Copperbelt: Mining my Heart
You’ll be sorry you missed this one! Oh, dear readers, this was one that I’m sad to be reviewing late. It was an incredible play. Natasha Mumba absolutely blew this story out of the water! The cast and simple yet impactful set design made every moment the actors were on stage meaningful. I was blown away with the performance of Copperbelt. Every minute the actors were on stage was used to the fullest, even transitions and set movements were turned into opportunities for the characters to express internal conflicts with their body language. It was awesome to see a play so well directed. Thank you Nina Lee Aquino!
I’m sure if you’re like me dear readers, you have no idea what the Copperbelt is even about and are sitting there, reading this, waiting for the details! I really want to do this play justice, so bear with me while I try to capture its essence without telling you the entire story. The Copperbelt is a play about the Copperbelt in Zambia, the mining industry, and the over-reaching hands of other countries into what they believe they need. This particular story follows a Zambian family, the Kasubas, who own the copperbelt under their own mining company, Rising Sun. The overarching conflict of the play is that Eden (our leading lady) has introduced the idea to the Toronto company, whom she works for, that they make a deal with Rising Sun. The main conflict of the play is the Kasuba family’s interpersonal relationships. The deal between the companies is already in motion when Eden gets a call about her father having had a serious heart attack, and being asked to come home. We follow Eden home to learn about her family and why she doesn’t talk to them.
As I like to leave a little something for you to enjoy about the play if you get the chance to see it in a different city. I will only be focusing on some of the B-plot. The play opens in Toronto with Eden and Peter (her Caucasian boyfriend) arguing off stage about a business dinner that was anything but productive for Eden. Eden is working and living in Toronto for a mining company. Peter also works for this company; he is higher on the ladder and it shows, as he is always reminding Eden that “this is how business works” and that she is still new. Eden and Peter are dating and, yes, it totally is a conflict of interest, but don’t worry. Peter isn’t high enough in the company to make an impact on Eden’s career. Natasha Mumba and Rick Roberts are a fantastic duo for Eden and Peter. Mumba is a powerful presence on stage; she commands your attention when she speaks, which is Eden’s character. Eden wants the room to focus on her because even though she is a woman of colour she seems to hold a higher intelligence than whoever she’s talking to. Roberts is the older man, silver fox type, and he plays this role so well, even with the twist. The twist being that despite his best efforts, Peter is never the smartest in the room, and he doesn’t know it. The conflict between them is introduced before the actors even touch the stage, and it sets into motion what I could only imagine would be a crazy conflict of interest story before they break up. My first thought was that Eden could do better. Some time passes, and we are brought to the second fight of Eden and Peter, after Eden is called asking her to come home because her father had a heart attack. This second fight is about Eden’s family. Peter is upset that they’ve been together for two years and he still hasn’t met her family. Now, based on what Eden says directly to Peter in this scene, they’ve had this talk before. Eden is not close to her family. She barely sees them as it is. It’s understandable that Peter would want to meet her family, but I’ve just met Eden and I can tell her family isn’t a part of her life in Canada. Now, an important note here, he’s fighting with her about this when she has a plane to catch, and her father is in the hospital. To quote Eden, “Now is not the time Peter”, but she makes time and convinces him that they’ll discuss it again later. When the journey begins, the story truly picks up, as we follow Eden to Zambia back to her childhood home and her family whom she hasn’t seen in years.
Are you with me so far? Great! It gets juicier! The Kasuba’s don’t know that Eden is dating Peter. That’s right, Eden never told her family she was dating this man for two years. So they have no idea that Peter even exists when he disrespects Eden’s boundaries, and surprises her and her whole family at home, interrupting the heated family dinner in a very comedic way because, of course, Peter has to show up right when things are getting crazy. Otherwise, how would he learn that Eden is the daughter of Rising Sun CEO, Chimfwebme Kasuba? In Canada she goes by her middle name, Eden. Using her first name as a last name after she changed it in university. Two things Peter had absolutely no idea about when he made the trip to Africa. Don’t feel bad for him though, as he was sent there on business and decided he could also use the trip to surprise Eden. Yeah, he was business first the whole time!
So Peter and Eden’s relationship is rocky at best when we meet them but it honestly gets worse. Both of them have made questionable decisions in this relationship but the craziest has to be Peter’s divorce. Or I should say, would be divorce, as despite being with Eden for two years he still hasn’t finalized the paperwork for it. Wild! And this plot is secondary. Yes, you read that correctly. Now just imagine what the main plot is like! I’m sure you want to see it now. I mean I want to see it again after reading that.
Moving past Peter, we are introduced to Eden’s family: her mother, younger brother and sister, along with her sister’s husband, then finally her father, Chimfwembe. The audience is thrown into this family as Eden is thrown back into it. We are outsiders looking in paralleling Eden’s place in the family. Though she has a familial connection to them, she is also seen as an outsider at times because she left. And we see the effects of her leaving in her relationships. The most notable being that of her father. Chimfwebme is a very powerful man. He’s ill when we are officially introduced to him. He suffered a heart attack after all. But his presence wasn’t dulled. He may have been sick, but I think he’d still throw down if someone pushed him, and they wouldn’t have to push him that hard. I could see two sides to Chimfwebme. A father who wants to leave his family with a worthy legacy. One that makes them proud to be African and shows the world that they are a strong and independent family. And the second a man, who has lost sight of his legacy as many do when the money starts rolling in. Kapembwa Wanjelani plays Chimfwebme so well that I honestly had chills at times. He was a commanding presence in every sense of the term.
The story would be nothing without the incredible actors. I felt like I was peering into the lives of an actual family. There were scenes I felt like I shouldn’t be seeing because it was clearly a private moment for them, but there I was, enjoying the drama! It was so cool to get to see a live performance where I really felt like I was lost in the play. The thing that really struck me and totally helped bring the whole play together was the set design. The set was so simple yet so impactful! I was really impressed by how seamless the transitions between scenes were. The set used sliding walls to change between buildings and countries. The actors would slide the walls onto and off the stage as needed, but it never felt like a waiting period between scenes. Every moment the actors were on stage was used to express something. The music was minimal, yet it carried the whole play between scenes as well. For some transitions, the actors moved in slow motion to show the characters' internal conflicts as well as the passage of time. The lyric “we learn who we are” stands out to me as we learned who each character was in relation to the Kasuba name and themselves. I love the little details in theatre, the little details like a shaking arm or a small gasp gave the characters so much dimension. The struggles and stresses they deal with in the backs of their minds are things we never see, but in Copperbelt we did! They were displayed for the audience so that there was very little doubt as to what was happening in the back of their minds. They were all keeping up a facade that would dissolve during set changes. Even the scene changes that were quick and silent were just as impactful as the longer ones with music. I absolutely loved this play! Every part about it was bang on!
My favourite transition would be the one to the dinner scene. The actors were moving the walls, dining table and chairs to their marks, and the music was building, telling us that this was the dinner. This would be a dinner that the family remembered. The actors were moving in slow motion at times then continuing at regular speed. In the slow motion movement they expressed their internal conflicts, heads were in hands, arms were up defensively, or reaching beyond the table to things we couldn’t see! We could tell that this dinner would be remembered. Not just because it had more moving parts to get to, but because this family hasn’t sat down for dinner as one in years, and they were all struggling with their own problems before they even sat down. The moment they all slammed the chairs down and started the scene was jarring, but it said so much. ‘Here we go,’ ‘this is it,’ ‘back at this table again,’ and more! We just watched them struggling before this dinner and then, bam!- chairs are down, now they're in it. Whatever they were struggling with is pushed aside because this dinner is their new challenge. It was so good!
The Copperbelt gets five out of five copper bars from me. I cannot stress this enough: you will be so upset you missed this one! Please, if you can find another city to see it in, get your tickets now. That’s all from me today! This has been a Bubblez Review, until the next one.
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