The thrill of home grown theatre performance

It may go against the current trends, but I will dare to say it anyway. Theatre has the potential to take centre stage in entertainment (Yes, pun intended!). In a world where global entertainment empires decide what shows on our TV screens, we have a chance to personalise our entertainment, to set it in the context of our home towns and culture. Stage drama is an excellent way to provide drama, comedy and romance set in familiar places - on the very street corners you pass every day, or at the local bus stop, with words and phrases that bring the story home in a way that international entertainment cannot. The way mass media has lost ground to social media, stage drama can take ground from mass entertainment.

[Images from "My Pursuit" -  a musical drama that was performed at Ster Kinekor on 8th October; produced by "Ili Kenge Events" under the able leadership of Henry Chibutu and Mwase Kumwenda, with support from "Stand and Sing of Zambia"  (SASOZ) proprietor, Logan Nyasulu]

I attended a musical performance, "My pursuit", last October, and I cannot explain how it brought the story home of exile and homecoming for the young girl who rejected her churchgoing roots. It created the feeling that I was watching something happening next door! Something about sitting a few rows from the performers brought the story home with emotive force.

Don't get me wrong, international screen productions will not be replaced any time soon, and they don't have to be. Much like mass news media and social media, the two can co-exist. However, there is a vacuum in terms of presenting local stories to local audiences, and little chance that our Zambian stories will over run the international scene just yet. Rather than hold back the local talent, we can use theatre as a means to use local talent to tell stories in a homespun way. We just need to approach it right.

Drama is also a developmental tool. We hear like sustainable development goals and other UN resolutions. We hear about Wildlife conservation projects and global warming. But all these things seem to be a world away, distance and detached. Theatre can help bring these developmental issues home to us, with local scripts, analogies and music.

Beyond all this, we can use drama to examine our worldview. Its important for us to reflect on our identity. So many things about our norms and our taboos, our values and even our moral contradictions as a society, need to be brought to light. Love, hate, spirituality, success and family life can be seen in a unique light, with dramas set in our community. Truth about the transformation we need, as individuals and society, needs a localised spotlight. If drama can be embraced by schools, youth groups, colleges and adult enthusiasts, we can provide a constructive way for society to reflect on what drives us and where our lives are leading.

New book out soon - Zambia @ 50

This book has been long overdue. The attempt to piece together Zambia's history from various biographies and books on other topics has been difficult. This work presents an attempt to chronicle Zambia's history is a systematic fashion, and give landmark events their rightful place.

Written in a friendly style, the author doesn't pull any punches. The best and worst of the prominent figures in our history (including founding father Kenneth Kaunda) are all revealed, presenting us with real 3-dimensional people, and not the idolised or demonised myths we are told. If we cannot be honest about the good and bad in our history, how can we be truthful and practical in the present?

This is a frank historical work, where the writer is not afraid to present the best and worst. Anything else would not be a true account of history. For that I applaud the writer. Worth adding to your collection!

The good old days - Making sense of the endless longing

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
    For it is not wise to ask such questions. - Eccl. 7:10

Every one has those 'gold old days' moments, when we recall some exciting moment in life. Sometimes it is even years later when we look back and say "Those days were so much fun! I didn't realise how good things were!" This is something good, a way of appreciating  the good things in life. A grateful attitude is also good going forward, it makes us less complacent, less self-pitying and more open to enjoy the good we come across today. This can also give us hope for making more golden memories in days ahead!

But there is a danger, a "twisted" form of remembering the past. We can create a "golden age" in our minds, and turn that into a debilitating excuse to stop really living in the present. We can get stuck in fantasies of that "peak moment" in life and refuse to do anything significant today.

Different people have different "peak" exciting moments in life. Others will talk of their early days (pre-teen), others speak of secondary school (high school?) days, other still college days, and others life after thirty. There is nothing wrong with such memories. They are good and we should be thankful. But the problem is when we begin to moan "Why were the old days better than these?"

The Pulpit Commentary describes someone who thinks like this as follows; "in his moody discontent he looks on what is around him with a jaundiced eye, and sees the past through a rose-tinted atmosphere, as an age of heroism, faith, and righteousness." He goes on to say, "Every age has its light and dark side; the past was not wholly light, the present is not wholly dark. And it may well be questioned whether much of the glamour shed over antiquity is not false and unreal." So the problem is, we forget the past had its own challenges. But because we no longer have to wrestle with decisions and danger, the 'past' has become a safe place. This mindset is dangerous for the present!
Sometimes the Pan-African philosophy can reach this extreme. As much as colonization was a horrible injustice, we must also remember that Africa was not a paradise before then! Wars, slave trade and abuse were real. In the desire to become Afrocentric, we must not imagine it was all garden of Eden two hundred or one thousand years ago. Like all cultures, we had our strengths and weaknesses. But in our attempt to paint a picture of the past, we must be wary of creating a false historical apex. Otherwise our goal will be an imagined point which did not exist. When we are deceitful are the past, we will fail to truly learn from history, and map a prudent way forward. We get stuck in a fantasy, and grumbling and complaining about the present.

In truth, the only garden of Eden was the garden of Eden. The root problem is not how the African paradise was disturbed, as much as that was unprovoked hostility. The root problem goes deeper.

Two things we need to remember. The first: 

 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

-Eccl. 3:1-8

Some things end simply because time is up. Our safe places are, at best, only here for a short time, not forever. At least in the present world. The second is, (I forget who said this), the dividing line between good and evil is not simply between countries, ideologies or parties, but runs right through every human heart. We are fragile and faulty, struggling internally and externally.

Once we accept the nature of our world, this will not placate our longing for permanent security, emotional and otherwise. Rather, it can only be a pointer to One who promises to fill our longing for never ending purpose, secure identity, love and spirituality. All the good things of this life, as really and truly good as they are, are only a hint of what the world always should have been. As C. S. Lewis put it, if we have desires this world cannot satisfy (but only hint at) this shows we were made for another (permanent) one. What we do with this hint, and how we satisfy the longing, is another matter entirely. But for Lewis and others, the answer lies in the Easter story, the one man who conquered the ultimate enemy that cuts short life - death itself.