THE WIZARD OF OZ COMES TO ZANZIBAR! PROJECT MANAGER DIARIES OF AN OSCAR-WORTHY PERFORMANCE

Tanzania - Teaching & Education - Volunteer Teaching & Community Project in Zanzibar

Jul 20, 2010

Our Volunteers and Project Team in Zanzibar recently involved the local community talent and put on a dazzling show of The Wizard of Oz!

Project manager Toni and volunteer coordinator Becky share their stories with us from our Zanzibar Project...

THE BUILD UP
Hey thanks for all your encouragement guys!!
We are so excited about this, the volunteers are working on the costumes for the Tinman and Wizard just now, and today for our craft lesson in all 3 nursery schools, we had the children making poppies and flowers with tissue paper, paints and glitter and for the Emerald City backdrop we had the children putting painted green hand prints all over 3 bedsheets – man it was messy but so much fun!!

We are having a full rehearsal tomorrow afternoon for the volunteerss who are leaving this weekend, then a performance for the nursery school children on Thursday and the official village performance on Friday – Becky is doing a truly amazing job – the students have got so many lines to learn, and its all in english so they are all working so hard on it, we are really impressed with their dedication and wow, for people who have never been part of a play before, they are all doing such a brilliant and animated job!

Please do have a look at the Zanzibar FB page – we are desperately trying to get videos up-loaded [so watch this space]!
Thank you again and we will keep you posted!
Toni

FEEDBACK FROM THE ACTORS
We asked the cast to write a review of the final performance and to describe how they each felt about their experience of acting in The Wizard of Oz. Here are some examples:

Kassu (playing Tinman)
We performed on Friday at 4pm and finished at 5.10pm. It went very nicely and we enjoyed so much and the audience enjoyed too. For me the most important things that I enjoyed was when Mr Wizard gave me a heart that I had wanted and had much suffering to get and when I fell over and said ‘All hollow’. Another thing is when I saw my friends and my sister they were laughing a lot. When I was inside I felt nervous, but when my time came I felt wonderful because the crowd of people they were looking at us and I had been in anxiety and I was suddenly confidence and since this play I am very very confident because I stood in front of a crowd without nerves.

Laun (Scarecrow)
I enjoyed playing this character because he is funny and he makes me laugh. I had confidence during the play and feel it was success. I enjoyed a lot playing my character because I had never acted since I was little and my favourite part was falling down a lot. I find a lot of people watching me difficult but I tried to do good in front of the people. I learnt a lot of Wizard of Oz. I hope my dream is come true. I had dream to be an actor. Now I’ve got motivation.

Anna (Glinda, The Good Witch)
I was feeling good because I think all players are very happy from the beginning up to the end. For myself, I like to see the Scarecrow because he is interesting to me. And the most difficult in The Wizard of Oz is time because in the morning I’m going to school and in afternoon I will come back home. When I’m at home I would like to rest. So the time to go to rehearsal will come quickly. So this is the most difficult to me. In this play I learnt that the Wicked Witch is bad for society and there’s no place like home.