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Death Knell For Theatre Arts?-posted 08/07/06
By Khanyile Mlotshwa
MACKAY Tickeys, like Andrew Moyo, belong to the first and probably
the finest generation of theatre artists this country has ever known. It is sad that they are both late.
Tickeys death is shocking. He has been sick for some time, in
and out of hospital and has even had an interview with The Chronicle where he expressed the desire to retire from arts
and get married. Unfortunately for us the Lord is always the wisest, He had already arranged a wedding with Angels for him.
The strength he has shown in sickness and the desire to give to arts is inspirational for the young.
As an artist, Tickeys has been involved in the creative industry,
which means he has been involved in creating. What he created remains behind him as we can still see Sinjalo on DVD or VHS or ZTV repeats. Some of the works he did on stage is immortalized on VHS and DVD. Like Paul,
the apostle, we have the guts to ask, “death where is your sting?”
In John Donne’s poetic prophecy, Tickeys’ talent and
technology have conspired to murder death.
Tickeys, popularly known in Zimbabwe as Sakhamuzi, died
at Mpilo central Hospital in Bulawayo at 1.30 a.m. on Friday
16 June 2006. This was after a long illness. He was last on stage in November 2005 at theatre in the Park in Harare when he appeared in Cont Mhlanga’s Members. Tickeys trained as an actor
at Amakhosi between 1982 and 1984. in 1983 he appeared in the plays, Book of Lies and Diamond Warriors. These
were the early days of Amakhosi theatre and Bruce Lee’s Kung fu inspired the plays. He won his first national award
in 1985 in the production Nansi Le Ndoda. Thereafter he broke into the international scene, touring world wide with
Amakhosi.
However most Zimbabweans remember him for his role on the television
sitcom, Sinjalo where he played the role of Sakhamuzi. This role won him several National Artistic Merit Awards (NAMA). He
also featured in Waiters by rooftop Promotions and flirted for some time with the soap, Studio 263.
In 1988 he appeared in A World Apart a film directed by
Chris Menges were he played Milius. In 1989 he played the comic Sunglas Sales in A Midday Sun.
However his death sobers most of us involved in the arts industry
today. For those of us who are peering into the future, we know that his death; following hard in the heels of Moyo’s
death, point to a crisis on our hands. Without any down to earth arts training programme, tomorrow we will have no actors.
And this can possibly become true in Zimbabwe.
It is ironic that Tickeys was also a theatre trainer who traveled all over Southern Africa
sharing his skills. We have lost a mentor and an artist. The industry is really poorer without him.
The question is: tomorrow who shall we see on our stages?
All the young people we have in arts today come for the romance
with technology, film, television; but never the blood and iron of the stage. They call themselves producers and directors,
when they have never been blinded by stage fright and rescued by the lights of the stage.
Tickeys and Moyo, as artists, are not mere cultural agents but
are the pioneers of culture in the country. They are part of the cream that contributed to the growth and development of Amakhosi
Theatre, the trailblazing arts house that revolutionized arts in all imagination in the country. Their talent held audiences
right across the width and breadth of the globe spellbound.
That their performance was rooted in theatre makes them true artists.
They did not turn to stage in order to exploit glamour got from television like most ‘young stars’ are doing today.
They came from the stage to the ephemeral medium. That is why their legacy endures.
However all is not lost as we remain with tigers and tigresses
of the stage in Alois Moyo, Mandla Moyo, Thembi Ngwabi and the younger generation of Zenzo Nyathi and Julian Tshuma.
The mistake will be to believe that these artists who pass on
are irreplaceable. Any generation that ever comes to the belief that it is the beginning and an end limits its contribution
to human development. Each generation must believe that the generation of its children will be the finest and should endevour
to make it so. If there is any law of development that is part of that body of laws. If nothing is done today to remedy the
crisis in theatre, Tickeys and Moyo’s death, will not be a tragedy, but the tragedy will be the vacuum their departure
leaves behind.
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Girls College To Stage Stitsha
By Nomvuyo Mdluli
GIRLS College students will stage Stitsha, a popular drama series that was screened
on Zimbabwe Television in 1995. The students from Girls College will perform the play, which was first staged in 1990. Stitsha, which toured
the European region and parts of the United States of America,
will be staged on the 28th and 29th of July at the Zimbabwe Academy Of Music.
The play is in a family setting where a young girl wants to outgrow traditional
barriers and pursue her dreams. She faces a lot of challenges along the way until she eventually manages to change her family’s
misconceptions about the girl child and the modern society.
“The staging of the play
has been set to see how the modern generation interprets the play, 16 years later.” said Cont Mhlanga, the writer of the play.
The director of the play, Ms Kelly, said rehearsals and preparations for the
show have started and everything is underway to make sure that the show is a success.
“We have already done the casting and we are happy to be working hand
in glove with Cont Mhlanga, our own local and professional producer.” added
Kelly.
Kelly
who is also a drama teacher at Girls College
is also an artist in her own right, as she is a musician, ballet dancer and also studied drama at University level.
“I also feel that the play is practical and it strikes the individuality
and identity of the girl child in the modern African society,” said Kelly.
“The play will seek to appeal on the identity of young African women
and at the same time re-instate a sense of worthiness in the society” She added.
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The Meeting Of Gods
By Khanyile Mlotshwa –
posted 05/02/06
THE GREEK gods are coming on the 27th of March 2006
to meet the Ndebele gods at the Royal town of Bulawayo. It
is a beautiful afternoon, the restuarant is quiet when I get a chance to talk to the man who is bringing the gods together.
While his cast is deep in lunch, he is not eating staring at the Ndebele designs and the picture of the last Ndebele king,
Lobengula, as if in deep prayers at the Amakhosi restaurant.
Ian Beddowes is adapting the Greek story, Lysistrata,
for Amakhosi’s world theater day celebrations and is working with an exciting cast that includes veteran actresses Thembi
Ngwabi, Edith Katinji and the charming musician actress Sandra Ndebele, in coming up with a play adapted to the Ndebele realm.
Below is what he had to say:
Wonderful –
The story is called Lysistrata and it was written by Aristophanes
in 410 BC, that is ancient Greece.
Greek theatre emerged 80
or 100 years before Aristophanes’ play. It emerged from song and dance contests, which were mostly celebrations to the
god Dionysius, the god wine. It started in ancient Athens
with special songs for special occasions.
Then one of the producers of these contests, Thespis, introduced
an actor to stand in front of the chorus and that was the beginning of acting.
[Thespis is where the word Thespian is derived from and a chorus
was a group of musicians].
Aeschylus added the second actor and the actors would at times
do more than one part using masks. Euripides and Sophocles followed these two pioneers.
After the two then came our playwright, Aristophanes, a specialist
in comedies. Earlier playwrights had written tragedies. After Aristophanes we have Menander. There were other playwrights,
but the five are the major playwrights whose plays survived and between them we’ve 58 plays. 16 of these plays are comedies
and 11 of the comedies are by Aristophanes, which makes him a major comedy writer. Lysistrata is the most famous of those
comedies.
The story is not historically
true and it was written during a war involving the whole of Greece and
the main enemies were Athens and Sparta,
drawing in the other cities. The women in the play then call all the other women in other cities and tell the men that they
wont give them sex if they do not end the war.Even today it is still a funny play.
I have reduced it to 9 actors and I haven’t departed from
the story of the play. Greek theatre grew from music and dance and it has never lost that. We put back the element of song and dance, which is normally left out in European productions. We’ve done it in the Ndebele
style, re-creating the spirit in which the play was written.
I am not real sure. They don’t know what to do with the
chorus. With us our Ndebele theatre has also developed from music and dance so it is natural that we include it.
Another fact is that the play is technically European but the
society then is far removed from morden Europe and it was before the Christian era hence
when it comes to sexual language, it is very explicit,as in the Nguni society of that period.
I think it is very moral
and appropriate to its age. It is even more moral by the fact that it talks about peace as opposed to war and also the understanding
between men and women.
I think if people first hear that it’s a Greek play they
will dismiss it as something boring, but when they see it they will like it. We have a draw card in the cast list,very popular
and well respected in the entertainment circles. People are generally interested in sexual comedies and I hope we will be
able to get support and an audience on that basis.
It is my intention that if we make a success of this I’ve
other classic plays that I’ll be interested in doing. There are a lot of good stories out there. In this country there
is a fashion of trying to be original all the time, but what matters is the way we tell stories. Shakespeare has few original
stories and he is the world’s most interesting and celebrated playwright of all time, yet he thrived on adapting. In
Europe today we can get two directors telling
the same Shakespearean story yet it comes out in two different ways.
All our actors, all of them
local, in three days of rehearsing, have already seen what is wanted and they are already deep into it.
At a later stage I’ll
be looking at criticism of current Zimbabwean soaps on television, especially on the story part. All out television productions
seem to focus on the current situation. The only film that goes to the past is
Flame, but our history is much longer than the liberation war. I think by starting off with what is existing I am interested
in developing 2 films, one in the 1940s and the other goes right back to umfecane, Zwangendaba and Chilisamulo, the
last Mambo.
We need not only talk about our history but to put it in a dramatic
and interesting way.
There is a big link between
the two. Theatre is the starting point for many actors. Theatre requires discipline than film in that you’ve to lean
your lines and not a few words. There is no chance for another take like in film. great film actors started on the stage.
In Zimbabwe we’ve an attitude that anybody can act. Acting is a skill and a
profession just as good as being a bricklayer or a farmer. Everybody can grow vegetables but not everyone can be a farmer.
American actors start acting when they are young, probably ten or eleven, and that is the same in the UK and Russia.
In Zimbabwe we’ve the wrong idea
that if you put together young good looking Zimbabweans they can act. The acting is at times atrocious and so bad such that
my teenage daughters like watching films on television so that they can laugh at the actors.
You are welcome.
The production, Lysistrata, is opening at The Theatre
Upstairs at Amakhosi Township Square Cultural Centre
on the 27th of March 2006, as part of Zimbabwe’s World Theater Day celebrations. We will keep you posted on this
site for interviews with Thembi Ngwabi, the choreographer and music director of the play and the cast.
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Hoyaya Ho! Marks The End Of The Season..posted 08-01-06
THE theatre season at Amakhosi rounded off on Saturday the 3rd
of December 2005, with the public performance of Hoyaya Ho, an Hiv/Aids awareness musical. Hundreds of shoppers and vendors
crowded along Lobengula Street in Bulawayo to watch the play performed by a mixture of an experienced cast and new comers
into theatre.
Hoyaya Ho written and
directed by Cont Mhlanga 8 yrs ago: Music by Raymond Kasawaya: Dance choreography by Tongesai Gumbo is an HIV/AIDS awareness
story which also tells about the transmission of the virus. It is a story of two lovers, Fa and Georgina,
who lived in two antagonistic territories. Georgina’s territory is controlled by gangsters
led by Ninja. The antagonism of the two territories tie it with the story of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but it is of little consequence to the story of Fa and Georgina.
What is of great importance is that they are living at a time when HIV/AIDS is causing havoc in their communities. To show
that the scourge is alive and present, it is represented by a puppet actor. The situation therefore demands that the two lovers
be faithful to each other and avoid sex before marriage. If they are to have sex before marriage they have to use a condom.
The condoms are represented by sweets passed among the audience and cast in the play. Those that catch virus are identified
by traditional masks.
The season saw a variety of shows such as Mama Africa by the Amakhosi Performing Arts Academy (APPA) students, Blood
River by Combined Artists, Penpals by veteran artist Sihlangu Dlodlo, which
he did in collaboration with the world acclaimed dance group, Inkululeko Yabatsha School of Arts (IYASA) and The Members which featured the veteran Amakhosi cast of Alois Moyo, Mackey Tickeys, Mandla Moyo and Thembi Ngwabi.
“In terms of audiences, I believe we have had a good response
this year and our statistics show us that from play to play, our audience has been growing. We have had shows that reach full
houses especially with Members,” said Styx Mhlanga, who chairs the programming Committee at Amakhosi and sits in the
same committee on behalf of theatre.
He said overall, the season has been a good season and next year
they hope to build on top of what they achieved this year.
“What we achieved is that basically at an age where in Bulawayo
live theatre is being overtaken by television and live music and dance, we have managed to put up a show every week and managed
to win the hearts of the people,” said Mhlanga.
“The performance of Hoyaya Ho marked the end of the season
and we will be starting off next year in March,” he said.
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WHAT THEATRE? ....
By Shepherd Mandhlazi
When I was asked to do a theatre feature for amakhosi.org,
I almost interjected with; what theatre? Zimbabweans do theatre as if under duress. If award winning playwrights and directors
like Raisedon Baya still use lights for the basic reasons of getting rid of darkness; I shake my head in trepidation.
I have seen great plays. Plays like Sarafina,
Wole Soyinka’s Dance Of Trees, Othello, Merchant Of Venice and Nansi Le Ndoda. I
hope I will get to see Workshop Negative in this lifetime. It is regrettable that few Zimbabwean plays leave me with
the satisfaction I got from the above mentioned plays. Ntare Mwine’s Biro, which was recently at Amakhosi was surely
heaven sent; I was beginning to give up on theatre.
The last twelve months have seen the production
of only three mention worth plays. There was Sihlangu Dlodlo’s Penpals, My Fair Lady by Bulawayo theatre and recently Raisedon Baya’s Superstar Prophets: a far cry from his
blockbuster, Madman and Fools. The silence from Thoko Zulu, Grassroots, Bambelela, nelson Mapapko and others has been shattering.
There is a plethora of reasons why theatre is
in the doldrums in this City of Bulawayo; the reasons that stick out like a sore thumb is that theatre does not put enough
bread on the tables of its practitioners. Writers, directors, producers and actors argue that they cannot go on with empty
stomachs.
Theatre does not have enough audience to cover
production costs. Neither does it have good funding. Fact. The small city hall costs in excess of four million dollars to
book for one show. Add to that markerting costs and payment due to the performers, ouch. Trying to make a living out of theatre
can be nerve wreaking. But who is to blame for the mess?
We never seem to plan and set out clear objectives
for what we want to achieve. Everything is like a rabbit bolting out of some shrubbery. When I was waiting to watch Mwine’s
Biro, a bunch of children arrived. I asked why they had come since the play was not of their moral or intellectual level.
The children had never been properly introduced to theatre and there isn’t going to be a follow up to Biro. Because
it was a Ugandan American [performance, the children were dragged along. Trying to build Rome
in a day.
Ever wondered why movies have a huge and faithful
audience? There are five 12:30 movies, five 15:00 movies, five 19:00 movies. The movies have a steady clientele because of
consistency in quality.
Who would develop a passion for theatre where
good plays come at six months intervals. In between good plays, thetare lovers are treated to mediocre improvisations created
by people who do not know what a plot is. People who would stare at you in bemusement if you said down stage left.
As a theatre lover I neeed to know that I can
run into a friend and say, “Let’s go watch a play.”
There are no shortcuts. The magic words are quality
and consistency.
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Who Will Save Theatre in Zim?
By Shepherd Mandhlazi-- posted 11-04-06
I ATTENDED World Theatre
Day celebrations organized by Nhimbe Trust at St Johns Cathedral on the 25th of March. The celebrations incorporated
a workshop and two theatre pieces performances, both by Raisedon Baya.
Nicholas Moyo, the National
Arts Council of Zimbabwe Bulawayo province administrator, read a speech prepared for World Theatre Day celebrations by Victor
Hugo Rascan Banda. Hugo mourned the near extinction of theatre the world over.
In Zimbabwe, we also have the same cries; our theatre is dead.
Zimbabwe was built upon the premise of
passion and that can be taken as the Achilles heel as it has led to the death of theatre. In the days that Cont Mhlanga and
others started out in the craft of theatre, there were jobs for anyone who wanted to work. As a direct result anyone you found
in the arts was passionate and this paid off handsomely and the quality of the works was breathtaking.
Now with the economic
meltdown, we cannot talk of passion anymore. Who can afford to be passionate when his family is starving? So instead of theatre
being driven by passion, skill has to take over and the skill can only be learnt in properly structured institutions. Theatre
is especially being let down by the lack of properly trained personnel like writers, directors, set designers and light technicians.
This is where the Amakhosi
Performing Arts Academy comes in.
The Academy offers specialized
training in the creation, production and presentation processes for theatre, music, dance and film and video. We hope where
passion left off, skill will take over and bring back the glory days of theatre.
Hopes are high, since
the founder of the Amakhosi Performing Arts Academy, Cont Mhlanga is the same guy who lit up the theatre scene almost two
decades ago. He must know, surely know what he is doing.
A Note About The Author: Shepherd Mandhlazi, a certified teacher by profession, is a graduate of the Amakhosi Performing Arts Academy’s pioneering class of 2005.
He is currently doing his diploma studies with the same institution while now working as its administrator for the certificate
level classes.
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Lysistrata
Opens At The Theater Upstairs - posted 11-04-06
Sex For Peace: Fair Deal!
A Review Of The Play
The cast, a mixture of veterans and young blood, gave a passionate
performance on the opening day of the show and old Greece
came alive at Amakhosi Theatre Upstairs. The play adapted into a Zimbabwean setting.
In the middle of music and dance, the story of Lysistrata is not historically true but it revolves around a plan by women to win peace for the Greek States by
withholding conjugal favours to their men who are in war. The play was written during a war involving the whole of Greece and the main enemies were Athens and Sparta and it drew in the other cities. The play is a comedy and its central character Lysistrata,
played by Edith Katiji, is the organizer of this sexual boycott.
The cast features Katiji, Thembi Ngwabi, Pindurai Mwakurudza,
Sharon Zombe, Alois Moyo, Patrick Mabhena, Aleck Zulu and Richard Phiri.
Katiji put up a spelling performance, playing with the confidence
of a veteran. For one who has been in two plays so far, Katiji is fast becoming a veteran and has appeared in Lewis Phiri’s
Who Is Wise? She is set to appear in Phiri’s one woman production, Nyembezi.
For Pindurai Mwakurudza, who made her debut in professional theatre,
she showed promise. She is a dance artist who has come up with her own group, Blue
Virgins, and her appearance on stage suggests that she is in arts to stay. The zeal and commitment with which she takes
up tasks amplify her talent and she has a say in the future of arts in this country.
Thembi Ngwabi who choreographed the play and helped with the music,
which was used effectively to make the story as much Ndebele as it is Greek, was ever green in her performance. This was her
second play this year after an appearance in Dave Ghuzha’s controversial political satire, Pregnant With Emotions, at the Theatre In The Park in Harare.
She has proved to be one of the most consistent female artists and has shown a high sense of stage intelligence.
Zombe, who is riding on her sex appeal, brought a lot of it to
Lysistrata and many people will remember the scene where she seduces her husband,
played by Alois Moyo, who has come for her in the nunnery. The husband is sick with an erection, but is also not in the mood
to trade peace for sex and as instructed by Lysistrata, her woman denies her the pleasure.
The sexual theme of the play shocked a lot of people but by the
end of the play everyone was convinced that it is not just pornography, but true art. The audience laughed from the start
only to be captured in a moment of reflection in the last scene of the play were Lysistrata successfully trades sex for peace.
People have always taken sex for granted but Lysistrata sets out
to reveal its power. Instead of prostitution women can always do good on the basis of sex, instead of being comfort girls
they can always use their power to negotiate peace. War is senseless and madness.
The success of the play pointed to the fact that the all-quiet
Bulawayo theatre scene should adapt plays from other places
where the industry has developed. This is because it will allow young artists to be accustomed to style and structure at the
earliest possible time in their career before they can go out to experiment.
The play was directed by Ian Beddowes, his debut for the Theatre
Upstairs and produced by Styx Mhlanga, who is among the pioneers of popular theatre arts in Bulawayo. Sikhathele Kaoma was on the drums.
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Theatre Season Opens-posted
06-03-06
THE theatre season opened at amakhosi on Friday the 17th of February 2006 with
the performance of Herbert Phiri’s one man play, Graveyard and Omkhula art’s
Vula Vala. Over 80 people attended the opening at the Theatre Upstairs.
The plays were well received and ran again on the 25th of February at the same
venue to a packed audience. The two plays drew a lot of laughter from the audience.
“We’ve started our theatre season for the year and will be peaking with the
staging of Lystrata, a Greek play directed by Ian Beddowes on the 25th
of March,” said Styx Mhlanga, the resident theatre producer at the Township Square Cultural Centre.
Graveyard is a revolutionary and ironic one man
play directed at politicians. The man is a guard at the heroes graves and engages in an imaginary conversation with a ghost
of one minister. He asks the ghost: Where all those men and women at your funeral, concubines or genuine mourners?
“It was just words quoted from my mother
that if you are living in a country with no fuel, food, electricity and no rule of law, then you have no freedom. You are
walking on a graveyard waiting to be buried,” said Phiri, the playwright.
Phiri acts in the play as the sole actor.
““I was frustrated. I was not at peace
with myself because of what I see in my country as an artist and as a citizen of this country. This frustration was mainly
caused by the pain that I see from the eyes of my mother who cannot read and write. The problems that she goes through and
how she gets out of them through the aid of God. At the present moment she accepts everything and just lives with the pain.
I had to take my pen and paper and express my feelings, fighting as a peaceful and creative son of the soil who wants to build
and create for the community and nation as a whole and a better tomorrow,” said Phiri.
Omkhula’s play is a hilarious comedy of
two men who come to the city for the first time. This is after they have been enticed by the prospect of finding loads and
loads of oranges in the city. Besides the humour the play has a serious message about human deception and duplicity.
“It was so sweet to watch Omkhula in a safe venue as opposed to seeing them at Hyper
Markert where there are a lot of thieves around,” said Esnath Moyo, who was part of the audience, “Such theatre
deserves to find a venue so that people can really enjoy their work.”
Omkhula have been performing as a nomadic group for long now and a lot of people have seen
their work in the streets of Bulawayo. They have also filmed
some of their work for the aborted Bulawayo television station,
National Television (NTV). Their work aims a salvo at everyone especially the Emergency taxis touts and crooks and thieves
who attack mostly defenceless women in the city. Their message is simply social justice among people in the city.
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