The day’s programme includes two theatre performances. The first two! During the mission we will see 6 performances by groups from Palma, Quionga and Pundanhar. And no, I don’t know what it means… 🙂

What will they propose? But most of all, will I understand the plot? Will I be able to see the undertones? And the actors, I have to choose the actors, I must remember to ask what language they speak, and then Italy, they’ll ask me all sorts of things about Italy, about the stage, what will I tell them???
I’ll think about it after breakfast.

Taken almost textually from my notes:

First presentation: a school group from Palma
The story: it’s important to go to school and study.

Second presentation: Amodefa theatre company from Palma
The story: the main character lives between the desire to go to school and study, and the family which instead wants her to work and marry, and set up a home. Going to school and studying is important.

Everyone stop, we have a problem!!! Does anyone have any rice? Did you see hints of comedy? I look at the faces of my travelling companions…

I got Adelino Gonçalves, a sort of councillor for culture, to explain to me how things work here, namely in the rural north of the young republic of Mozambique. The government uses small theatre groups from schools and communities to spread a series of “messages” to the villages, even the most distant and isolated ones. The messages range from the importance of going to school to the use of condoms, the prevention of pregnancies in girls who are too young.

The companies improvise a plot outline that is inspired by reality, a few quips, a narrator explains the sense of everything, the famous message. No story creation phase, no creative process.
Do you work with a written script? Do you write the dialogues, the scenes? I ask Adelino Geraldo, one of the actors from the second company, who tells me he is also a writer.
“No”, and he shows me a sheet, he simulates writing, he speaks of notes, the message…

After the performances, Felix makes them move, play, sing. It’s clear to see that they are not ‘stage-wise’, maybe because they have never been on a stage, at times the two actors on stage speak to each other, they forget to look at the audience.

So we make them walk, looking directly at each other, we make them play to imitate the movements, we sing firstly together and then solo to see how they handle their own voice and “the voices” together, without imposing themselves and without eating their words.

Perplexed. This is my key word for this evening. I believe I have personally seen the result of a total lack of training. If no-one teaches you how to improvise, you do your best, maybe you have a natural talent, but you don’t have those fundamental, basic notions that are needed.

How many actors like this are there in Mozambique, in Africa?