Inside Chanco Travelling Theatre
The Chancellor College Travelling Theatre has announced plans to publish two anthologies of plays to preserve the country’s cultural beliefs and practices. Our Reporter JOHN CHIRWA caught up with the group’s chairperson Vitumbiko Gwambaike Zgambo to find out how the group has contributed to the development of theatre in the country since its inception in the 1970s.
Q
: What is Chanco Travelling Theatre all about?
A
:It is an outreach wing of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts that works as a laboratory for drama. It also involves students who may not be studying drama and this situation is mitigated by the presence of the patron who is always a drama lecturer and deals with performance quality control among other responsibilities. It takes theatre out to the people and also performs on campus.
Q
: How did it start?
A
:The group is a result of collaborations between John Linstrum who became the first patron and Mupa Shumba, an assistant registrar, who had been a member of the Makerere Travelling Theatre in Uganda. When John Linstrum produced Berltolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle with a version titled The Chalk Circle, the play was a very big success and Linstrum was pressured to produce another play. This was in 1970.
Q
:How has the group contributed to the development of theatre in the country?
A
:Theatre for Development in Malawi was pioneered by the travelling theatre in 1981 and Chris Kamlongera [deceased] was instrumental in this respect. It has also raised the standards of theatre. There are also a lot of prominent people in society that have gone through the travelling theatre.
Q
:As the name entails, has the group travelled enough?
A
:The travelling theatre has not moved out of Zomba as frequently as it should due to financial constraints and indefinite closure of Chancellor College. Otherwise, it has been very vibrant on campus but without reaching out to people out there.
Q
: You are back into the limelight with the book project which seeks to identify, document and preserve some cultural beliefs and practices in form of written stage plays. How will that benefit the country?
A
:The country’s identity shall be preserved with this project under the Hivos Cultural Fund for Malawi. It shall contribute to the literature by Malawians which is rare. It shall expose the talent for the youth even from outside Chancellor College. In terms of play publications, it should be noted that Malawi has not done a lot. With scarcity of published Malawian plays, the conclusion for people outside the country is that Malawians do not write plays at all when the opposite is true. As a pacesetter, the travelling theatre intends to show the way for theatre practitioners in Malawi.
Q
: What other projects are in stock?
A
:We are currently rehearsing Nthuli in collaboration with International Alliance for Umunthu Theatre, Ngugi’s wa Thiongo’s The Black Hermit and Phindu Banda’s Silence. We will start staging these end of July. With continued funding from Hivos we hope to publish more anthologies. The current publication project under Hivos is known as Living Playscripts.
In the same Living Playscripts Project, another component is training in playwriting to be conducted by Smith Likongwe, an established playwright and long-time member of the travelling theatre whose book Kamuzu Banda and other plays shall soon be on the market as it is being published by Dzuka Publishers. Likongwe also has another book on the cards titled Southern African Plays Collection to be released in August and published by Pan African Publishers. In this collection, Likongwe is both editor and contributor with his play The President’s Prerogative. There are plays from established and award winning playwrights in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. All this is part of the influence that the travelling theatre has had and continues to exist on the Malawian theatre scene.
Q
: Lastly, any other word?
A
:People should expect us on tour again.n
