FROM BUSH TO COUNTRY

Musho Festival review by Samantha Daly.

Written and performed by Arifani Moyo, From Bush to Country debuted at the opening of the 6th annual Musho! festival last night at the Catalina Theatre.

Directed by William Le Cordeur, From Bush to Country is a one-man show which weaves a story through the turbulent history and evolution of colonial Rhodesia to Zimbabwe as we know it today—a country rife with dictatorship, political tyranny, violence and destruction.

As they enter the theatre, the audience is greeted by a sparsely set stage, with only a table, chair and books strewn across it. There is also a tribal-looking wooden statue and mask, which don’t get used during the performance, and I questioned the point of placing these items on stage. I would have liked to have seen these items used in performance somehow.

Nevertheless, Moyo walks casually onto stage, inconspicuous even in his suit, as though he were one of the audience members looking for his seat. It is only when he begins to speak, that one even realises the show has begun! This calm facade is shed very soon into the performance however, as the intense physical demands that come with one man playing several characters, replace this.

From Bush to Country sees Moyo playing no less than five characters (often more than one character simultaneously), including a young, black, pregnant Zimbabwean woman, an Ndebele warrior, an anxious farmer’s wife, a young Portuguese soldier and an Irish Catholic priest, to name a few. Moyo creates these characters using nothing more than the props on stage, and his suit. In this way then, he relies on the representational and symbolic use of his clothes and props, with his blazer representing a baby in one scene and, when worn backwards, a Portuguese soldier in another. Similarly, a shirt worn backwards comes to resemble a farmer’s wife’s dress and a chair becomes a hammer used to make the bricks that will build a new, stronger Zimbabwe.

The amount of concentration and detailed characterisation which goes into the playing of numerous characters like this, is intense to say the least. Not to mention the extreme physical requirements of such a performance, but you’d never say so seeing Moyo switch almost seamlessly as one character dissolves into another on stage. This speaks not only to Moyo’s incredible talent as a performer, but also to the good direction offered by Le Cordeur.

The strong comic element contained within this performance was also very welcome amongst the audience, and served to balance out the more serious and sombre overriding message. In a hard-hitting and motivational speech, Moyo concludes his performance declaring proudly, “This is the time to rise and be alive. The time for hope is now. The time to dream and be is now. The time to be is now Zimbabwe. The time to be is now Africa”. – Samantha Daly