By Donata Mpochela
LILONGWE-(Maravi Post)-With the artificial turf and floodlights installed at Madsoc Theatre in Lilongwe, Paragon Arts is bidding for gender superiority and daily situation humor in a comic satire dubbed “A Marriage Proposal” which happened on Sunday, February 16 2020.
A Marriage Proposal is a Russian act farced by Anton Chekhov written in 1888 to 1889 and first performed in 1890. It is a fast-paced play dialogue based action and situational humor.
A young man Lomov comes to propose his neighbor Natalya but they both keep on fighting on various topics.
But, Paragon Arts adapted the comic to Malawian context addressing what Malawians are facing such as politics, land issues, gender superiority which is bringing Malawians to laugh at some issues and get some sensitivities in a situational humor.
In an effort to speak to Paragon Arts Director, Philmon Kuipa said the play was once showcased but due to the request from people they decided to re-do it with current situations.
“This performance was premiered last year and we toured it to various places but through the request from Madsoc Theatre as they have opened their theatre season due to public demand we decided to re-perform it with creativity depending on the current issues that has been happening in our country,” says Philmon.
Philmon said people should anticipate a lot from them as they will come up with their own written cast dubbed ‘Prison Catastrophe’ which they are planning to premier it this year.
“We are here to stay as paragon arts and we want to give the best not just acting for the sake of acting with an aim of making money, we want to give the best because we are trained in the field of arts,” Philmon said.
The play has three actors who are award winning actors such as Beatus Msamange who was Ivan Vassilevitch, Miriam Phiri played as Natalya Stepanovina and Ibrahim Affia who was Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov.
Commenting on the play from one of the actors, Miriam Phiri said they were trying to deliver what people already know but with different eye.
“The message delivered in play was talking of politics but we couldn’t go straight to the point all we wanted was to give a different eye in order to open up peoples mind,” she explained while twinkling.
Looking at her explanations the play draws us its theme as it a cold play approached to marriage that has been common in nineteenth century Russia, especially among the wealthy.
However, the satire for this money-driven type of marriage, depicts the two main characters as excessively posh and desperately wanting to wed each other for economic security blind to the fact they would not get along well.
Miraiam explained:
“You see the beginning of our relations are fun, romance and flirtation, but the beginning of this relationship is all fighting, arguing and name calling.
“Ivan clearly feels some pressure to marry soon as he marks that he is already 35-years-old, a critical age and he hopes to begin a quiet and regular life with a wife.
“Chekhov, thus convoys the idea that we cannot look to marriage to make us happy, we must find happiness in ourselves, further we must marry for better reasons than for improving our financial status, we ought to marry because we are truly well-suited to our partner and they to us,” says Miriam.
She further said in daily lives looking at the depiction of land, politics and other things are all depicting gender issues.
“In daily life these all things are connected, the man who came to propose the marriage was trying to give an impression that a woman cannot possess land, undermining women as looked as inferior with a mindset that women do not have rights to inherit anything in life,” Miriam said.
She then encouraged people to embrace theatre because it one of the tool that informs, educates as well enlightens peoples mindsets.
The event was a stand-alone event with no other activity to spice it up because it was too spicy in itself as it made the audience to laugh and at the same time left mouth agape with an imagery of what could happen next.
