I'm alive and well after my second trip down the road of theatre direcrting/organizing hell. But I survived! I had 11 schools participating and 11 PCVs came along for the ride. What a ride it was!
My day started with nerves. My nerves were stretched taunt because all the week before it was overcast, "cold" and London-rainy. I woke up at one point in the night, having already taken "Betasleep" from South Africa to insure a night of verligting van slaaplosigheid, and heard the cacophony of rain on my tin roof. I just cringed and tried to sleep another hour or two.
I woke up to my friend Justino knocking on the bedroom door. I've known him since 2005 and he agreed to be a judge for me. Since he lives about 75 kilometers away, I told him he could stay the night. I woke up, nerves streched beyond belief. I could only stomach black tea and we went off to the camp ground where the competition was going to be. Oh yeah, this was after I had already gotten a text. I was expecting it from Anne, my closest neighbor and someone who helps me a lot in my projects here. Nope, it was from Rachel, the PCV with a group from Mapinhane, a town 200 kilometers away. SHE WAS ALREADY HERE!!! It was 6 o'clock in the morning!!!! Oh boy.
I had to run to get some chairs, tables and the bastedor which I stored at a house closer to the city center. A bastedor is just a giant sheet that acts as a backdrop but here in Mozambique, without the sheet there is no theatre. It gets me so frustrated because.... well I'm not going to go into it because it's not worth me getting this mad over. I run to Anne's house and get the keys from here. Justino and I unload everything from the office and put it out on the front lawn. We get to the office at 7:03 AM so I didn't think I was late, especially by African standards. I relax though, because Anne comes and then the girls who have be using this office as a rehearsal space come as well. I notice it's 7:30 AM, still no car to bring these props to the south side of Maxixe. I get another text message... two more groups have shown up and they've all said that the guard to the camp ground didn't know anything about the competition. I didn't expect him to, but I still was panicky at this point. I spent the rest of my cell phone airtime credit calling my brother the night before so all I could do was send text messages to the driver asking where the hell he was. He showed up at 8 AM. Thank God the south end of town is only about 5 minutes away.
Got there and got set up. Thankfully I have such good friends here and we were able to get the stage set in 10 minutes. My old students from Homoine were there as well (some who were involved last year) and they asked right away if they could do anything. My housekeeper came. I had given her a day off earlier in the week so I could get her to come. She's a wonderful lady because she controlled the food all day long and is fasting for Ramadan! More power to her because I certainly do not have that will power. :)
I had a panel of 3 judges that took their work very seriously and my little buddy the cashew seller (James, I DO know his name) came and kept time. If it weren't for him, I would still be there. The rule was for each school to perform for 10 minutes. I gave them a choice of either Portuguese or English and naturally the majority chose Portuguese but the ones that chose English were hysterical and really thought out. Unfortunately, I don't remember the plot of a single one. I don't remember much of the day. I'm still tired from it today but really enjoyed myself. We were able to get 11 groups of students together just to joke and chat and watch some theatre. TO MY eye it looked like it was all the same, but some students got some messages out of it I'm certain. It was a generally festive enviroment. We had morning snack (I felt like a kindergarten teacher all day counting, counting) and then whipped through 11 shows before the scheduled break for lunch at 1. Had lunch, gave out the prizes and kicked everybody out by 3 PM. Thank GOD!!!! No surprise though, the car was a half an hour late coming back to pick up the theatre pieces and bring them back to my office. Now, thanks for all the rain dances, the bottles you may have buried and the prayers I know were thrown my way. It DIDN'T rain. As you'll be able to see from the pictures, it was one of the most beautiful days I've seen here in a long time. I wish I could just remember more of the actual theatre!
That's all folks...
No comments:
Post a Comment