the journey continues

Been back just over a month and so much has happened. After advertising on the Young Vic directors' forum, as of today I now have two new associates:

Amy Bonsall has joined as Associate Director, and she will direct a production of Romeo and Juliet to be performed in the gardens of Hall's Croft in Stratford. She has only just been appointed, and already I'm wondering how I managed without her energy and ideas.

Working with Amy as Assistant Director for R&J will be Roe Lane, who is coming to the end of her MA in Text and Performance at Birkbeck/RADA and has been associated with my Malawian theatre work since 2004 when she joined Nanzikambe for her gap year. I'm really looking forward to having her around again, and will be shamelessly exploiting her intelligence and good nature!

The second of my new Associates is Jemma Gross, who has galloped in on her white charger to take over responsibility for the PR and Marketing of And Crocodiles Are Hungry At Night and Romeo and Juliet. I am feeling very lucky!

Of course it's not all plain sailing. Today has also seen some very worried messages from Misheck in Malawi who is planning on travelling to Germany this coming Monday for the project with Theater Konstanz. Misheck and Dipo from our Crocs  company are both also doing the German project; they already have German visas (these took 2 days to process) and have sent their  passports to the British High Commission to get the UK visas before the trip to Germany. They have now been waiting a month with no feedback from UK visas - so now they have had to ask to cancel the application and have their passports returned urgently. Apparently the UK government 'outsource their visa function' to South Africa so the passports are not even in Malawi. Fingers crossed that the passports make it back to Malawi in time - and we will have to start the visa application all over again. This does not make me proud to be British. 

Also in the last month Amy and I have prepared and submitted the Arts Council application for Grants for the Arts. A long and arduous process, it's also very useful as it makes us be truly specific about why we want to do the project and what we hope to achieve. I only hope the application is strong enough to beat off the competition (at the moment only 45% of applications get approved for funding). Now our attention must turn to all the other funding applications waiting to be completed ...

reviews ....

Well there was a lot of press around the launch of And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night ... here are two of them

all done and dusted

So I'm now sitting in the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, where I shall languish for several hours before flying back to London.

And Crocodiles Are Hungry At Night was a great success ... good sized audiences who seemed to love it. Reviews are now coming in, and although I haven't seen the review in The Nation (I was in transit) today, I have heard it is good. I'm trying to search for it online without much luck ... but I'm sure someone will send it to me soon. I have however found a very positive piece in Nyasa Times which of course I will be quoting in my funding applications for the UK performances in July ...

http://www.nyasatimes.com/malawi/2012/03/05/mpinganjira-shed-tears-as-nanzikambe-staged-mapanje-memoirs/

The opening night was fabulous. Brown Mpinganjira came and cried throughout. Sitting next to Smith Likongwe in the audience he had to remove his glasses often to wipe his eyes. After the show he was invited on stage to say a few words, and was extremely gracious. I feel so pleased that we told his story with integrity - he said that he has been unable to write his memoir as he finds it too upsetting but wants to see the story told. So we have helped with that.

So my Malawi trip is over. It has been a wonderfully creative time and such a joy to be working with the Nanzikambe guys again. We now have a theatre space with a high domed roof and lights (not many, but it's a start) and Nkhwachi Mhango, who was working on the show preparing the performance space and helping with set, now has the bit properly between his teeth. We are working on him coming to the UK with the company and he has asked that I set him up with some theatre lighting and sound people so that he can learn how to run the space more professionally. He loved learning how to use QLab, and run basic sound effects and music through a laptop and has become a bit of a keen techie. So I have another air fare to find, and some capacity-building meetings to set up. I've no idea how difficult or easy this will be, but all I can do is make a start when I get back.

Blackout

So here we are: Tuesday. We open on Saturday and no electricity all day. I'm writing this while my laptop still has some battery life ... came in this morning with a newly-edited script ready to print out, but no, things are not so easy in Malawi.

The cars are all grounded, as there is no fuel, diesel or petrol, to be had in Blantyre at the moment. At every new rumour of a delivery, queues form at the filling stations. So my lovely borrowed car is no use to me just now!

On a more positive note, Misheck and I went to the Censorship Board yesterday and they have passed our script. They wanted us to take out two words: one of the characters is not allowed to describe the national anthem as 'stupid' and another is not allowed to describe the president's official hostess as his 'concubine'. Ha! We can still convey the message without the words so it's fine. It's almost as though they were looking for something to censor while leaving the play intact. We're allowed to insinuate that John Tembo and the Kadzamira siblings were complicit in the murder of many people; we're allowed to say 'bloody shit' and 'bloody murderers' (in two languages!). But not to call the national anthem 'stupid'. Ah well.

Day off

After three weeks of working, I decided that this was the weekend I could come away from Blantyre, if only for one night, so made the three hour drive to Nkhudzi Bay to stay with my friend Carrie.

Bliss. I am now sitting on her khonde (covered patio) looking across the lawn to the lake at the bottom of her garden. This morning we had a swim before breakfast which was lovely; although there was an added frisson because yesterday we heard that a crocodile has been basking on the rocks just a few hundred metres away. Fortunately our neighbours had also decided on an early morning swim, so I reasoned that a hungry croc was not likely to swim past them to pick me for his breakfast.

When I got here yesterday morning, I met for the first time a lovely lady who I have heard much about over the years. June Walker, mother of a friend of mine, Chris, has been living in Malawi since the early fifties. Her husband worked for both the colonial government and in Banda’s first post-independence government. He was greatly disapproved of by the British, as he was deemed to have ‘gone native’. An interesting lady, we had a most enjoyable lunch and a lot of laughter. In spite of her insistence that she is definitely in her ‘third age’ and slowing down, she seemed as sharp as either Carrie or I (although I had to teach her how to switch her new smart phone on!).

I have a few hours now before heading back to Blantyre. It’s time to sort out the lighting plot and get the sound cues in order. My main concern at the moment is costume; but that’s something for the production meeting in the morning. One week to go!

The great man arrives ...

So this morning, we were rehearsing on the stage when Thlupego looked up past the auditiorium, nudged me and said quietly “Brown Mpinganjira has just arrived”. And sure enough, there was the great man himself.

Two hours later he left again, having sat on a plastic chair on the stage with the actors and answered questions and talked frankly about his time in D4, the cell in Mikuyu Prison which he shared with, among others, Jack Mapanje.

This was a tremendous gift to us; the company asked intelligent, forthright questions which were answered in similar vein. We gave him our spare copy of Jack’s memoir, with which he was delighted, as he had not yet managed to secure a copy himself, and he has promised to be there at the launch of the show.

So the short amount of rehearsal which remained today was spent slightly revising some of the show in the light of Brown’s contributions. We have lost a day’s rehearsal but gained an immense amount of insight. Aaron especially has been affected: he is playing Brown and was fascinated to see his physicality and manner of speaking which have already started appearing in his characterisation.

This afternoon Stanley Kadzuwa, now a radio journalist but previously an actor with Nanzikambe came to interview Misheck and I. Stanley first came to Nanzikambe to perform in Chilly Heart (directed by Melissa Eveleigh) in 2003; I also directed him in African Macbeth and A Flea in Her Ear, so we go way back! It was a delight to see him, and I hope he will give us good coverage on his programme on MIJ radio.

A visit from an ex-prisoner

Today one of the prisoners we met in Chichiri came to see us. He has just been released, and was dressed extremely smartly in jacket, crisp white shirt and tie and a big grin. He sat and watched rehearsals for a while, and joined in when we were recording one of the songs. It is a hymn of thanks the prisoners at Mikuyu sang when they were released, so it was particularly pleasing to have our very own released prisoner join us. The actors had a whip round to give him a little money to cover his transport costs (he can't afford the bus fare to visit his mother in Ntcheu) and to welcome him out of prison, which was really nice of them, as they themselves are only on a modest daily allowance.

We ran the first half of the play - it took 55 minutes which is at least 10 minutes too long. However, this should tighten up by at least that. If not, I am going to have to do some ruthless cutting. I hope not, as I can't think of anything which could easily go at the moment.

The best thing about this week though, is the stage roof is now about 2 metres higher. A relief to everyone and I'm amazed at how quickly you can get things done in Malawi if you put your mind to it!

Publicity has started to take off, too ... there was a centre page spread (with pictures) which was an interview with me in the Sunday Times, this morning Misheck and I were interviewed for Capital FM (the most popular radio station) and next wednesday we're being interviewed on TVM (Television Malawi). Hopefully this is just the start - posters are out, the FaceBook event has been created and an SMS (text messaging) campaign is slated for the middle of next week. So if we aren't a sell-out, it's nobody's fault!