Harare's oldest theatrical group, The Repertory Players, celebrate their 80th anniversary this week and are marking the event with a re-staging of the two plays which the original members selected to launch their amateur dramatic society on February 17 1931.
The plays are a short drama, Fame And The Poet, by Lord Dunsany and Magic, a comedy written by the well-known author G K Chesterton. Both are directed by Sue Bolt and they will run from Tuesday February 15 to Saturday February 19 on the main stage at Reps Theatre in Belgravia.
The Repertory Players have staged theatrical productions almost continuously since that launch in 1931, in the early days using the old Duthie Hall or the Prince Edward School Beit Hall but later moving to a permanent base in a wartime cinema in the Harare Showgrounds. When this venue started proving too small and inadequate for the society's purposes, 'the Reps' undertook a major fundraising campaign in the 1950s and built their own theatre - the Reps Theatre that is today a well-known landmark in the Harare arts and entertainment world. This theatre last year celebrated its 50th anniversary as a home for Repertory Players' productions and also for a wide range of hire shows each year.
The 2011 version of Fame And The Poet features Musa Saruro, Fiona Garrity and Ryan Lawrence, while Magic stars Alex Fairlie, Stephane Thomas, Roger Fairlie, Marc Thomas, Kyla Render, Lara Hundermark and Andrew Hyde.
Performances of the plays will be at 7pm each evening and a special additional matinee at 2.30pm on Saturday. The February 17 show will be a gala anniversary performance and there will be no performance on February 18 as this will be a social anniversary celebration for members of The Repertory Players.
"The real fascination is for us to recreate the plays which launched the society all those years ago and to see just what it was that got 'the Reps' under way, with close to 700 productions having now been staged in those 80 successful years," said Sue Bolt.
Advance booking for the performances this week is open at The Spotlight, situated in the Reps Theatre foyer.
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