All roads lead to the National Arts Festival for Botho Theatre Co-operative. Hooray!
By Ouma Mabaso
Botho Theatre Cooperative is a theatre group from Zamdela in Sasolburg. The group is taking its theatre play titled Guluva to Makhanda in the Eastern Cape for this year’s National Arts Festival to showcase their work and talent.
It started in 2020 to produce main stream theatre productions, sub objectives such as development for young people who are interested in the art and theatre play, to creative arts facility for schools and training for teachers. The cooperative also advocated for provincial and national arts policy. The cooperative was started by Styx Mokejane, Mputlane wa Bofelo and Mpho Lavinga.
According to Styx Mokejane the administrator of the cooperative one of their big objective is to change one child into art in the country, and have a business identity which seeks to assist government and other brand companies in finding art as a direct contributor to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“We want to have a running theatre company from Zamdela that take jobs abroad, and assists local artist to achieve their dreams without going to other places” said Mokejane.
The One Man show play, Guluva is written by Mputlane wa Bofelo and played by Styx Mokejane. It is a story about the author himself, he was once detained during apartheid and tells his life in prison during that era in the early 90s. The play explores the troubled and tormented soul and creative imagination of a child who dives into the language of poetics, politics, philosophy and psychology to deal with the trauma of having seen and experienced too many (horrible) things too early in his life.
It starts with a walk down memory lane through a fictionalised narrative of the experiences, observations and ruminations of a seventeen year-old Black Consciousness activist in the 1980s. It ends with an articulation of anxieties.
“We are appealing and asking for any kind of support and contribution, and it doesn’t have to be money as such, messages of support and prayers will be much appreciated” said Mokejane.
For more information on the National Arts Festival and to view the schedule of Guluva visit: https://nationalartsfestival.co.za/show/guluva-2/
