We have a script! Well, very nearly. The marvellous Aaron Ngalonde, who is playing Brown Mpinganjira, has offered to write two of the final scenes. He's busy tapping away at his laptop and as soon as he's done the play is finished. The plan is to take it to the Censorship Board for classification tomorrow. I'm a little nervous, as they have immense power and if they decide they think it breaks any of the incredibly vague criteria by which they judge these things, they can pull the plug completely. Fortunately it is a very high profile project in terms of the local press, so I'm hoping they won't have the nerve to object.
Today has been a strange day - no rehearsals, as Misheck Mzumara (who is playing Jack) has had to attend a meeting in Lilongwe in his capacity as senior management of Nanzikambe. So Aaron and I have been working on finalising the script. The other news is that work has begun on the stage - I pointed out when I arrived that the curved roof is far too low to be workable as a stage for anything other than stand up comedy as it's like performing in a tunnel and any performer who stands more than a metre upstage cannot be seen. It seems that when the structure was moved from their last home, it was cut down to fit the area available - no-one noticed that in so doing the roof was lowered considerably. Fortunately once I pointed out the impossibility of actually rigging any lights, Chris Nditani the MD could see the problem so they are quite literally raising the roof!
Tomorrow we will work at The Warehouse - a performance venue in Blantyre which is being most kindly lent to us by Thom Chibambo for the next couple of days while the building works happen at Nanzikambe. I shall make sure that they get full credit in the programme and any press interviews I do. It is wonderful that arts organisations here are willing to help each other (this is not how it always is).
Still no sign of Brown Mpinganjira though ...
No comments:
Post a Comment