Frederick Philander
18 April 2008
Windhoek — The Youth Theatre Development Programme of the National Theatre of Namibia is now fully operative again after the December recess.
This was said in an Art/Life interview by a youth theatre consultant for NTN, Joseph Molapong, who has just returned from a three-week workshop excursion to the south of the country.
"We have been working with a number of out-of-school youths at Lüderitz, Gochas and Tses, all with community groups actively involved in the programme. The young people's involvement really gives me hope for the programme as well as youth theatre in the country," said Molapong.
According to him, the first week a workshop had been done with existing Angra Bay theatre group at Lüderitz.
"We did a five-day workshop and created a street performance play in which the community was very much interested. These workshops are primarily aimed at empowering the youth to become self-sustaining with regard to self-employment and self-employment projects," he said.
"We are in the process of opening up the programme to get greater involvement from other organisations and institutions such as the College of Arts and Assitej-Namibia with whom we intend holding meetings in the near future," he indicated.
At Tses a similar workshop was conducted with the Siyabonga community theatre group that created a play, "Sexy" dealing with the growing problem of truck prostitution in the south.
"Prostitution is indeed a growing problem in the south and needs to be curbed in order to help limit the spread of AIDS through sex, a big social issue taking into account no real development is taken place in that part of the country," Molapong, who said other workshops would be staged in other selected towns in the country.
Towns identified for the theatre workshop are Okakarara, Karibib, Epukiro, Oshakati, Otjiwarongo and Tsumeb.
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