Arts views with Thabani H Moyo
This year’s version of Intwasa Arts festival runs from 20 to 24 December 2020 under the theme ‘The New Normal’. The festival is being held in difficult time of Covid-19 hence the theme. The dates are set at a time when the global community is experiencing the second wave of infections and at home the numbers continue on an upward trend. It makes it even more difficult for the organisers to plan. It must be like one of those painful child bearing experiences for them. But Intwasa Arts Festival is not giving birth to the first child, this is the 16th child. Interestingly the 16th child is coming more painfully than the 1st child. You might lose this one before they are born due to the unpredictability of Covid- 19 complications and the regulations it comes with. The organisers must get ready to shit bricks and stones, to give a painful birth to the 16th edition.
This year’s Intwasa Arts Festival content is hard stuff, stuff that people don’t usually speak casually about. This year’s content for Intwasa Arts Festival is for those abelempumelo emikhulu ekhupha amaganu. The festival organisers have lined up two theatre shows Vagina Monologues Africa, a sequel to Vagina Monologues, and Sons of Men. These are the two plays that Intwasa Arts Festival has chosen to invest so much on. The last time that Intwasa Arts Festival invested so much on Theatre was when they produced the all-time classic “UMbiko kaMadlenya”. UMbiko sent tongues wagging in its own way. Will Vagina Monologues Africa and Sons of Men match that epic?
Vagina Monologues original and Vagina Monologues Africa are one package that has done well. The two pieces deal with the same subject of women abuse. They explore the lives of abused women through their most prized asset, the vagina. The two plays make weak men shiver and pee in their pants. They are direct. They are poignant. They discuss our sexual taboos as women and men directly. They call a spade a spade. Maybe that why is Intwasa Arts Festival bringing Vagina Monologue Africa live on stage after its premiere online.
‘Sons of Men’ is a play to buy your data or ticket for. If women are easy screamers then Sons of men will reveal to you that men can even scream louder. Not only will you hear men screaming, bellowing the English Premier League players’ names, they also scream their memories of their sexual failures and conquests in their sleep. Sons of Men is a play written by Bulawayo’s craziest playwrights. The play weaves six monologues by Philani Amadeus Nyoni, Butshilo Nleya, Thabani H Moyo, Raisedon Baya, Memory Kumbota and Christopher Mlalazi. These are some of the best names that have contributed to Bulawayo’s Theatre sector with amazing works. Sons of Men reads like a reply to Vagina Monologues. What distinguishes Sons of Men from Vagina Monologues Africa is how the powerful through their most prized possession men fall. Intwasa brings to us Men’s minds. Men’s minds that are influenced by the want of vagina and the fun it is associated with. Women’s minds that are influenced by the imagination of the penis’ thrust. This year’s Intwasa is a time for sexual truths. It is time for manhood and womanhood. The weak and the strong must come and learn.
For Raisedon Baya ‘Sons of Men’ bring issues that we all push aside. Stories that we don’t want to tell because we are men and are supposed to be strong. Stories around men’s mental health. Abuse of men. The trauma of being unemployed and facing your wife and children every day. The fear of failure’, says Baya. For Baya the play brings new conversations.
The two plays reflect on each other. They unpack gender problems from both perspectives. ‘With Covid-19 its time to go to uncomfortable places’, says Baya. It will seem that the two plays will push bricks and stones out of both sexes.
Intwasa Arts Festival will try to put both plays as live performances and online. Zimbabwean audiences will have to migrate to online shows. This is where the world has moved to and will not come back. Let us be ready for Intwasa online and live.
