The Henrik Ibsen performing arts workshop, which featured Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, ended on a high note last week in Harare with theatre practitioners from the three nations promising to take their works worldwide.
Zimbabwe’s New Horizon Theatre Company, an offshoot of Children’s Performing Arts Workshop (Chipawo), joined their Namibian and South African counterparts to create unique theatre pieces relevant to African culture.
Themed “Negotiating Ibsen in Southern Africa”, the workshop left many theatre followers in awe as the group managed to convert Ibsen’s century-old plays into fine theatre pieces relevant to present-day society.
The recently concluded workshop was a result of an award won by Chipawo World’s Dr Robert McLaren for his outstanding ideas on adaptation of Ibsen’s plays.
McLaren, accompanied by Werner Thaniseb, director of the National Theatre of Namibia, travelled to Ibsen’s birthplace in Norway to receive the award.
After submitting a project proposal “Negotiating Ibsen in Southern Africa”, which competed with 70 other projects, Chipawo World was chosen together with Sudan and Lebanon for the three Ibsen awards.
McLaren brought his wealth of experience in performing arts to the two-week workshop which started on March 22.
The plays produced by the young theatre artists from the three Southern Africa countries will now be taken on performance tours in the respective countries before they go worldwide.
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Chipo Basopo, manager for Chipawo Zimbabwe, described the workshop as a groundbreaking project.
“Every new idea is somehow looked at sceptically, but I am happy that the Chipawo team together with the visitors produced something that left everyone motivated and believing that anything is possible if the right amount of work and resources are poured into it,” said Basopo
“What we hope for, however, is that this workshop, particularly these Ibsen projects, become annual events in Southern Africa and around the world. In future we hope to do these workshops with participants from as far afield as China, Brazil and Canada so as to understand how other cultures outside our vicinity interpret Ibsen’s works.”
The young artists interrogated ideas and issues raised in three of Ibsen’s plays in the context of the realities of their own societies.
New Horizon Theatre Company had already gone through this process converting the play A Doll’s House into a fascinating production titled The Most Wonderful Thing of All.
The new play raises deeply challenging issues relating to marriage, the law and religion with regard to gender equity.
Basopo added: “At Chipawo we had already done plays by Ibsen, which were nterrogated at the workshop. Basically we were sharing our experiences with our counterparts — how we managed to convert the century old plays into modern dramas with relevance in our own cultures.”
Norwegian playwright, Ibsen (1828-1906) is the most widely performed dramatist in the world. He has also been referred to as the “Father of Modern Drama”.
Although, he lived over a century ago, his ideas, which regularly outraged the audiences of his time, are thought- provoking and relevant to society and development in Southern Africa today.
Chipawo is an arts education for development and employment organisation founded in 1989. It aims to educate and develop children and young people through media arts.
New Horizon Theatre Company, which took part in the workshop, was established by Chipawo as a professional theatre project in its youth programme. Chipawo World was set up in April 2011 by Chipawo Zimbabwe in order to share performing arts experiences with children in other countries.
McLaren hopes that the “Negotiating Ibsen in Southern Africa” project will culminate in the foundation of a regular international theatre festival in Africa, dedicated to plays that explore and provoke ideas related to society and development in the spirit of Ibsen.
