Award winning scriptwriter, director, producer and actress, Jenny Kandenge, is staging her new play, Sisters at the National Theatre of Namibia (NTN) Backstage tonight.
Having a strong passion for writing and sharing stories, Jenny has scripted over 10 productions last year. The new play will be the first work under her own production, Lab Project, a capacity-building and training project to develop theatrical production skills such as a stage play, musical, comedy or drama produced from a written book or script. This will also be one of her best plays having been on the Youth Filmmaking Programme (YFP) in South Africa recently.
Sisters is a psychological thriller portraying the tale of Jeffery and Selina who share a bond stronger than most siblings, believing that they are together for the long haul, until other sisters come along. Jeffery plans a dinner date for Joy but she has a plan with her sister, Alicia, to uncover the truth of their younger sister’s death. The night turns into a cat and mouse game, where you do not know who is fooling who as Joy tries to get Jeffery to let his guard down with the threat of Selina and Jeffery’s sister. It is an evening of revenge and deceit, as siblings work to outsmart each other to find out what each are hiding.
Sisters’ play explores the bonds of siblings and how far one would be willing to go for the other. The play features Namibian actors, Lahja Haufiku, Monica Iyambo, Nashawn Marenga and Mikiros //Garoes. Jenny is an award-winning director, who also won the award for best script for her 2016 theatre production, Ominous at the Namibian Theatre and Film Awards in 2017.
Born in Swakopmund and having grown up all over Namibia, mostly in Windhoek, she always has had a love for literature, mostly reading and writing short stories. She studied Media Studies and Drama at the University of Namibia (Unam), where she learned more about script writing. “I fell in love with theatre when I was at Unam, but attending a screenwriting course with the NFC in 2014 taught me a lot more about writing for film.”
She also wrote and published the book Trauma. She acted in the first year at the university and The Nuthouse last year. Both are TheatreZone plays at the NTN.
Recently Jenny co-wrote and produced a web series called Untitled and wrote and directed a short film in South Africa, Two Sides of a Coin under an NFVF programme.
Tickets are available from all Computicket outlets nationwide for N$80 and N$50 for pensioners and students. Doors open at six o’clock in the evening.