Radical Edit

Harare, April 19th 2019 | Thandiwe Mawungwa

Having been part of the first Almasi African Playwrights Conference, I was really looking forward to being part of the 2019 one because I knew, from experience, the value of having a play read and critiqued by directors, actors and other playwrights under the supervision of a dramaturg. This year I submitted a play called Thirty Three Cents and I was blown away by the transformation of the play.

Initially, the play was two and a half hours long and I distinctly remember that during the feedback session with actors, one actor said it was long. Upon being pressed if there was anything other than the length of the play that she would like to comment on, she said no! Various other comments were that all the other ‘brush’ was taking away from the main theme of the story. It was clear that I needed to do some serious ‘killing of my babies’

With Alice Tuan and Gideon Wabvuta’s guidance, I managed to identify the elements that were not essential to the story and, in my excitement, I went and reduced my play from 111 pages down to 58 pages. As Alice said, this was the first radical edit, which is very necessary for the development of the play.

After this radical edit, we then spent the next couple of days re-introducing some elements that had been cut out in the first edit as well as modifying some scenes and dialog in order to come up with a clear and concise story.

The ten days were intense but fun. I really enjoyed the positive energy that everyone brought to the festival and this positive energy made it easy for me to accept criticism and suggestions. This ultimately led to a very satisfying experience during the public staged reading where the audience thoroughly enjoyed the play.

I think the African Playwright’s conference is one of the best things that could possibly happen to an African Playwright and I would like to thank Danai Gurira and the Almasi team for providing us with such a platform.