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Theatre piece ‘resurrects’ author Doris Lessing

Life & Style
ALTHOUGH prolific author Doris Lessing – famed for her epic novel The Grass is Singing – died on November 17, 2013, she briefly came alive at the weekend at Theatre in the Park, where a Norwegian play, Play with the Guinea Fowl, recaptured the unforgettable moments of her life.

ALTHOUGH prolific author Doris Lessing – famed for her epic novel The Grass is Singing – died on November 17, 2013, she briefly came alive at the weekend at Theatre in the Park, where a Norwegian play, Play with the Guinea Fowl, recaptured the unforgettable moments of her life.

BY IDAH MHETU

The resurrection of Lessing on stage, in a partnership between Rooftop Promotions and Theatre Nova, also coincided with the resurrection of Theatre in the Park, after a two-and-a-half-year break.

The three-cast play captures Lessing’s life and authorship and was conceived as part of what would have been her 100th birthday celebration.

Beanca Halvosen and Simone Thiis

Theatre Nova director, Simone Thiis, told NewsDay that they decided to stage the play in Zimbabwe because Lessing loved the then Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and her novels are mainly centred on her life in the country.

“We tracked Doris Lessing’s life and found out she grew up in Southern Rhodesia and her novels mainly talks about her roots,” said Thiis.

“So staging the play here is like bringing the play back to where she started and her whole life. She was longing for Zimbabwe.” Beanca Halvosen, who wrote the play, said Zimbabwe was the best place to stage the play since Lessing’s roots where in this country.

“This was the most natural thing to do after I had discovered that Doris’ roots were in Zimbabwe, even though she later moved to London. I just thought if we are going to talk about Lessing, it had to be in Zimbabwe,” she said.

The story is about a guinea fowl hunting escapade in a bush where 14-year-old Lessing creates Martha Quest, a character, who is to become her life-long companion. After Doris got married for the first time and had Child 1 and Child 2 (as they named them in the play), she slowly disappeared into a cloud of smoke by the typewriter and spends more time with her communist friends.

Lessing was born in Persia in 1919 and grew up in Southern Rhodesia. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 at 88 and died in London in 2013.