Are the gods to blame in Mufulira
Published On September 20, 2014 » 1426 Views» By Davies M.M Chanda » Features
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Theatre logoMUFULIRA Arts Council (MAC) at the little theatre behind the hosting a successful inaugural summit of the Copperbelt Theatre Arts Promoters (CTAP) meeting last weekend, besides, has set Are the Gods to Blame, a play for public performances this weekend September, 26 and 27  beginning at 19.00 hours.
First things first; what is Are the Gods to Blame all about?
Written by the youthful Richard Simpemba and directed by Godfrey Chitambala – Chitambla elatedly plays duo inflexible roles as a stage theatre performer and director, and that the play is stigmatised on kingship, bequest and inheritance.
In a make-believe traditional setup, a village hunter played by Marron Mangala falls for the King’s daughter Princess (Kimberly Moyo), but then the King does not buttress the affair; instead he calls for the killing of the boy as the best option since the hunter is outrageously considered an outcast!
In a twist of fate, calamity strikes the community when it dawns upon the village that the local hunter come about to be the King’s son, who for years had been concealed for incriminatingly impregnating the King’s daughter!
But then, it does not take mere men and women to dictate the optional choice, so the village Sangoma (Chipanta Chibwe) is invited to prevail over the misfortune, and debacle at the King’s palace, where the story legendarily unfolds, and finally ends!
The Sangoma, a fetish and obsessed man insists on every member of the village to drink from his conventional and mystical gourd, which resultantly is fatal as the most dependent members of the King’s adviser’s regrettably fall off, and perish!
With dramatis personae that include Jacinta Chanda as Queen, the King’s wife, Lituli as the King’s right hand man played by Aldridge Jones, Jonathan Simpemba as the King’s adviser, while that of King Buza is perceptively and sharply played by the smartly character of Alpha Chilufya.
Notwithstanding, Godfrey Chitambala, has amassed a youthful dramatic team which effectively displays the traditional allegory in a fairy tale with the theme settling in the categories of fables and legends!
With a hinterland creatively surrounding the cast; this is one thing Mufulira Arts Council is proud to do; assemble former secondary school graduates for them to pursue their acting careers.
The cast comprises former secondary school drama clubs – youths whose artistic knack is skillfully woven into a classical team, and are billed to mid-October showcase two other dramas, Unforgiving and Sight of the Blind by Barney Kanjela.
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For the second week running, I want to remark on the United Church of Zambia (UCZ) Lusaka Presbytery Youth Drama Festival held a fortnight ago particularly over what I felt were uncalled for acting.
I noticed that violence in some plays took centre stage, and felt there is a general perception, and conviction that to show good acting, and rage one needed to explicitly be violent. No, no, not the kind of violence we watched in Busokololo congregation drama club when they staged My Husband My Worst Enemy.
Anger like emotions on stage should decisively be controlled. Good portrayal of roles should be managed and manipulated by the player.
In a situation whereby an actor exceeds certain levels of anger, annoyance, irritation, resentment or and antagonism and emotions, it becomes difficult to relate to other characters in the play, and this is more likely to spoil well rehearsed plays.
Just this year during the Copperbelt chapter of the Schools Arts Association of Zambia festival held at Kalulushi secondary school – one girl went into a fit of emotions, crying all the way, and long after the performance. I recall walking over to the matron in charge of this Ndola-based school, who told me that the girl never stopped crying until surprisingly ‘she cools down!’
I remember too, in 1985, the late Patrick Mukuka and Tony Mwale, veteran directors of repute telling us as a cast in Kenneth Kunene’s My Son for My Freedom, “I want you to show emotions…acting is about expressions, facial and gestures, but emotions have to do with your reactions, and this is vital in acting.”
Patrick went on, “When emotional, do not think of your dead father or mother or brother and sister, just picture imaginatively some sad event in your mind, because we want to see you alive in the next scene…when you think of your late relative, it will no longer be acting when you break down to cry”
These words have never escaped my mind each time I watch a play in which characters walk offstage still in somber moods. There is need in our stage players to meditate, ponder, contemplate and think before a performance and possibly do several other simple physical exercises to loosen up if one needs to exhibit good balanced performance. Actors need to adequately prepare for the stage. Emphatically, continued hostility and weeping is never a sign of good acting!
Back to the UCZ festival; my colleague Dinais Chipampe who stayed with me as an adjudicator had to walk backstage to stop a performance in which the father was literary pummeling, kicking and punching his wife.
As the title of the play designated, My Husband My Worst Enemy, I failed to relate the moral of the play in which the husband was good for nothing! This man never took good care of his wife, his children, but kept a raised voice and always mated a ‘good’ beating of his wife. The storyline deprived realistic life of a good performance in which the husband should have reformed for a darling of the house.
Further, reading through the script, I failed to come across the subterranean rage that was exhibited on stage. On one hand, I blamed the director, though on the other from the acting style, the anger depicted by the father was individually garnered.
Indeed, a director’s role is mere modulating actors’ energies; vigor, power, liveliness, movements, clarity, speech and gestures, and this is why for a good performance, they take the kudus. For shoddy performances, the sad part is that one would not tell if it is the mere players to blame or the director – as the case was for Busokololo; I highly presumed the bad performance of the father in the play was as a result of the actor himself, not the director.
Stopping a performance was the second time I was doing this, the first being when a character in a sketch nearly took off his clothes to the nude to depict a high comedy show!
When I spoke to the girl who played the wife in the referral play, she declined to have been hard hit. Strangely, she said she was nevertheless comfortable! No, no no! Violence on stage is stalwartly forbidden as we often want to strongly discourage real fire, smoke and sharp objects as knives and pangas as these can precisely be a source of danger to the actors!
However, I was enthralled with the Last Days Drama group’s performance of Stepping on Fire stage in vernacular, a mixture of Icibemba and Nyanja. Watching the actors; the cues were blameless, emotions upbeat and movements and gestures believable.
The use of local languages in plays is uniquely something we have neglected in Zambia; there is a feeling of inadequacy using local languages, and this should be discouraged. For instance our established theatre houses need to recount big plays for the stage in local languages other than through comedy and sketches only. Why are comedies in vernacular succeeding?
One bitter lesson; none of the groups that shared in the festival put up or choreographed and composed scripts to suit the youthful audiences. If not all, the thirteen play performances were roundly without themes that centered on the lives of the youth who formed the larger part of the audience. The plays suited their parents, and other elderly people, hence my call for the UCZ church to sponsor the groups so that some of these plays can reach the right target, the right audiences.
John.kapesa818@yahoo.co.uk – 0955-0967-0977-710975

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