The Sunday News
Raisedon Baya
FOR drama lovers second term in schools is the time for Plan High Schools Drama competitions.
During this time Intwasa Arts Festival in partnership with Plan Zimbabwe host the preliminaries and semi-finals of the competition. The objective of the competition is to cultivate, among teachers and students, a deep appreciation of both drama and child rights-related issues through participation in the creation and performance of short theatre pieces that speak to the issues of children’s rights. The platform, provided by both Intwasa and Plan Zimbabwe, gives students creative freedom — that is freedom to speak out, to suggest ideas, to ask questions, to challenge and openly criticise issues or situations that hinder the enjoyment of their rights.
There is so much that has been said about children’s rights. Half the time it is adults discussing children’s issues. With the drama competition emphasis is on child participation.
The focus on:
Children and young people participating in performances.
Children and young people participating as audiences.
Children and young people participating as creators.
The competition strongly believes in children and young people playing an active role in choosing, collecting, rehearsing and communicating their ideas. Short plays entered in the competition must strive to comment, inform, entertain, and educate peers. A theatre piece that does more than one of the above functions may be received more favourably by the judges.
As in all years the pieces focus on a theme. Focus this year is on children in conflict with the law. This can be about children committing crime, children that have already committed crimes, children who are being processed by the justice system or those that have already been incarcerated. The critical message to be driven through the plays is that children, no matter what crime they have committed, are still children, and should be treated as such.
Committing an offence does not, in anyway, alter a child’s age. Most of the plays seen so far seemed to encourage the justice system and public in general to treat children as children regardless of the crime committed.
Schools explored crimes/offences mostly perpetrated by children. These included stealing, drugs, driving without a licence, public drinking and fighting, and serious ones such as rape and murder.
About Preliminaries
A few schools did not attend due to several reasons but mostly communication problems. This year was more difficult to co-ordinate due to several reasons. School plays continue to improve, especially in the areas of staging and directing. There were a lot of surprises as schools continue to discover and nurture talent. This should be commended. However, we also noticed some schools had really not prepared, some plays were obviously under-rehearsed and actors were struggling with lines and roles.
About Theme
This year’s theme is a bit of a challenge — and needs some serious thinking. Most schools that presented stopped halfway and yet during the “theme-unpacking workshop” it was stressed that the important message that should come out is “that no matter what crime, children should be treated as children”. Unfortunately, this did not come out clearly. Most schools chose to depict children committing crimes and being arrested and harassed.
There is need to go beyond that, beyond the harassment and negative treatment of children. The hope is that those schools who progressed to the semi-finals and those already in the finals will continue to work and improve on their pieces. There is need for more work on your stories and how they bring out the theme.
Semi-finals are scheduled for end of second term and finals will be held during Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo in September.
