Weekend Extravaganza

Last weekend was a full on creative extravaganza. Bulawayo put together and hosted an Art & Craft show, complete with exhibition stands of fine art pieces and lots of stalls selling handiwork, jewellery and all kinds of beautiful items. The diversity and quality was great. The event took place at the national gallery from Friday afternoon through to Saturday afternoon. Exhibitors and interested parties came from Harare and South Africa to see the showcase of talent and artistic creativity and take part. Weeks back The Lounge was approached to put together and run the entertainment for the whole event. Coincidentally last Friday was the second Friday of the month (the usual date for The Lounge) so we combined the two events. For us it marked something of a step up as we, as organisers, had to provide around 15hrs of entertainment in total (where a usual Lounge event lasts 3hrs) but we were confident of being up to the challenge, not least because of all the musical talent we know resides in Greater Bulawayo... To be fair, with Oria and I both away for the 5 weeks beforehand, most of the organising was done by Tswa in collaboration with the event organisers and the Alliance Francaise who were sponsors. All in all the weekend was brilliant, as was the entertainment element. I had to hit the ground running with only one full day between arriving back in Zimbabwe and the opening. I did that slightly more literally than I intended, namely by fainting for the first time ever in my life (a result of heat, running round not eating/drinking enough and getting a fairly graphic version of someone's amputation story all in one go!) Despite being exhausting - we finished at the gallery at midnight on the Friday and had to be back soon after 7am on Saturday - the whole weekend was great and gave The Lounge a whole new (and larger) audience. I liked the variety of people who came through and were obviously impressed by the quality of talent. I was responsible for liaising with our artists before and after they performed. An amusing moment came once the event was well underway and on their arrival I met a dance group due to perform. After showing them to the changing room I asked if there was anything they needed and they said 'a fire please, for our drums'. Apparently in order to produce the best quality sound, certain types of drums need heating up, normally either by being left in the sun for a few hours or in front of a fire. It wasn't a request I was expecting, but soon we had made a plan using some cardboard and a space out the back of the gallery, and the drums were heated to the required amount! It made for some cool pictures

Photography

A combined effort results in another great photograph by Oria Dale

See http://oriadale.com for more of Oria's work

Anyone interested in ordering prints of any images should email oriadale@gmail.com (or ask me for more info...)

Styx Mhlanga

With Styx after the showing of his play

Dark City Bright

bambata show :)

It was great to go watch the first performance of a play written by Stix Mhlanga and performed by a group from Bambata, the theatre training project that I've been involved with in one of the townships on the edge of town. I haven't seen them for several weeks so it was good to reconnect and I was impressed by their work. They are part way through a 2 year programme with Styx and the performance was a first run-through of the script Dark City Bright to an audience. They set up a playing area between two sheds in the grounds of the local secondary school. It was rough and ready, but I really thought it worked. Expecially because the script tells a story of the community, based on true-to-life events from the surrounding area. Being at the heart of the place itself gave a certain authenticity and punch to the story. The audience loved it, there was a brilliant cameo of a policeman that in particular brought the house down!

In the post-performance discussion comments about the way 3 languages were successfully interwoven and used for comedy were raised as well as well as other praise! I want to submit the play for a festival of one-act plays that I've been asked to scout for and also see it showing as part of The Green Room :-)

The Lounge

Two more Lounge events have taken place since I last wrote about The Lounge. The latest, July's Lounge, was last Friday. Aside from the very first Lounge, personally this was the one that I enjoyed most. Somehow, everything seemed to run smoothly (except the sound which wasn't great this time!) and in terms of the event as a whole, it really shows that we're more experienced now and have the running of it in good shape. We know what works and have good systems in place! Set up & sound check complete, the scene as the doors open at 6.30pm

As a team, Tswa, Oria and I have delegated amongst ourselves who oversees particular areas of the night which seems a good plan and is going well. Others who help out also know what to expect and who to ask about what.

We've averaged about 90-100 people at the last two Lounges which is very good considering the midwinter weather - one day it'll be great to have patio heaters...

We've been experimenting with ways to encourage the open mic vibe with an organic, collaborative impro feel...We've always had a Jam session, but on Friday we tried something different and did away with the sign-up board and ran the whole night on a "grab the mic" basis. This worked well. We have a good security team, including one guy, Herbert, who was in a long-running Zimbabwean soap as a well-known character. Many of the crowd credit him with having inspired them to pursue arts in the first place. He's very humble so shrugs it off, but I'm looking forward to getting his creative input for The Green Room! We're on the lookout for people to come on board for that project and it's been cool to chat to guys at The Lounge who are also into theatre as well as music and poetry. For example, I was chatting to one guy who was interested, he's a writer, and it turns out that he wrote a sell-out play for HIFA 09 about current issues in Zim. Great to get to know him and others like him ahead of the Green Room launch in October.

I love the level of fun and trust we have as a team too. Whether we're pushing each other to perform as well as run the night, or watching each others' backs and making sure we all have fun too - it's a very cool dynamic that we have going on. We're in it together for the long haul and are open to experimenting with new ideas additional ways to collaborate as well as ensuring the Lounge remains organic and true to the vision of serving the community and creativity of the artistic community. We get on well and I think it all kinda shows through!

The June Lounge ended with a great Jam with dancers Rolx improvising along with the poets, rappers and musicians - it was pumping. The two guys on the left had travelled down from Harare to guest at the Lounge as part of a collaboration between us and some guys running another outfit in Harare. The collaboration came out of conversations we had at HIFA about wanting to increase the ties between the two cities and partner better. Next month we'll be sending one of our artists to their event in Harare.

Some of our crowd

Bruce Kuhn

Had a workshop today with an actor, Bruce Kuhn. I took part, together with my friends Tswa and Charlton and about 15 others. It was on storytelling and the skills Bruce taught and we explored connect well to a number of the projects that I am involved in or want to start up. So it was good and useful and I'm glad that guys I work with and collaborate with were there so that we worked together. That will be useful for following up and drawing on the ideas in future. In particular, Bruce's work is linked to the bible and the gospels of Luke and Mark. It really got me thinking about eyewitness accounts and the passion with which we tell stories that we connect with and it reminded me again of the idea I've had for some time to find ways to tell peoples stories and use peoples stories as part of reconciliation and peace-building work. It was good to have some time to chat to Bruce too - a small group of us had a night out at the farm and came back yesterday morning. Definitely need to follow-up on the story-telling idea and I think I have also now got an idea of how to use it as part of another project I'm working towards with the new Bishop here, Cleophas. The exercises we did today gave me ideas for how to use some bible stories to illustrate issues of tensions and conflict... I love the way that drama and stories are so different to preaching and teaching, yet are powerful and can be very moving if they hit on things that are universal themes. If we relate to something in the story it can impact very deeply.

Whatever next

I can pinpoint one of the most significant conversations of my life. It was a couple of years ago when someone I respect was asking about my future plans. I was struggling to chose between pursuing a career in the field of development, or in the field of the arts and I shared my frustration at the dilemma. For the first time it was suggested that maybe I shouldn't chose between the two but could think of combining them instead. A new idea to me then, that suggestion led to what I'm doing now and along what has been an adventurous and exciting journey so far!

A fortnight ago I was approached by a friend who runs the small NGO, Family Impact that I've been involved with a bit, and ran some training at last month. I was asked at fairly short notice I could help out with a problem they were facing. Some of the PHHE material I had covered is designed around using animal characters as a tool to teach children about health, hygiene and community. The trainers are meant to have masks to help them with the characters. The problem was that the art department they'd commissioned to produce the masks was quoting $80 (USD) per mask and as they needed ten it was beyond their budget. So, before long, I found myself agreeing to experiment with mask-making to see if I could come up with something that would work instead.

What reminded me of the conversation I'd had 2 years ago, was that I reckon in taking on this project I well and truly combined the two fields of development and arts! As I set off on a path of experimentation which led to a process involving wire frames, paper mache, plaster of paris, acrylic paint and heavy duty varnish to create masks to form part of a PHHE programme, I knew that at a basic, inherent level, it doesn't really get more integrated than that! While surprisingly time-consuming (and hardly fine-art) I really enjoyed getting my hands dirty with paint and other art materials again. I pursuaded the team of volunteers to spend an afternoon doing paper-mache with me, to help out - a novel team-building exercise! The finished results!