Brigades compete in anti-AIDS competition

Jerry Bungu | Friday July 16, 2010 00:00

The winning group, together with three others will now take part in the semi-finals to be held in Gaborone on July 24, 2010.

Eight groups took part in the quarter finals, held in Molepolole last Sunday. The theme of the drama for this year is: 'Young, Gifted, and Inspired Youth Against Multi-Concurrent Partners - Break the Chain. The title of the play for Lobatse Brigades was: The Gift of life, which aptly portrayed the theme and how the youth could help in the fight against multiple partners.

The runner-up was Mahalapye Brigades with their play entitled: Sotoma wa Bofelo. They were followed by Tswelelopele and Barolong. The other four groups that participated in the competition are Zwenshambe, Kanye, Mosetse and Boteti.

Chief judge for the performances, Samson Setumo advised drama groups to follow the themes outlined in their performances. 'In most of the performances we were not seeing what to do to curb MCP (multiple concurrent partners),' he said. His emphasis was that performances should give solutions to a problem 'but what we saw was just disease and sorrow which may make us think that we are just dead without a solution.'

Setumo, who is a renowned arts performer himself said as judges they had observed that there were some movements that did not serve any purpose in the performances.

He also mentioned the use of a background chorus as one of the old fashioned ways of staging a performance as well as gesturing.

'There should be a natural way of gesturing employed so that people do not see the difference between fiction and reality. Our plays are too fictitious to be meaningful, thereby people do not derive lessons from them,' Setumo advised.