The Sunday News
Vincent Gono Magazine Editor
BULAWAYO will once again prove to the world that it is still a force to reckon with in the country’s arts sector as they will descend on the capital for the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa) which is the country’s premier arts festival. Groups such as Djembe Monks, iTribe and Siyaya Arts will also be performing at the six- day festival scheduled to start on Tuesday with the curtain coming down on Sunday.
Raisedon Baya will also take his play The Taking to Hifa.
Siyaya Arts will be taking part of the group to Harare to showcase their artistic prowess on a project that features artistes from Hawaii.
“Bulawayo’s Siyaya Arts & Sabela Music Projects, supported by the US Embassy (Zimbabwe) will team up with Keola Beamer & Jeff Peterson and Moanalani Beamer (from Maui, Hawaii) to present a once off show christened Aloha meets Ubuntu. This is the second time Sabela Music projects and The American Embassy are bringing an act to the city after hosting country outfit Blended 328 last year.
“The talented entourage brings together Hawaiian legend Keola Beamer, who has stretched the boundaries of slack key guitar music while remaining true to the soul of its deeply Hawaiian roots, with a rising star of the next generation of slack key players Jeff Peterson.
“They are joined by dancer Moanalani Beamer, who brings hula and Hawaiian chants to the stage, and adds musical texture with ancient Hawaiian instruments. The trio will work with local artistes in a collaboration that will play a free concert for ticket holders at the Zim Kids orphanage in Pumula today and round up at Stanley Hall before going to play at the prestigious Hifa in Harare,” said Siyaya Arts director Saimon Mambazo Phiri.
Jeys Marabini said the organisers of the festival phoned him some time ago requesting that he performs with Temba Ndlovu and Dorothy Masuka but never came back to him, neither did he make a follow-up.
“They did phone me sometime in March requesting that I perform at the festival with Temba Ndlovu and Dorothy Masuka but they just went quiet. I also never made a follow-up because I did not request to be slotted in, in the first place,” said Marabini.
Some of the artistes in Bulawayo said they were eager to be part of the country’s biggest arts festival but could not make it because of budgetary constraints.
Raisedon Baya, who penned the theatre play — The Taking told Sunday Leisure that he was taking the play to Hifa courtesy of the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust and Hivos Mobility Fund.
The play has been performed in Bulawayo and has received applause from theatre lovers with most of them saying they will not miss a chance of seeing it again.
The play is directed by Memory Kumbota and it explores complex subjects surrounding the land issue.
In his review of the play veteran playwright Thabani Hillary Moyo noted that, “The Taking comes from the pen of a well tried and tested playwright who has seen it all in the world of theatre. Baya is a good wordsmith who plays well with words.
“His skill in using words was evident in the dialogue that was well delivered by the five actors on stage. Weaving three stories into one fluid presentation proved that the writer and the director have mastered the intricate and complicated art of play creation very well.
“The play is presented in a crisp, assured style that shows a remarkable regard for detail and ideas by both the writer and the director.”
With the main story set in a prison cell, Baya easily used his characters to take his audiences out of the prison set up into the wild as Sixpence retold his folktale to the arresting police officer.
The folktale pitting Albino Hippos from the Atlantic and the indigenous Crocodiles in a Zimbabwean river captured the philosophy behind Zimbabwe’s history and the war of liberation.
The war was fought to free the masses from the chains of colonialism and to equitably redistribute resources.
Moyo further noted in his review that, “The Taking is a story that people usually feel uncomfortable to talk about in fear of being accused of political expediency or of being seen as unsympathetic to the plight of white farmers, depending on the angle one chooses to take.”
The cast of Zenzo Nyathi, Gift Chakuvinga, Aleck Zulu, Elton Sibanda and Musa Sibanda put up a splendid showing in the play that will surely leave any theatre lover asking for more. They did justice to their respective roles as they kept themselves within their limits in a play where an overzealous actor could have run away with the show.
The Taking therefore has almost everything one looks for when they go and watch a play in a theatre.
