The Bridge

In July 2007 Kevin directed and workshopped a play into being with two very talented Zimbabwean actors Lucia Nhamo and Verity Norman. That play has since been made into a radio play for broadcast on the Voice of America. Listen to it here. If you missed it in Harare you may be able to catch it at The National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. More about those performances here.

The workshop technique employed for creating the play is a particular style that combines Kevin's love of improvisation and story-telling. The emphasis in this style focuses on helping the performers to tell a story that reflects their own lives, characters that they already know well. It is a powerful and liberating exercise for all involved as they give up their creative skills to The Story and allow it to, in a sense, tell itself. Kevin is currently writing a book called 'Jump Theatre' that explains this technique further. The book is set to be launched at HIFA next year.

Kalanga!

For the Harare International Fesival of the Arts 2008, Kevin worked alongside HIFA and the Kellog Foundation to direct a production by the Kalanga people of Masendu, a small rural community an hour from Plumtree in South-West Zimbabwe. The production is a combination of traditional Kalanga dance and story-telling, woven together with natural and digital sound and impressive visual design to celebrate this marginalised Zimbabwean community.

 

As You Like It

Also for HIFA Kevin oversaw a Youth production of Shakespeare's As You Like It. This show was initiated when Kevin was approached by HIFA (the Harare International Festival of the Arts) and Giles Ramsay from the UK to create a production as Zimbabwe's entry in the International Shakespeare Schools Festival administered in London. Kevin recruited a young director Renee Mostert to steer the ship home. Renee has done much work in both the music and theatre world in Zimbabwe during her high school years at Harare Dominican Convent School and Nationally through organisations such as Musicamp Zimbabwe. The production was launched on Shakespeare's birth and death day, the 23rd of April, along with performances of Shakespeare's plays happening in 63 countries all around the world on the same day as part of the International Shakespeare Schools Festival. The production went onto two performances at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in May 2008 (HIFA).

 

A Midsummer African Dream

In his capacity as Director of the Theory X Theatre Initiative Kevin worked together with Zimbabwean University graduates to write a new play based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Fairies became monkeys, carpenters became farm labourers and the forest became a jungle of scaffolding, foofee slides (sp?!) and swinging ropes in this exciting production that premiered at HIFA 2006.