NEWSLETTER | Pane Basa/There Is Work To Do!

Note from the President & Co-Founder

I recently returned from Zimbabwe; we held our annual retreat and simultaneously conducted a training workshop with American Actor Ross Marquand. We then immediately continued with our Staged Reading Series/Director Mentor Program, this reading helmed by local artist Kudzi Sevenzo. We also commenced preparations for our largest program to date, our collaboration with Ojai Playwright’s Conference where Artistic Director Robert Egan and playwright/screenwriter Stephen Belber are to come to Zimbabwe in May and curate our first ever Playwrights development program: Almasi African Playwright’s Festival. It was been a busy month. But the moment that really hit me the hardest throughout the time I was at home in Zim was a moment in the living room of an old friend. We sat and chatted about old times and our formative years in our beloved Harare and in the theater scene. He then said something that floored me, though I had heard variations of it previously, he said, “Zimbabwean Theater is Dead..." CONTINUE READING

Currently we seek partners to help make our up and coming inaugural Almasi African Playwrights Festival a reality. Any amount, large or small, has a massive impact on the success of this groundbreaking initiative. Please, take a look at our work, take a look at Elizabeth Muchemwa’s artistic statement on why this festival is crucial to her development as an African female playwright in the world today. Take a look at the other wonderful artists we seek to empower and the art they create, and drop me a line  at danai@almasiarts.org, let me know how you can partner with us, as we say in Shona, pane basa. We have work to do. And it will take a global village. But we can keep this work alive. And I am in it for the long haul. I hope you will join me.

Elizabeth "Zaza" Muchemwa An African Female Playwright Speaks...

Harare, April 28th 2015 | Elizabeth Zaza Muchemwa

We don’t know how capable we are until we have been tested and we don't know how good we can be until we have been given a chance.

My name is Elizabeth (Zaza) Muchemwa. My work in the Zimbabwean performing arts scene for the past 9 years has been that of Poet, Theatre Director, Arts Administrator and aspiring playwright. I am a 29-year Zimbabwean woman and the fourth child out of six children. My love for story, which to me is the basis for all art, started from when I was a little girl. I heard stories and I told my own. I did not mind what form the story took as long as it had the ability to speak to me in ways that ordinary conversation could not. Consequently, the most important thing for me is to create great dramatic art. Definitely not the most popular career choice in my community, and even more so when you are female, but I have been brought up to believe that I have a say in what happens around me even though the vagaries of a patriarchal society have constantly sought to tell me otherwise. I discovered early on that a girl in my society could be defined through many of her filial and no-filial relationships but rarely through her achievements or her as an individual. My agenda has been to discover and define self without what preconditions that have been set before me. In setting out to fulfill this agenda I have realized that it is imperative to know myself as well as the women in my society.

Many have talked on our behalf, many have subscribed their own opinions on who we are but few have touched on the core of the African female. Our voice is yet to be heard. In my country there are very few women who hold the right tools to tell their stories. Of all my childhood influences on writing few have been women. In stories I have read, the African woman who spoke back to me from the pages have largely been one-dimensional. It is hence very important for me to tell my own stories. And I am dedicating my life to telling stories that have a life of their own, using the medium that is most accessible to me and that medium is theatre. It is these things that have ignited in me the need to create powerful stories and also add my work to the global narrative tapestry. I feel it is time a voice like mine is heard. All this yearning, and clarity of what I must do in this world and yet I have limited skill and very little expertise. In an ideal world skilled and experienced professionals would have trained me in the dramatic arts for years. But because of my geographical location I have had a very makeshift route to professionalizing my craft. I am still to get there. And I know I have a ways to go.

Even the practice of the art has been relegated to make way for immediate survival needs. My participation in the Almasi African Playwrights Festival is not just about getting more training but an opportunity for me to dedicate the hours needed to complete my own piece of dramatic writing. This opportunity is like no other I have yet had access to, it allows me to complete a work with experts as my guide and be given the time and space and resource. I am thrilled at the chance. Thank you for considering supporting me in this endeavor. It truly allows me to get that much closer to my dream and to allowing an African girl to be heard.

In early May, ALMASI will partner with OJAI PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVALS, based in Ojai California to develop the next great Zimbabwean Playwrights. Mr Egan will embark on what we hope to be a long term partnership with Almasi playwrights and directors over an intense two week development process. The three playwrights work will then be received by the ZIMBABWEAN community in free staged readings over the course the final weekend. Mr Egan will continue the exchange. This exchange marks a new level of collaboration, direct partnership with an established artistic institution in the US, that is invested in working with African Artists on equal footing | www.ojaiplays.org

My Directorial Debut

Harare, April 21st 2015 | Kudzai Sevenzo

The Almasi Directorship program, has been an exciting journey for me. My first staged reading “Necessary Targets” under Julie Wharton’s directing, was really when it all began. I began to understand the complexity of directing a play, how important it was for actors go through the text in detail. I also learnt from the previous staged readings and from our mentor, the importance of making actors feel a sense of ownership of the production. I realized it is important to always be probing, asking questions while analysing, researching and allowing actors to find their own interpretations of the various characters while at the same time not losing the essence and intention of the playwright. When Julie asked me if I could direct a play in March, I eagerly took up the challenge. I had a couple months to decide what play I wanted to direct, so I was pretty calm, but as March came closer, I found myself battling with self-doubt and nervousness. Was I ready to switch from actor to directing a play? Would I find a play that I could resonate with? March came quickly, and after going through a few plays that I received from Almasi, I came across ‘Sueño’. I knew instantly that would be the play I would choose as my directorial debut.

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ROSS MARQUAND WORKSHOP

ALMASI TRAINING EXCHANGE

From the 18th to the 20th of March, 2015, Almasi Collaborative Arts held a Vocal Accent Variation workshop, led by accomplished television, film, theatre and voiceover artist Ross Marquand. Marquand taught Almasi artists various techniques in order to have better elocution and varied vocal and accented expression. The participants worked on specific pieces and were taken through a series of physical and vocal exercises and discussions in order to improve their vocal delivery. The group really enjoyed and benefited greatly from their time with Marquand as expressed by participant Jerullah Muchiuro: “It was a really good experience that made the language that we know become new. We learned the differences between the Zimbabwean and American dialects and got a better understanding of our scripts. We also learned how to trust in our work and not to overthink the script, everything we need is already within us.” – Jerullah. The workshop is another in a long line of Almasi programs that supports our desire to equip Zimbabwean artists with the tools to compete on a global stage.

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Fabulous Fabulation

Harare, March 17th 2015 | Patience G. Tawengwa

When I first read “Fabulation or The Re-Education of Undine” I was drawn in by the similarities which exist between Undine’s self discovery journey and the search for identity for many of us contemporary Africans. Most Africans of my generation have parents who were born and raised in the rural areas of colonial Africa, only after independence were black Africans able to freely move from “Africans only” designated townships to the affluent and formerly all white suburbs. My generation became beneficiaries of a lifestyle and opportunities which our parents never had access to. The multi-racial schools we attended had an english language only policy and we were not allowed to speak our own African languages, that rule created within us a belief that english language and culture were superior and synonymous with education and civilization and our own mother tongue and culture inferior and aligned with being backward. There was a shift in values and to the younger generation non-english speaking rural relatives became “uncool” and their presence in certain social settings elicited a sense of shame.

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Almasi awarded Gideon the opportunity to go to the U.S. this winter to audition for grad schools in drama. Here he chronicles his journey...

Snow Not So Sexy

New York, February 12th 2015 | Gideon Jeph Wabvuta’s US Journey

Twenty three hours of travel can make anyone cranky but not when you visiting the USA for the first time. Leaving Zimbabwe at 1230, landing in South Africa at 2:30PM then a 6 hour layover. I was still sane then and rearing to go, my schedule said I would leave SA at 8:30PM and land in Abu Dhabi at 645am then leave for New York at 1045 and land at 4pm. First mistake I made was think of 4pm Zimbabwean time thus I had calculated the flight from Abu Dhabi to be about 7 hours at most. I was in for a shocker when I realized I was on a 14 hour flight. It’s the worst realization ever as my body had prepared for 7 hours now I had go for an extra 7 hours!! 

So I finally land at JFK and as I’m heading towards the baggage area I’m thinking to myself am I really in America? How did I get here? I follow the well illuminated signs and just as I get there I’m intercepted by Nikiya, Danai’s friend who has come to pick me up. We wait for my bag which I can’t remember what it looks like exactly except that it’s brown. Finally the bag appears and we herd out and instantly the sheer size of New York hits me in the face, we exit the airport and get into a “taxi” the kind of “taxi” I’ve never seen in the movies.

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Eclipsed in London

Congrats to the British creative team of Danai Gurira's "Eclipsed", a drama that follows women navigating the Liberian war Zone. It had its European premiere at the Gate theater in London this week and has had wonderful responses from audiences and press alike. "Danai Gurira's vibrant and often funny and heartbreaking drama about women navigating the Liberian war zone explores limited choices and multifaceted psychological and physical strategies for survival" ~ The Guardian

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Almasi works to build tangible, long term, collaborative relationships
between American and African artists. It seeks to professionalize Zimbabwe's
dramatic arts industry; to bring real opportunity and employment to Africans
who are talented and dedicated to their craft. 

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