The highlight of the Festival was making significant contact with the companies from Europe and Africa that were also participating. There was time to exchange ideas and understandings about theater making in the various contexts. This was particularly significant in relation to the companies from Chad, Togo, Cameroon and Niger. In this sense the experience met our desired expectations of meeting other practitioners working in youth theatre in Africa and other parts of the world. The Festival provided a structure through which we were able to exchange information and activities For the Magnet theatre participation in the Festival was very successful in terms of creating a profile for the company in Africa. We were able to showcase the work of Magnet Theatre and explain our artistic literacy. It was very satisfying to perform to audiences from another country and language group and feel that the story that we made was powerfully communicated to them. We were able to discover and develop different artistic fields for Magnet Theater through networking opportunities during the festival. Contacts were made that will hopefully bear fruit in the future in terms of performance, visits conferences, collaborations etc. The learning occurred mainly through an increased understanding of what it is to make theater in Africa compared to in Europe. South Africa sits somewhere in between in terms of the amount of support etc groups receive. It was interesting to see how companies make work with very little resources. The major challenge for us was dealing with the organization of the Festival which was severely under resourced both in terms of funding and personnel and struggled to deal with the dimensions of the event that they had envisioned. Magnet Theatre is already in email contact with some of the companies and we hope to maintain this contact and find ways of developing relationships. Some of the connections also reinforced relationships with people working in Africa that I had made when I was studying in France. Eg Mama Kouyate working in Ougagougou, Burkina Faso. EVERY YEAR, EVERy DAY, I AM WALKINGt was made especially for the Festival but it will be performing in South Africa at the Baxter Theatre , Cape Town in 2007 as well as at the Main Festival at the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown
Grant Year : 2006
Profile :
Gender :
Mobility project
performance of the Magnet theatre in African Theatre Festival for Children and Young People, festival from the 9th to the 16th November 2006. ”Magnet Theatre created a new piece of physical theatre with Jennie Reznek, Faniswa Yisa, and musician Neo Muyanga. EVERY YEAR, EVERY DAY, I AM WALKING premiered at the Festival in Yaounde on the 10th November, 2006. Mark Fleishman – the director and Riana Alfreds – company manager also traveled to the Festival. The piece was very well received by the audiences and the other Festival participants
Session
Type of Project
Departure : Cape Town –South Africa
Destination : Yaounde- Cameroon (Central Africa)