Nkeze Mbonwoh
2 April 2008
The Social and Cultural Adviser to the South West Governor, Edwin Nkenya Ngwana, has urged actors and lovers of theatre arts to derive maximum benefits from the Ministry of Culture's Special Fund instituted in 2001 to support creativity and promote culture.
Mr. Ngwana was addressing an impressive audience at the University of Buea's amphi 150 B, 27 March, while he chaired manifestations marking the 2008 World Theatre Day. The Adviser attempted a definition of theatre as a "presentation of a play, comedy or tragedy, to pass on a message through actions and gesticulations with the objective to tell a story." He called on actors and dramatists to use the authors' rights corporation (SOCILADRA) to protect their works.
Mr. Lita Roger, South West Provincial Delegate of Culture, explained that like other arts, theatre results from creativity and remains an instrument of expression and education. And because no theatre would thrive without the audience, Lita called on the general public to support such works of art in order to sustain its growth.
The World Theatre Day was created in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI) at their Ninth World Congress. With its 100 national centres across the world, dramatists say ITI is an important Non-Governmental Organization enjoying formal consultative and associative relations with UNESCO. Actors are unanimous with the fact that performing arts contribute in enhancing peace as well as build harmony among peoples.
Three theatre groups thrilled the Buea audience during their 2008 day. The darling Buea University Theatre Group wove their tragedy around a hidden conflict between modernism and traditionalism as a sign of an irresistibly changing world whose train is difficult to arrest. More importantly, peace also won its war over the quest of power through yesteryears characteristic wars. An earlier comedy by the Salvation College Troupe plunged the public into unending laughter. Meanwhile the Alliance Franco-Camerounaise Theatre came out remarkably to criticise unfaithfulness that plagues many marriages today. Tafor Ateh came, in a solo outing, and kept the audience spellbound in a megalo-comic piece to point at promiscuous ills that surface in University milieus.
One major observation cut across the performances to prove that intellectual talents abound among today's youths and which talents need to be well tapped and harnessed to profit the actors and the entire society. That is why the Ministry of Culture is leaving no stone unturned to encourage artists through a special fund from which a dozen artists from the South West have already benefited.
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