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Tafadzwa Zimoyo Senior Arts Reporter

Organisers of the Mitambo International Festival, currently running in Harare, say the Children Performing Arts Workshop (Chipawo) and Zimbabwe Theatre Academy will be the closing acts on October 2, when the festival end.

The festival which roared into life two weeks ago, has been running under the theme “Rise Up”,meant to push the content creators and performing artistes space to be creative within the confines of the Covid-19 containment measures.

Chipawo will perform a play entitled “Kuna Kunze” at Matthew Rusike Children’s Home while Zimbabwe Theatre Academy will stage theirs “Zandezi” at Harare Prisons.

In an interview, festival director Llyod Nyikadzino, said everything was going according to plan.

“We decided to have ‘Rise Up’ as our theme due to the fact that Covid-19 has affected the industry and it is now time to show creativeness as artistes.

“We had workshops (symposium), short plays and next week we will be having community outreach performances. So far, we had about 10 short plays and we are happy with the talent.”

Nyikadzino said this week they are focusing on personal activities.

Speaking at the preparations for their performance, Chipawo manager Chipo Basopo said they have been relying on online lessons and rehearsing under Covid-19 regulations.

She added that the play was an adoption of a book published by UNICEF.

“The play was inspired by the findings of Chipawo’s work. There is need to teach young children that chocolates can’t buy your life and appreciate what your parents give you,” she said.

“It is a Shona play and the story centres on life of school girls being lured by old men and getting them nice things like chocolates and watches among others. In the play there is a young girl called Tarisai who warns other school girls of such immoral behaviour.”

Chipawo manager said they had to cancel all their trips and other international festivals they were scheduled to perform due to Covid-19 pandemic.

“We wait for things to be normal and at ease. Remember we work with children henceforth we wouldn’t want to expose them to a lot of people. We had to cancel all our trips hoping for the right time,” she explained.

Basopo said the play features Rutendo Dendemera, Judith Pay, Zoey Williasi, Jude Dendamers, Jahdiel Dzvairo, Violet Mupaya, Shalom Chitopo and Dennis Jakopo.