By Frederick Philander
WINDHOEK
“The National Administrators Workshop has been a continuing programme and Namibia marks the ninth country in which we have been able to train thirty theatre administrators because we believe that this process will help instill governance and compliance in transforming theatre into a proper industry.”
This is the view of the executive secretary of the Southern African Theatre Initiative (SATI), Mpho Molepo, in his annual report to the board on which Namibia also has representation for the past six years.
But “the challenges facing SATI and its existence are quite threatening in the year 2006/2007 as funding is now an issue. For the next three funding cycles SATI does not have any confirmed financiers. “However, the regional office and the Board are going to be engaged in a fundraising drive to make sure that SATI is sustained and continues its work,” he writes.
“The industrialization process begins with training managers and these we hope will entrench values and transparency within the theatre sector.
“The phase two of the Theatre for Development Seminar project was launched in South Africa with the key leading theatre for development practitioners from networks that are focusing on the genre and also majoring on HIV and Aids,” Molepo said.
The present SATI board of directors are to be replaced next year.
“This is to make sure that the organization remains legitimate and democratic in structure and accountable to the theatre fraternity in Southern Africa.
“The meeting held in South Africa has been able to adopt a new SATI structure and elected a secretary of the Board.
Within all the development the organization has also undertaken to do a review of the present state of networking in the region and also a review of existing national theatre networks, and Swaziland and Lesotho were selected as pilot countries,” he said.
According to him, SATI has over the past six years managed to implement quite a number of theatre projects.
“All the projects implemented within the six years have also helped practitioners from the region to exchange skill, information, expertise, directing, writing and management.”
The implementation of the above projects with limited funds really maintained SATI’ s objective to strengthen the theatre practice and industrialization of theatre in the 21st century.
“The creative industries’ approach is a new phenomenon around the world in making sure that theatre contributes to the Gross Domestic Product of each country. On the other hand the process of creating touring circuits around the region and exchange of work remains a challenge.
“The market and audience development initiatives around theatre remains priority initiatives that the region needs to start dialoguing about,” he proposed.
His biggest hope is to be able to receive support from SADC and hopefully other governments to support national theatre initiatives.