BY SHARON SIBINDI
BULAWAYO-BASED film producer and director Khaliphile “Khally” Sibanda is set to raise the country’s flag high after her play He Doesn’t Have a Backbone was recently selected for the forthcoming Women Playwrights Montreal Canada 2022 Conference.
The award-winning Khally told NewsDay Life & Style that it had been a dream come true to showcase her craft at an international stage.
“My colleague Thembelihle Moyo told me about the competition of Women Playwrights. I then wrote and sent my script. Five months later, I received an email confirming that from 351 entries, I was selected as the only Zimbabwean,” she said.
“I am happy that I was selected for such a huge conference. It has always been my desire to go international and that play opened my career sort of. I can’t wait for the conference in 2022 as I feel it’s far away.”
She said her theatre play mirrored the lives of frustrated people in a hex love.
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“The play He Doesn’t Have a Backbone mirrors the lives of frustrated people in a hex love. They all have one saying: ‘It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging the responsibilities’ ….and the world says ‘cry my beloved patient for you are in a ventilator, a life supporting machine’,” she said.
“Our scripts will be presented at a workshop before they are performed internationally and from the videos I see on their page, I am the only Zimbabwean so far, with some ladies from South Africa.”
Khally was part of the judges panel at the World Monologue Games Australia in 2020 and has won international awards for her film titled S/He is Perfect.
In a bid to promote the opera genre in the country, she recently directed the production Miserable, a rendition from the book Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
- Follow Sharon on Twitter @SibindiSharon