ndebele and gave birth to Bornfree.
His suspicions of infidelity is the major cause of the frequent and violent fights in their household and ultimately leads to Nyika murdering his wife. Bornfree is taken for foster care by the courts but he still poses a threat to his father who becomes a prominent politician 18 years later. Bornfree struggles to free himself from his father’s clutches and suffers from an identity crisis. In the end, he avenges his mother’s murder by shooting his father four times in the head, the same way his mother had been killed. Straight after that he rushes to church to confess his sin and subsequently discovers that Nyika was not his biological father as he was sired by the church priest, Father Abraham Ndlovu. “The play was greatly received by an almost full-house at the Charles Austin Theatre last week and we were really happy about the great turn-out,” said Munganasa, adding, “It has a five-member cast that takes on many characters. It stars Michael Banda, award-winning actor Yanano Musingarabwi, musician and actor Ngoni Chinovava, upcoming actress Kudzai Takawira and award-winning actor Takudzwa Ponde.” Said Munganasa: “I believe as the human race we rely on memories to explain our current experiences. In this instance, there is a relationship between the past and the future in Bornfree’s attempt to understand the contextual meaning of his name in relation to his life as a whole. “The term Bornfree is largely a negative label that is used by those who were born before Independence to refer to those born after, without considering that wars are not only physical but also psychological and emotional as well.”