{"id":22201,"date":"2016-04-08T10:32:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T08:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=22201"},"modified":"2016-04-08T10:32:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T08:32:22","slug":"romeo-and-juliet-chichewa-version-premieres-today-in-mzuzu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2016\/04\/08\/romeo-and-juliet-chichewa-version-premieres-today-in-mzuzu\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Romeo and Juliet\u2019 Chichewa version premieres today in Mzuzu"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chichewa version of the long awaited Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet <\/em>romantic play will be premiered Friday in Mzuzu.<\/p>\n

The play will premiere this morning at Luwinga Secondary School in Mzuzu before going to Mzuzu University (Mzuni) Friday night.<\/p>\n

The play will then be staged at Chingalire Rural Growth Centre in Lilongwe where people will watch the production for free.<\/p>\n

Mzuni drama lecturer Misheck Mzumara, who also stars in the play said Thursday that they will only have three performances for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s not coming to Blantyre for now but plans are there for Mzuni to shoot the play as a movie on set not on stage but in a real setting,\u201d said Mzumara.<\/p>\n

He said freelance theatre director and Bilimakhwe Arts Artistic Director Amy Bonsall created the production whose Chichewa translation was made by writer Stanley Onjezani Kenani.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is part of a PhD research which Amy is doing. As Mzuzu University we are interested in her research as we would like to know how the translation of Romeo and Juliet <\/em>by Onjezani Kenani could assist in the learning and teaching of Shakespeare in Malawian schools,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mzumara said it was their wish to find support towards touring the play to many secondary schools in the country.<\/p>\n

The Mzuni drama lecturer played Romeo in the 2012 production but now he is playing Capulet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am really excited to work with Amy and Hussein Gopole again as well as students. The rehearsals have been massive and we can\u2019t wait to get on stage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Amy said she began her career directing Shakespeare and that she has always loved Shakespeare\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much you can do with it, it can be set in different times and in different places from the original play, creating a variety of meanings for disparate audiences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Amy said they thought of translating Romeo and Juliet to Chichewa after noticing that it was a good choice as it was on the curriculum in Malawi.<\/p>\n

She said there are so many themes that are relevant to Malawi that are explored within the play citing parent\u2019s disapproving of what their children are doing, different families fighting and the differences between the generation.<\/p>\n

She said she undertook some research with secondary school students, and former school students in Blantyre in 2014, who all said that studying Romeo and Juliet <\/em>in English was extremely challenging and that a translation into Chichewa would really help them to study.<\/p>\n

Amy further said that when she worked with the students at University of Malawi – Chancellor College in Zomba, their response was very similar, that they got even more pleasure from the play because it was in Chichewa.<\/p>\n

Kenani said he translated Romeo and Juliet <\/em>because Bonsall asked him to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI accepted the challenge because I considered translating Shakespeare intellectually stimulating. In the process, I learnt a lot about both English and Chichewa, especially because some of the commonest English words do not have their Chichewa equivalent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chichewa version of the long awaited Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet romantic play will be premiered Friday in Mzuzu. The play will premiere this morning at Luwinga Secondary School in Mzuzu before going to Mzuzu University (Mzuni) Friday night. The play will then be staged at Chingalire Rural Growth Centre in Lilongwe where people will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22203,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22201\/revisions\/22203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}