Theatre in the park launches Afrobatics

Set to run from 2 February to 26 February daily at 5.30pm and 7.30pm except for Sundays and Mondays, Ganyu is a production of Mwezi Entertainment Productions performed by a professional acrobatics group called Kufewa from Malawi. The experience of exploring and creating GANYU is a deep search for the energy and spirit that can purely connect the art forms fused with the artists diverse talent. The direction provoked actors training as a first stage drawn from my experience in theatre, film and music.

In the process, we developed a unique fusion of theatre styles Afrobatics – a creative theatre style fusing acrobatics, text, movement, music, sounds and images in an artistically electrifying technique, says the director Stanley Mambo famed in Zimbabwe for his role in Studio 263 as the Nanga, Journalist and Detective in the original cast of the soap.

Stanley has also directed acclaimed productions like All Systems Out Of Order, Heavens Diary and Conquered Plans which have all thrilled Zimbabwean theatre buffs. He has worked extensively with world renowned, Theatre Talipot as a dancer.

Conceived in a marginalized society and brought up by a ghetto culture, influences and opportunities that limit their dreams and destiny, a group of youths transformed their teenage games to a source of life, a talent and inheritance from the past generation. They took to the streets performing to entertain the passers by and beg out that little extra or budgeted money into their own hats, their daily needs.

In that hunting forest, they meet the wild side of the jungle myths and beliefs, mob psychology and peer pressure, the law and corruption, alcohol and drug abuse and not being spared by the monster HIV/AIDS. Survival, the quest for bread and butter forces them to stick to their source and safeguard each dawn and sunset.