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Amakhosi begins Intwasa Arts Festival build up

by Staff Reporter
27 Aug 2013 at 23:00hrs | Views
THE Amakhosi Plays on Sunday second season kicked off with the premiere of four potential thrillers by Bulawayo script writers and directors last Sunday.

The initiative, organised by Intwasa Arts Festival in conjunction with Amakhosi Cultural centre, will showcase 12 short plays of 10 minutes each on Sundays till the festival begins as part of the build up to the festival.

Plays staged this past Sunday include Secrets written by award-winning actor Zenzo Nyathi, Shoes by Rudo Mutangadura, Hell by Wagon written by Tsoka Kwenda and Miracle of Crocodile Flats directed by Thabani Moyo.

The plays, despite being played for a short time were entertaining and showed great potential.

Director of Intwasa, Raisedon Baya said the concept of the short plays was to get as many writers, directors and actors to come together and work on something new which could be developed later into a full play.

"The objectives are to identify potential ideas in the hope of reworking them into full plays thereby motivating new writers and directors to continue producing new works.

"Most importantly, the initiative is about theatre artistes coming together and sharing experiences and ideas and what better place to do that than at Amakhosi," he said.

Baya said there were 12 plays that were shortlisted for the Intwasa festival but only four would be selected for the theatre programme.

"We have decided to showcase all the plays on Sundays and we are running a competition and each week adjudicators will select the two best plays that would make it to the next round of the competition until we have the final four plays for the festival."

Two plays, Secrets and Miracle of Crocodile Flats made it to the second round of the competition.

Secrets is a play that chronicles the life of a young woman who was raped and impregnated by her father. She later discovered that her mother had consented to the rape.

This was after the two had consulted an inyanga who advised them to look for a young girl who had not been deflowered.

As the secrets continue unravelling, the young lady is devastated to discover that the man is not her biological father and it seems there is more than what meets the eye.

Miracle of Crocodile Flats written by Raisedon Baya is an excerpt from a book.

The story line is about a small shanty town which could not be found during a population census.
This shows how run- down the town was.

Some of the plays to be showcased during the run-up to the festival include Weapons of Mass Destruction by Mzana Mthimkhulu, Remembering Margaret by Matilda Sibanda, and Kulunda's Dream by Memory Kumbota and The Madalas by Dennis Brown.

Source - Chronicle