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By KELVIN KACHINGWE
THE Lusaka Playhouse will today host to a memorial service for the late award-winning actor Victor Mweetwa who died on March 2 last year.
The programme, which includes a church service at the Lusaka Playhouse and drama performances by NAPSA Theatre Club and Lusaka Theatre Club, will start at 10:00 hours.
Also on the programme are speeches from the wife, Lusaka Theatre Club, NAPSA Theatre Club, National Theatre Arts Association of Zambia (Nataaz) and National Arts Council of Zambia (NAC).
There will also be visits to the Memorial Park Cemetery for unveiling of the tombstone before ending at his Ngwerere farm for lunch and refreshments.
Below are excerpts of the obituary the Weekend Mail wrote on Victor after his passing on last year.
It is not always that the Lusaka Theatre Club auditorium got filled to capacity whenever he appeared to act on stage, but when he appeared in front of the stage, motionless on Wednesday, the Playhouse proved inadequate to accommodate the sea of mourners.
In life, as in death, Victor Munsaka Mweetwa proved that he was a giant on-and-off stage.
“He was a friend to almost everyone. I don’t think you’re going to find someone who will have to complain about Victor,” veteran actor and director Bright Banda says of Victor, who he first met in 1988 during the Nataaz junior festival at the Lusaka Playhouse.
“I was adjudicating their [Arakan Secondary School] play titled Parents by the late Kwaleyela Ikafa. He was very open, obedient and dedicated, always following instructions of the director.
“He also did a lot in encouraging people to continue in the arts and I don’t know if there will be someone like him who will bring people into the arts, he had a large interest in theatre. Apart from NAPSA, he also acted with Tikwiza and Lusaka Theatre Club.”
Veteran playwright and director Sam Kasankha agrees with Bright.
“Among all the artistes I have worked with, Victor was one who was easy to direct when given a role to play in a particular production because he was a selfless and humble person who was ready to learn,” says the man, who is also known as Uncle Sam.
The tributes do not end there!
“Victor was very dedicated when involved in a production. He never complained when asked to re-do a part that is not well rehearsed…he was willing to learn all the time, especially, when he didn’t know how to pronounce a certain word.
“We were co-lead actors in a Cheela Chilala play Uncle James, where he performed so well. This production ended up at a festival in Maputo. He was a great talent and personality,” says actor, director and poet Nicholas Kawinga.
Certainly, Uncle Bright, as the soft-spoken veteran director is fondly called in theatre circles, is qualified to talk about Victor Mweetwa, who died last Saturday in the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) at the age of 43 and was buried on Wednesday at Leopards Hill Memorial Park, leaving behind a wife and five children.
A four-time Ngoma Award winner for Best Actor, Victor’s first award in the early 2000 came when Uncle Bright directed him in the lead role in the Cheela Chilala-written play Uncle James, which was originally titled Venom of an Angel.
Uncle Bright, a Ngoma Award winner for Best Director, again worked with him when he directed another Cheela Chilala-written play for NAPSA titled Dead Roots, which won him a second Ngoma Award for Best Actor, when he again took the lead role.
The same production won him the Best Actor at the 2007 April International Theatre Festival organised by Yezi-Arts Promotions and Productions.
Yet, the awards do not end there; he also collected two more Best Actor Awards for his lead roles in Chief Minister’s Daughter and Rufino’s Wife, which were directed by his close friend Eddie Tembo, another Ngoma Award winner for Best Director.
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