By Frederick Philander
WINDHOEK
Six highly entertaining and educational self-written youth theatre productions will today compete in the first-ever school youth theatre sector of the annual Youth Theatre competition in the South.
The PK de Villiers Secondary School at Keetmanshoop is the venue for the competition, part of the Assitej-Namibia youth theatre expansion programme, now in its second year.
“We are almost there with the establishment of a truly national youth theatre structure for the country. One phase remains of the project, which will be implemented as from the beginning of next month in the north, north-east and the west of the country,” said Assitej-Namibia’s chairperson, David Ndjavera, who will this weekend act as one of two adjudicators for the Southern theatre competition.
The six-hour festival in which versatile female artist, Lize Kubersky, has also been selected to act as a judge, will start at 14h00 today and will be officially opened by Assitej-Namibia’s executive secretary.
“The festival is the culmination of a year’s hard work at selected towns and villages in the South. Our facilitator, Richard Swartz, has been hard at work guiding, teaching and encouraging playwriting, acting and directing in these towns since August last year. The youth actors are all excited to take part in the festival, from which three best plays will be selected. The winning plays will receive trophy shields and certificates for the hard work,” said chairperson Ndjavera.
The outright winning play will receive a floating trophy, which was last year won by the Grootfontein Secondary School for the comedy, The Happy Days of Mister Komeddy.
“A further significant prize for the three winning youth plays is the fact that one of them might be selected to travel to Sweden next year. Our organization has been contacted for such a possibility for the secretariat to send one such play to take part in a similar festival in that country.
Negotiations to that effect are currently underway,” said Ndjavera.
The stage works that will compete in the festival today are: Forbidden Passion (Assitej-Keetmanshoop), Shark Island (Assitej-L??????’??