Productions
TUMAINI
On the 17th of February 2016 at the University of Zimbabwe Beit Hall, Almasi presented Tumaini, a physical theatre lab performance led by Lloyd Nyikadzino. The performance was a culmination of a 7 day investigation process with 10 actors; a mixed pool of experienced actors and University of Zimbabwe Students. Centered around the character development process, Tumaini saw the facilitator and the actors exploring issues of displacement, transition and migration, and how these affect the human being. Tumaini drew participants from the pool of actors who participated in a physical theatre training intensive and lab led by Tafadzwa Bob Mutumbi in September last year. This physical theatre lab is part of The Capacity Building of Dramatic Artists Project supported by The Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust in partnership with Sida and Danida.
CHIRORODZIVA
On the 4th and 5th of September, Almasi Collaborative Arts presented Chirorodziva, a Physical Theatre Performance Conceptualised and Facilitated by Tafadzwa Bob Mutumbi at the Beit Hall, University of Zimbabwe. The ten performers were drawn from the pool of artists who had attended the physical theatre workshop facilitated by Tafadzwa Bob Mutumbi from the 25th to the 29th of August at the Beit Hall, University of Zimbabwe. Chirorodziva is an exploration of dreams, spirituality and identity. It chronicles a survival journey through the mind of a weary soul that is trying to keep its aspirations afloat. It also brings to light the dreaded reality of how broken and miserable mankind can be when all they foresee in the midst of their efforts to attain their goals is a state in which they will be in a pool of fallen dreams.
THE CONVERT
Winner of six ovation awards, the 2011 Stavis Award, the Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Writing Award. “It is with great joy I bring this play to be read in the land of its inception.” – Danai Gurira
“What Happens When Culture and Faith Collide?” “It’s 1895 when the convert, a teenage girl named Jekesai, is thrust into strange new circumstances that pit Ancient African Traditions against Western Culture and her newfound Christian faith. When conflict erupts across the land who will she become?”
The Convert was commissioned by Center Theater Group and premiered at McCarter Theater (Director Emily Mann), The Goodman Theater and The Kirk Douglas Theater (CTG). This production of The Convert is presented with the generous support from Center Theater Group, Los Angeles, California, USA. It was also sponsored by Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). The Convert had its African premiere in Harare at Prince Edward High School’s Beit Hall from Dec. 10th to Dec. 24th 2013.
ECLIPSED
“The wonder of Danai Gurira’s new play is that Eclipsed is neither depressingly bleak nor oppressively sober. It’s A SURPRISINGLY VIVACIOUS PORTRAIT of helplessness, of the entirely human impulse to adapt…conveyed with a lovely authority, at times even a whimsicality. [In this] authentic- feeling production, her tight-knit kinship with these characters comes across as if she shared the stage with them.” ~ The Washington Post
Eclipsed by Danai Gurira, the award-winning Zimbabwean American Playwright/Actress, experienced three simultaneous world premieres at Yale Repertory Theater, The Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington DC and The Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles in 2009. The play subsequently won The Charles McArthur Award for Best New Play at the 2010 Helen Hayes Awards as well as the launch Award for Best Production in the Connecticut Circle of Critics. It recently received 5 NAACP Theater Award nominations for the Los Angeles production at the Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre.