An international Shakespeare collaboration is set to bring Scottish artists to the country, where they are set to showcase their work at the Easter Theatre Festival.
The festival is scheduled for next month in Blantyre.
The three artists’ visit to Malawi from Chameleon Theatre in Scotland marks the beginning of a major international collaboration centred on a new intercultural production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Amy Bonsall, Kate Stafford and Madeleine Rich, representing Arts D&G (Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival), will work in Blantyre with local performers Joshua Bhima and Robert Magasa under the partnership of Solomonic Peacocks Theatre.
Together, the team will begin developing the next phase of a cross-cultural production of The Tempest, which started as a tour of England and is expected to tour Scotland in 2027 before returning to Malawi.
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The exchange has been funded by the British Council’s Festivals Connect programme, with Solomonic Peacocks’ Director McArthur Matukuta securing the grant to support the international partnership.
Theatre lovers in the country will remember Stafford from her time as Artistic Director for Nanzikambe Theatre in the early 2000s, when she directed landmark productions, including Hamlet, African Macbeth, An African Dream and the popular comedy A Flea in Her Ear.
Stafford said yesterday that her return represented a significant artistic homecoming.
“We are very excited to be coming back to Malawi to work during the Easter Theatre Festival. It is sometime since I developed work in Malawi; so, this is a special project for me,” she said.
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She also said this would be the first time that “I am here as performer rather than director, which makes it doubly exciting”.
She said festival audiences would be able to attend a public work-in-progress sharing on March 29, 2026.
“Director, Professor Amy Bonsall, also has a long-standing academic and creative connection with Malawi. Her doctoral research led to the creation of Romeo ndi Julietti, a Chichewa translation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, performed by Mzuzu University students in Mzuzu and Lilongwe,” Stafford said.
During the Easter Theatre Festival, to be held at Portuguese Club, Bonsall is scheduled to give a talk on her recently published book, Shakespeare in Malawi: Power and Performance.
Bonsall maintains an ongoing research partnership with Zindaba Chisiza from the University of Malawi and, together, they have two books on Malawian theatre currently under contract with Lever Press, further strengthening scholarly and creative collaboration between people in Malawi and those in the United Kingdom.
Matukuta said Easter Theatre Festival, now in its seventh edition, was bringing big theatre back to the Malawian stage.
“This partnership places Malawi at the centre of a growing international theatre network and demonstrates the country’s continuing leadership in African Shakespeare performance,” he said.
The collaboration will continue in June this year when Matukuta visits Scotland for the Arts D&G Festival, marking the next phase of the cultural exchange.
