Community Theatre Festival
As a generic term
A term used to refer to festivals set up to showcase work from Community Theatre practitioners and groups. There have been a number of such initiatives in South Africa.
See also Community theatre, Festival
Specific Community Theatre festivals
The Market Theatre Laboratory's Community Theatre Festival
This originated as the Fieldworkers Festival in 198*, but became the Market Lab Annual Community Theatre Festival in 1992. The project is intended to prepare and present the work of up to 50 community theatre groups and present a showcase of these in a semi-professional setting. It is put on annually at the Market Theatre Laboratory, Johannesburg.
See Market Theatre.
The Ikhwezi Festival and Zabalaza Theatre Festival at the Baxter Theatre
In 2011 the Baxter Theatre Centre changed the name of the Ikhwezi Festival to the Zabalaza Theatre Festival, with a new managing team, vision, format and programme.
Sources
http://www.baxter.co.za/about/zabalaza/
The Mzansi Fela Community Arts Festival at the State Theatre
Founded in 2007, this festival has had a Community Theatre component from the start, to showcase the work of all the community art groups involved in the Fieldwork Programme run by the State Theatre. The two-week long festival also involves masterclasses by individual artists from the arts industry.
In 2010, two groups that had been participating in the Mzansi Fela Festival since 2007 toured the townships in and around Pretoria with their own plays that they developed while in the Fieldwork Programme. Since 2011 successful groups have been given the opportunity to mount professional productions at the Momentum Theatre and the National Arts Festival.
In the future, we look forward to showcasing even more original works that the young writers are creating through the Fieldwork Programme.
Sources
State Theatre website[1]
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