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Black History Month: new play rich in the symbols of rural African communities is food for thought




Black History Month

Seed Guardians
at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford
from Thursday, October 3 to Saturday 5

Review by JON LEWIS

Food for Thought

Seed Guardians
Seed Guardians

Mandala Theatre Company’s Seed Guardians, written and directed by Yasmin Sidhwa, with poetry by Jenny Lewis, is a new play rich in the symbols of rural African communities.

A grandmother originally from Zimbabwe, Grandma Seed, known as Gogo (Nicole-Rose Munhawa), who advocates on behalf of environmental groups against the malign influence of multinational agricultural chemical companies, is seriously attacked at a UK festival where she is a keynote speaker. An American-accented voiceover from one of these companies reads out business aims whilst the eyes on a white sculpted head glow red. It’s suggested that these firms’ activities in Africa are an evil, contemporary form of colonialism.

Sidhwa has written many scenes as flashbacks. One repeatedly haunting image shows Gogo when she was a painter working on an artwork depicting a figure with a seed-like face in front of a canopy of exotic plants, the seed’s mouth wide-open in a scream. Gogo, as Grandmother Seed, is transformed into the mythical figure of a seed guardian, a human version of Kew Gardens’ Seed Bank taking care of the world’s agricultural heritage.

Gogo’s granddaughter Zahra (Mya Fraser), like Gogo, is a community activist, volunteering as a manager at her local food bank meeting an increasing need after the pandemic. After the assault on her grandmother, Zahra becomes an amateur sleuth investigating Gogo’s assault. The apple does not fall far from the tree as Zahra becomes a different kind of food guardian, nourishing friends and strangers.

While the overall narrative is bleak - the culmination of themes and ideas found in previous Mandala productions – there is hope found in the ideals of the younger generation. Zahra, and her potential Deliveroo boyfriend Raf (Luis Ribeiro), are driven by a need to help others. Daniel (Onthium Klarcks), a refugee with a legal training from South Sudan whose mother and daughter have gone missing from a refugee camp, comes from a small village that relied on traditional farming methods, a connection across the continent to Gogo.

It's wonderful that the three young actors in the cast are graduates from Mandala’s young company; like the play’s subject, the company grows its own.



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