Rooftop Promotions scripts to be available online

Harare- STUDENTS, researchers, thespians and scholars will soon be able to access old and new scripts of plays staged at Theatre in the Park online after Rooftop Promotions established a digital archive.

The project which is funded by SANORD will make it easier to provide scripts and information regarding the playwrights, cast and years in which the plays were produced.

Working on the project are Dr Nkululeko Sibanda (University of Pretoria), Dr Pedzisai Maedza (University College Dublin), Dr Kelvin Chikonzo (University of Zimbabwe), Prof Ashleigh Harris (Uppsalla University) and Daves Guzha.
Added to this, the digital archive will ensure that Zimbabwean plays can now be performed and monetized overseas.

Rooftop Promotions producer Guzha reiterated the importance of digitalizing their library dating back to Theatre in the Park formative years in 1986.

“The biggest asset for Rooftop Promotions it is actually the scripts and that’s where our value really is. To put it into context, were you to do a comparison with Market Theatre and 20th Century Fox and so forth they have over 20 years or 40 ago years scripts in their vault.
“We are really excited, we are taking the first step digitalizing content and second step, monetizing that particular content,” Guzha said.

He said the digital library would provide for copywright and storage issues.

“Our work or content from Theatre in the Park play didn’t cross to Europe or United States because it is not readily available. .

The process has been slow, because you don’t expect somebody to come from Europe to ask for a copy of the script.
“But once they are online it becomes very easier to share the content, it also makes it easy to protect issues of rights, issues of storage it becomes fluid and seamless,” Guzaha said.
According to Guzha some of the challenges of not digitalizing their archive was that they lost a number of scripts over the years.
“We are actually going back in time bearing in mind Rootftop Promotions started in 1986 and now to think of digitalizing that archive in 2023 you can do the maths in terms of how many years is that, but yes, we have lost some and we also trying to recover some.
“What has also been particularly difficult is remembering the years of production that we did the earlier work including who were the cast.
Remember we were not photographing everything not every play had photographs and not every play was reviewed we might have to come in to The Herald. Unfortunately, Parade (magazine) archive nobody knows where it is or Look & Listen archive nobody knows where it is otherwise it would’ve been easier to go to any of those archives and see what exists,” he said.
He, however acknowledged that they could also have made use of the National Archives and deposit their scripts periodically.

The database project is being led by Swedish-based renowned researcher Professor Ashleigh Harries of Uppsula University.
“I do research to make sure archives in African literature and culture are getting secured for the future. So, Rooftop has got this amazing collection of all of the play that have been put up here since its beginning but have been sitting in this container and eventually some papers just disappear,” she said.
She said so far, they had created an archive of over 280 plays that were performed at Theatre int the Park.

Some of the plays on the database include 70 scripts by Stephen Chifunyise, a foremost prolific playwright to emerge from Zimbabwe.