Shimmer Chinodya’s internationally acclaimed novel of 1989, Harvest of Thorns, was adapted for stage and presented during the recent Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa) as a stage drama. It was staged to a capacity crowd on April 30, 2013 at 7 Arts Theatre in Harare, Zimbabwe. In the spirit of encouraging the notion of adaptation, I caught up with Shimmer Chinodya and talked about the goings on behind the scenes.
CHIRERE: Harvest of Thorns got so much international
recognition, winning you The Common Wealth Prize for
Literature (Africa Region) in 1990. What place does this novel hold in your
life and career?
CHINODYA:
It was my literary breakthrough. Mind you, I was only twenty seven when I
started it but few people realise it was my fourth
novel. It took me places, carved me a niche in Zimbabwean and world literature.
It was staple reading for a whole generation of Zimbabweans and foreigners. It
became an ‘O’ level literature text for Zimbabwe in the 90s and was taught in
universities and colleges worldwide and read by people in the street. Harvest’s
success challenged and spurred me to write more. I went on to write seven other
books of fiction, and two of them, Chairman of Fools and the Noma Award winning
Strife have been prescribed as ‘A’ level set texts. The success of these and
scores of my textbooks used in the SADC region made me quit my last job as
Professor of Creative Writing at St Lawrence University, New York, to return
home and take up full time writing as a career. And I haven’t looked back!
CHIRERE:
But you are not known for theatre…
CHINODYA:
Oh, yes, I do have some grounding in theatre. With sixty
published books under my belt, you bet there isn’t a literary genre I haven’t
handled. In my brief high school teaching spell I directed three plays for Open
Days. Exactly thirty years ago, in 1983, I adapted my dear, beloved first
novel, Dew in the Morning, into a 40 episode radio drama for the then Radio 4
and I even narrated, directed and co-produced it! Then in 1987, I wrote and
published a collection of Plays for Schools under the pseudonym B.S. Chirasha
and it was favourably reviewed by Stephen Chifunyise in
The Herald. I went on to do film work, winning the first prize in the Short
Films Scripts and Ideas competition in 1992 with my ‘Run, Boy, Run’ and
attending a Frank Daniel script writing course. I wrote the story and script
draft for the feature film, Everyone’s Child and the producer, John Riber,
invited me to direct it but I couldn’t because I had to take up the
professorship in the States so they roped in Tsitsi Dangarembga. Now, directing
a film, that would have been some adventure..! And I’m not scared one bit of
artistic adventures!
CHIRERE:
Adaptations are not common in Zimbabwe. How did you come up with the idea to
adapt Harvest for the stage? And why Harvest, of all your novels?
CHINODYA: There had been several offers to make a film
of Harvest and in 1995, the great Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety (of
‘Hyenas’ fame) and producer Tariq Ali had agreed to work on the project with a
company called Bandung. I even did the treatment but the fundraising hit the
rocks...Now in the last two years, I have been ardently watching Zimbabwean
theatre and I thought; some of our theatre is so tame, fireside or sitting room
affairs ‘manufactured’ for convenient NGO causes or topical interests with
short life spans and I said to myself, why don’t I do something really big and
beautiful and artsy with our history and our culture and our classics and POP!
Harvest came up! Because, many people say, the book is an epic and is so
graphic and it already wrote itself out as a drama.
CHIRERE:
What guided you towards which parts to bring into Harvest as drama and which
sections to leave out?
CHINODYA: The storyline
was not difficult to maintain. It was the compressing that was difficult. When
you have to tell a huge 50 year story in 90 minutes and using four different
genres; theatre, music, dance and storytelling, you have to be ruthless to your
own work. Some parts that worked beautifully as prose like protagonist Benjamin
Tichafa’s interior monologues or reminiscences of the 60s, for instance, had to
be sacrificed to save time. Perhaps Clopas and Shamiso’s romantic comedy took
up too much time. Benjamin’s predicament and mental turmoil could have been
explored more. But that is drama, you have to have a take, an angle and sacrifice
some aspects. With prose the canvas is much wider and the artist is freer to
indulge her/himself.
CHIRERE:
What was it like doing the adapted script itself? Was it like a rewriting or a
revision? Or, a new challenge?
CHINODYA:
It was fun all the way, but very tough - rediscovering my characters and interrogating
their predicaments, a quarter of a century later! The characters and issues emerged
like swimmers out of the blue, clearer, sharper. The cast members immediately
warmed up to their roles and I must thank them for their practical suggestions;
every evening we would whittle and refine the story. It was a real team effort.
I gave them the story and they brought their various skills to nurture it to
life. The real challenge was to blend in the various genres so that none of
them ‘bullied’ the others, and all worked together smoothly to create a fresh
and delightful product.
CHIRERE:
Harvest of Thorns is a novel partly about war and sometimes real combat. I
understand that you have never been a combatant. How did you come up with the
sections on contacts? Where did you get the confidence?
CHINODYA:
Memory and imagination, Mr Chirere! Remember I was expelled from Goromonzi in
1976 for protesting against black call up. I could easily have run off to
Mozambique and joined the ‘boys’. We heard the propaganda. We heard vivid reports
from the war zones. I heard the misplaced blasts at downtown Woolworths from
the Manfred Hodson Hall, college green and saw the fuel tanks blaze in
Southerton in the late 70s. We lost relatives or family members in landmine blasts
and ‘crossfire’ and witnessed atrocities from either side. When you saw in my
play that old demented woman dazedly picking up children’s body parts and
stuffing them into a paper bag after the Rhodesian bombings, the very next
morning after the infants had been gleefully chanting ‘The Chimurenga
alphabet’, that was a fusion of history and art.
CHIRERE:
This is a novel of 1989, how did it gain or lose from being adapted in 2012/13,
about 24 years later?
CHINODYA:
Artists must not always push their thumbs into the bowl of history. We tried to
capture things as they were right up to just after independence. The true judge
of history is time. Artistic distance often sharpens perception. I suppose some
people expected the ‘thorns’ to extend from the woes of the Tichafas to our
present day problems, the economic meltdown, potholes, poisoned environment,
endemic corruption and protracted political strife and insipid despair. I
didn’t want to overload the story. I opted to let Hope Masike jazz up the
ending with her wonderfully distilled lyrics for Benjamin’s ‘bornfree’ son,
Zvenyika in the last song – Zvenyika woye, wotoshinga mwanawe/ Baba havana
chavanacho/Mai ipwere/Wotoshinga Zvenyika mwanawe.
CHIRERE: You wrote this novel; Harvest of Thorns. You adapted
this story for stage. You directed the stage play. You have done three things
with this story. Don’t you think the product could have been different if
somebody had adapted and directed?
CHINODYA: Correction; four things. I also produced
it! I admit it probably might have been a different thing if we had brought
in other brains to work on it, but you don’t always get the vision and commitment – intellectual, financial and the time you envisage from your colleagues. Besides, who says a good
writer cannot try a hand at directing – many great African writers, Soyinka,
Ousmane etc, have done it. An excellent script is the ultimate director. I
approached quite a few people and was generally met with cynicism and
indifference or lukewarm commitment. So I said, Damn, I will do this myself, but
tap on the skills already within the
cast. Hope Masike is an accomplished musician, Maylene is one of the best
dancers in the country and Charles, Chipo, Bob, Everson and Sitshengisiwe are
experienced actors and for Christ’s sake, Shimmer has a superb story and great script so
we will make this a team product…You sometimes need that hardnosed egoism to
create something novel and shake up the industry.
CHIRERE: Doing the script is one thing but working with
actors is totally different. What were the challenges of identifying an
appropriate cast and working with it?
CHINODYA: Most of the cast was handpicked. I had seen them on
the stage or knew their work. I had to charm them into believing we were onto
something different. I tapped into their various talents. Everybody contributed.
The script metamorphosed, refined itself. It was a difficult and demanding
script, but we argued and interacted – and hopefully came out of it better
artists ourselves. You bet after this my own writing is going to be different…
CHIRERE: We notice that some people who were indicated in the
papers as being in this play were not there. Who really made the final line up?
CHINODYA: Actors Michael Kudakwashe, Notando Nobengula
and Caroline Mashingaidze dropped out because of clashes with other
engagements, but only after we had submitted their names to Hifa, so the media
inadvertently included their names in the project. I had invited Albert Nyathi
to be the producer; I am grateful to him for his apt advice in the two or three
initial consultative meetings we had, but he got tied up with other projects
and that left me with the additional task of actually producing the show. The
final line up was: Actors Charles Matare, Chipo Bizure, Everson Ndlovu, Sitshengisiwe
Siziba, Bob Mutumbe, Winnie Moyo, Tafadzwa Takadiyi and Vhusa Dzimwasha;
Musicians Hope Masike and her band members Elisha Hererwa, Blessing Chimanga
and Maxwell Mbukuro; dancers Maylene Chenjerai and Marvin Ndoro. And yours
truly tripled up as writer, director and producer.
CHIRERE: The mbira and songs by Hope Masike and company were
wonderful. How did you come up with all these?
CHINODYA: Hope Masike is an absolute beauty to work
with. She’s energetic, versatile, intelligent and professional. She won this
year’s Nama award for best female musician. She was my first recruit for the
project; as early as November 2012 we’d meet twice a week to discuss the
project and I’m grateful for her enthusiasm and willingness to hear me out which
gave me the confidence to think out the project to her. She (like all the
subsequent cast members) read my novel and liked it. I’d say to her, can you do these two chapters
in a two minute song or do a war refrain or back up this interior monologue with
sad blues mbira and she’s be back three days later with a couple
of tunes. I’d drive her out to Domboshawa or Goromonzi or Cleveland Dam and she
would pluck up Nhemamusasa, chimurenga, or mbira jazz and I would hand her a plate of mazhanje and
tease, ‘Njuzu munodyawo here muchero?’Her
music was not merely decorational, it became part of the story, part of the
drama.
CHIRERE: The story ends up in a happier way than the novel; a
new baby, a meeting and conversation between father and son… Were you answering
to some of your critics who might have told you that the novel has a sad ending?
CHINODYA: Art must ultimately uplift the human spirit. The
happy ending grew out of the comical slant of the play, the celebratory
reminiscences of the 60s, of the kwela dances, the ability of the soul,
particularly the Zimbawean psyche, to heal itself and regenerate. The last jazz
song united the whole cast, and jazz is not always happy or sad music, rather
it is mumhanzi wekugaya, a thinker’s
music, just like Zimbabwe is a thinker artist’s terrain.
CHIRERE: I saw that most of your cast are generally below age
40 and they didn’t directly experience the war of liberation and the music and
dress of the 1960s. How much work was done and what were the challenges?
CHINODYA: Most of the cast members had read the novel. The material
was mostly alien to them and I had to explain to them some aspects of the war,
for instance, the political ferment in the 60s, the war effort itself, Chinese
torture, the Chimoio bombings, the treatment of traitors and the human foibles
of the combatants. For nearly all the cast, the material was an education. But
Charles Matare, the main actor, who had previously excelled as The Colonel in Wusiku,
a play which earned him the Nama Award for this year, choreographed the war
sequences. I am in fact very grateful to Matare for ably assisting me in the
theatrical direction throughout the play.
CHIRERE: This show was advertised as ‘Zimbabwe’s first full
scale musical.’ I think that was misleading. 1. It was not a musical but a drama
with background music. 2. There have been musicals in Zimbabwe before. An
Offshoot of the Ecumenical Arts Workshop experiences was the widely-acclaimed
passion cantata composed by Abraham Maraire (Dumi). He called the cantata
'Mazuva Ekupedzisa' (The Last Days) in reference to the week of the passion of
Jesus up to Easter. Maraire's cantata was a true musical. The narrator sang his
part and all the actors in their various roles (Simon Peter, Mary the mother of
Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Judas Iscariot, Pontius Pilate etc) sang their parts. So
how was this error made and how could this have been taken by the audience?
CHINODYA: The error was a promotional oversight which I tried,
but failed, to stop and I am aware of it and apologize for it. I would have
preferred to call the show Harvest of Thorns Classic and will do so from now
on. Whatever it was we staged, dozens
of people phoned afterwards to say they enjoyed the show and the music and the
dance and said the story gelled beautifully and we should take it round the
world. Of course there were slips, areas
that need to be polished up. Mind you, that HIFA premier was the very first
time we got the thing together with script changes, props and lights and the
whole cast together on one proper stage, and if we present it again and again
we could definitely end up with a Zimbabwean gem.
CHIRERE: Why was there a decision for Hope Masike and band to
be visible throughout when the band was not physically interacting with the
acting? Why didn’t you keep the band behind the scene?
CHINODYA: That was a technical decision, Memory. We decided that
curtaining off the band every time they stopped playing, or having them slip
off stage would be too cumbersome, so we had them blacked out and the lights on
the action on the front stage when the band was not singing.
CHIRERE: You will agree with me that we need more of these
adaptations. What would you say to other writers who would want to do this with
their novels?
CHINODYA: It’s easier said than done. It’s damn expensive, a
no go area for ‘pump price’ artists. For the record; our revered Culture Fund
gave me not a cent – I have half the mind to approach and co-opt a committee of
established artists from across the arts to fund
the Fund itself! I am very grateful to HIFA, to Gavin Peter and Elton Mjanana,
in particular, for their generous vision, for believing in the project as
something that could showcase combined Zimbabwean talent and underwriting the
bulk of the budget. Adaptations need blocks of time – solid months of sheer
hard work – not the sort of thing to try when you have been grading seminar
papers all day, shuffling legal files or balancing company financial sheets or
running a multiplicity of small time errands like every other Zimbo. And you
need a broad enough vision and knowledge to see the interconnectedness of the
arts – music, drama, visual art, dance, literature and how one art form ultimately
feeds on the other. When the Book Café offered FREE screenings of a Miles Davis
documentary and the main 70s Woodstock film last year, there was not a single musician or writer present – just
one Thomas Brickhill and me and just a handful of other spectators. SHAME! Too
many of our writers are a lethargic lot – they don’t realize Miles Davis is a
haunting musical preface of Marechera, Vera,
Chiundura Moyo, Mungoshi, of us all full
time scribes. They don’t realize Woodstock is a great epic of history, the 60s
quest for freedom and human rights and the inescapable cannibalism of creativity.
For me Sororenzou Nyamasvisva and Maungira eNharira’s aching mbira captures and
evokes my tortured interface with the past and the present in my novel Strife. Hey,
maybe I’ll adapt that one next! Well, I can’t speak for my colleagues if they
want to try it but I wish them the best of luck – and stamina! It’s painfully
delicious fun, like all serious art, anyway. (The End)
