John Kundu Talks To Benne Banda

 

Benne - Right from the beginning people in Zambia have been programmed into thinking that the arts is something you do after a hard days work. The majority of the people think that it's your hobby or something that you do for fun: "You're going to play, when are you going to work!". It's not only a family thing, it's the way a community thinks. As a result it's difficult to get people to pay to see a show as people feel: "Why should I come and pay to see you play". It's difficult to get people to appreciate that this is an informal sector that can develop into a formal set-up, take in a lot of people and work at poverty reductions. I mean the two of us do nothing but the arts. We have families to look after. Its something that has worked but its just a difficult thing to do, there's not that many people coming out. Here people come to see the shows. Back home, it's difficult to make a living on theatre alone. That's why we do other things: Augustine presents a lottery show on TV and I present a storytelling programme for children to create other income. But still it all survives, some of the artists manage to stick in there and fight it out. To come here, for instance, It was difficult to raise funds because we were coming for one month. It had to take a foreign airline, British Airways, to actually sponsor the flights; we couldn't get money out of the local business houses. If you put something in, hats off to you! But up to date, we are here on a low budget. People didn't recognise the potential of putting anything into a project that was going to sell the country internationally. An audience of a million passes through the Fringe.

 

 

Benne - Back home (Zambia), we have very little formal training in the arts, especially in theatre. Theatre management skills, acting skills, script writing skills. People can only learn from experience, because they've written before, been criticised before then they get better. We are a good example of that, we have developed our own scripts, not out of having formal training in script writing but from encountering situations which we write about, presenting it to people and learning from their reactions. What we hope would happen is that institutions like Visiting Arts organise residencies for performing artists from Zambia and link us up with people in the UK so we can develop and exchange ideas. It would take some time to set up institutions in Zambia that would offer training... but its difficult to wait, as people need to be trained now.