The Sunday News
Rebecca Nyathi, Sunday Leisure correspondent
VETERAN theatre producer Daves Guzha last week unwrapped the controversy in the play Taking The Spirits Home, explaining that it was based on the African tradition especially Shona tradition, where people believe that the spirit of a dead relative has to be taken home from wherever they died or buried to be a guardian of the living and the home.
The play was part of the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo. The spirit is of a Shona man from Chivi who was working in Johannesburg and was killed during the xenophobic disturbances is at the centre of the play.
Guzha added that the issue of taking a spirit concerns many Zimbabweans whose relatives die outside the country as they find themselves struggling to bring them back home.
“The message in this play is how Zimbabweans respect their culture, their spiritual values and how they will struggle to ensure that they follow their spirituality and other traditions.
“Many Zimbabweans believe that their relatives who die live as spirits and must be brought home to become guardians of the remaining members of the family and whose names must be inherited and never be forgotten as they are passed on from one generation to another. This belief explains why Zimbabweans go into huge expenses to repatriate bodies of their dead relatives for burial in their rural homes. The bringing of the spirit home is a much cheaper method of ensuring that the dead are brought home,” said Guzha.
The intriguing play is set at Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa where a Zimbabwean meets serious challenges as the airport security cannot allow him to board the Air Zimbabwe plane with the rock which they claim he will use as a weapon to highjack the plane.
The scan machine reveals that a wrapped parcel that a Zimbabwean expatriate, Fungai (Dereck Nziyakwi) working in South Africa, wants to take into the plane is a rock.
The security officer Sibusisiwe (Lisa Gutu) tells Fungai that he cannot take the rock into the plane as it is against aviation security regulations.
As the heated argument continue they are joined by a charismatic Pentecostal Pastor (Guzha) also from Zimbabwe who makes the situation even worse when he accuses Fungai and Tendai of being possessed with the evil spirit and offers to clean the whole airport of satanic invasion.
“The storyline is based on what most people face on a daily basis and my aim was to educate people on certain controversies associated with traditional beliefs packaged in a lighter and entertaining way,” said Guzha.
The play has a star-studded cast that include award-winning and veteran actress, Eunice Tava, Mandla Moyo — a multi-award-winner whose theatrical exploits have seen him perform in more than 20 countries — Dereck Nziyakwi, who has performed in not less than 10 live stage performances, and Lisa Gutu, a recent University of Zimbabwe, Bachelor of Arts (Honours in Theatre Arts) graduate with a bundle of talent.
This was Gutu’s second live performance on stage under Rooftop Promotions after she surprised everyone by her award-winning performance in the play The Past is For the Future. Guzha said this was their first time having such talent put together.
“By just reading the names of the cast that has been put together one can tell what went down on that day as these are natural actors and actresses and blending them together gives the cast a chance to share and show how they react naturally to imagined circumstances,” he said.
