[Mb-hair] Re: HAiR in Africa

[David Erickson]

Hi John,
Thanks for your kind note and all of the encouragement.

Quickly a few answers ...
1.  The show will be in English.  Trying to stage a musical in
community theatre is work enough without trying to translate the show!
 We will probably through in some local jokes which are always good
for a few laughs and helps to pull the audience in a little closer.

2.  Yes, typically when in Africa, SA = South Africa

3.  Arusha is a growing town and I would guess that there are at least
1000 or more Expats living in and around the area.  We have everything
from Safari Operators, Farmers, UN staff, other NGO's, Health Workers,
and the list goes on.  The reasons people have moved here are to
varied to even begin to touch on in this short e-mail!  The New Arusha
Players as a group is just a bunch of people who are into Performing
Arts and theatre and this is the kind of town where, if you want to do
something like this you just go and do it and if others are keen then
they pile on!

4.  While I have personally not seen the show on stage, from our
research it's pretty easy to tell that the DVD is no where close to
the stage performance and I don't think we are locked into that as our
model.  It was just something to see and to help spark ideas. 
Besides, every time I mentioned the DVD people are more than ready to
remind us that the DVD is NOT the stage musical!

OK - hope that answers some of your questions.  We are still slowing
working our way through pre-production and once we get somewhere
interesting we'll post some pics and other fun stuff.

Best!
David


On 4/24/05, John Zuehlke <jpzuehlke at prodigy.net> wrote:
>  
>  
> 
> Hello David, and a warm welcome to the list. 
> 
> Best wishes for success for your proposed HAiR production in Tanzania!
> Sounds wonderful! 
> 
> In reading your posts, I had a few questions: 
> 
> 1. Is your production going to be performed in English, Swahili, some
> combination of the two, etc? If you do a Swahili language show, I hope that
> you can get a license to make an audio recording of it. 
> 
> 2. When you said that "no other African performances have been documented
> outside of SA", am I correct in assuming that you are referring to South
> Africa? 
> 
> 3. You wrote: "the cast and crew ... will be mostly Expats living here."
> Where is your group from originally? What motivated your moving to Tanzania?
> 
> You also wrote: "We had a meeting tonight to watch the DVD and listen to
> some of the Australian Cast Recording." I hope that the movie version does
> not lead your company astray. Quite a few of us, myself included, find the
> movie version to be quite inferior to the stage version. 
> 
> Once again, here's wishing you the best of luck in your endeavor. Hope you
> keep us posted regarding your progress. 
> 
>   
> 
> Blessed be with peace, love, freedom, and joy! 
> 
> John 
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