Bonfire adds their light to Bushfire Festival in Swaziland

By Chris Wildman

It was Bonfire actor Sean O’Connor who secured this exciting opportunity for six members of the Bonfire Theatre Company to run workshops and shows for the Swaziland Bushfire Schools festival

The aims of the four day festival were summed up in the Schools Festival press release:

“The Theme for the 2011 Schools Festival “Finding our Voices” stemmed from the rich oral tradition of storytelling in cultures all over the world, fuelling the event’s interactive approach and mandate to inspire and help young people find their voice. Bushfire believes that talent exists everywhere, and every child deserves the right to experience a rich and diverse access to Arts and Culture. By working with both local and international artistic role-models, Bushfire aims to help young people learn how to share their stories and develop their own artistic language.”

For four days we travelled the length and breadth of Swaziland to provide these workshops for rural school children and teachers who rarely get the opportunity to speak out and explore the performing arts.

Each day was opened by the amazing Pedro the Music Man, who taught them how to take the stem of a papaw leaf and turn it into a pipe that he claims is mankind’s first musical instrument. With stories filled with great charm and humour he  warmed the children up to the idea of making something out of nothing, a principle shared by Bonfire.

Bheki Mkhwane from Durban provided workshops on theatre skills while Jamaica-born dub poet D’bi Young elicited ensemble poetry-performance–theatre from groups of school children in an extraordinary short space of time. D”bi has agreed to provide workshops for Bonfire in the near future: a potential collaboration we are very excited about.

In our Bonfire workshops we exposed groups of 50 children to the many “forms” we use in narration and image making. As well being led by Heather Schiff our conductor, all four actors -Thando Ndoni, Sean O’Connor, Asanda Rilikityana and Lesley Bester – along with Chris Wildman the musician took turns to lead various activities for the first time in a Bonfire workshop.
At the end of each workshop Bonfire offered a short playback show where we were able to help reflect the collective experience of the day. The joy and inspiration these workshops provided is summed up in the images  on the Zakheni website (http://www.zakheni.org.za)

Thank you Bushfire Swaziland!

For more info on the Bushfire Festival  visit http://www.bush-fire.com/index.php?section=schools_festival.