14 Apr 2014

Maitisong hall was lightened up by the Spiderman versus Voodoomaster play performed by Maruapula students on Saturday night, April 11.

The drama, directed by Clayton Ndlovu, was held played the theme: Challenges of Poaching. The story revolved around the central character, Peter 'Spiderman' Parker, who came to the African safari to take some time off from fighting crime in America.

He then encountered some poachers in the safari and managed to capture them. That created a problem with a local official who had been ordered by the Voodoomaster to look for 50 rhino horns. The Voodoomaster wanted to create a creature which needed the horns.

At the same time, government officials were double crossing the Voodoomaster with an Asian counterpart who came to Africa for the horns. The Voodoomaster killed the Asian counterpart and sucked out the Spiderman’s powers and put them into a suit.

As time went on, a young man named Thabo came looking for Peter but managed to find his suit only. He put the suit on and somehow possessed the same powers. In the end, he fought the Voodoomaster and defeated him. Thabo saved Peter but the Voodoomaster managed to escape after losing the fight. Finally, the legend of Spiderman lived on as he managed to destroy bad guys. 

The children and other people in the audience were amazed by what they saw and everyone who watched was totally engaged. 

The final fight scene was very well done and the stunts were breath-taking.  The entire Maitisong theatre space was utilised well. There were some emotional moments and some humour at the end.

However, it is a challenge to do a spiderman play because Spiderman is a flying superhero who shoots webs from his hands and swings on them but the play did an outstanding job to preserve the magic. The sets were great and the Voodoomaster stole the show.

The stunts were amazing to watch and the Yape acrobats from Zimbabwe made the play unique with their spectacular performance.

Ndlovu who is the head of drama at Maruapula School said he brought them in because of their acrobatic elements.

“We want to use theatre as tool of information dissemination and the main idea is to let young people know that poaching is a challenge,” he said at the end of the play. ENDS