The African Theatre Webinar Series (ATW) is a collaboration between two friends employed as theatre pedagogues, Marion Kuester and Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare. Marion works with Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Rostock, in Germany and Mercy for Department of Performing Arts and Film at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. She is also founder and director of MEBO Theatre Documentaries Ltd. that is partnering with CHIPAWO Trust, an arts education for development organization founded in Harare in 1989, to create this online facility for Theatre Practitioners in Africa called the African Theatre Documentation and Resource Centre.
READ ON
A few sessions into the African Theatre Webinar Series, Marion and Mercy approached the International Drama / Theatre and Education Association (IDEA) to take up the series as one of its projects. This new development brought AWT international repute and ensured it a wider involvement and promotion of the event. Marion and Mercy are members of IDEA.
Project aims:
- To share concepts of African drama and theatre globally as part of Africa’s contribution to world sources of knowledge and practice in drama and theatre.
- To establish closer contacts, mutual, and professional relationships among drama and theatre practitioners in educational institutions in Africa and with the rest of the world.
- To contribute towards efforts to mainstream Africa and Africans into world debates and agendas on drama and theatre forms and practice.
- To contribute towards the decolonization hence liberation of Africa and the African mind from perpetual dependency on the West for cultural values and identities.
The concept
We met, we talked, and started working together; first, in IDEA, then, YOUNG IDEA, before we went digital. Friendship finally triumphed, and inspired us to explore the unknown and to take up new roles and responsibilities. To us the graphic of the two birds, a Crested Crane and an Eagle, national symbols for our respective countries of Uganda and Germany, takes on new meaning, refreshing our dreams and energies always. We wonder and ask each other
“How high do you want us to fly?”
“As high as we can fly together.”
“Is it possible to stand in the heavens with your feet planted here on Earth?”
“It’s possible. And we’re here to prove it.”
Initially, intended to be an international conference it soon became too huge a concept for such a meeting. First was the issue of the costs involved and then Covid 19 hit the world. We were paralyzed momentarily but, soon, realized we could still do something if not for anything else to keep our spirits alive. That’s how the African Theatre Webinar Series was born. In the end, we hosted 31 practitioners across 13 African countries as reflected herebelow. AWT was a two-hour session, and took place every third Wednesday of the month. There was only one break for Christmas 2021. After one year of ATW Marion and I decided to review the Series which will resume in another format. We also look to forward to hosting a physical conference in 2023 to review the planned book publication from the presentations.
