Sign-In
Cart
High Class Natives - The Ballroom Dancers & Mbira Players
Hardcover
General DramaGeneral EducationPlays
Publisher Price: $26.99
ISBN13: 9781965398319
Publisher: Masaka
Published: Apr 30 2025
Pages: 170
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Set in the charged twilight of 1970s Rhodesia, High Class Natives is a sweeping musical stage play that brings to life the inner struggles of the Choto family-torn between ancestral roots and Western aspirations, tradition and modernity, resilience and ambition. At its center is Majasi, a recently widowed elder whose rural homestead in Mhondoro African Reservation was set ablaze by Rhodesian Army forces. His wife was brutally killed, punished for the simple act of feeding guerrilla fighters who came seeking a warm meal and brief sanctuary. Displaced, grieving, and carrying the heavy weight of a crumbling world, Majasi finds refuge in Beatrice Cottages-the modest yet socially ambitious home of his eldest son, Rwizi.
Beatrice Cottages, an enclave of relative prosperity within Salisbury's African township, is a symbol of mobility and fragile hope-where lawn manicures and ballroom dancing lessons serve as armor against a society built on exclusion. But within the Choto home, fault lines begin to rupture. Rwizi's wife, Sally, elegant and refined, sees herself as ascending into a higher social caste-one shaped by European etiquette and sensibilities. In a moment of candor whispered across their bedroom, she makes her intentions plain: Majasi and his youngest son, Andrew, are not to overstay their welcome. Their presence, she insists, is disruptive to her vision of raising their six-year-old son, John, as a polished and cultured young man, free from the perceived backwardness of village life and tribal custom.
Caught between his reverence for tradition and the pressures of modern domestic life, Rwizi is paralyzed. His heart belongs to his father, the man who sold most of the family's cattle to put him through school, and who later loaned him the money to buy the very house Sally now seeks to keep free of rural clutter. Yet his loyalty to his wife and child-and to the aspirational, middle-class respectability they represent-is equally strong. What unfolds is a slow-burning domestic drama, steeped in cultural tension, political fear, and the aching dissonance of identity in transition.
Laced with stirring music that dances between the elegance of European ballroom and the soulful cadence of the Shona mbira, High Class Natives is not merely a story of a family in conflict-it is an excavation of memory, belonging, and the legacy of colonialism. It asks, with grace and power: What happens when the past we carry threatens the future we desire? Who do we become when the music of our ancestors plays in a room where no one listens?
Also from
Muronda, Alf E. F.
JULIET MUGOTI - Sango reRimuka: Sango reRimuka Does Not Eat Its Own Children
Muronda, Alf E. F.
Paperback
NATIVOS DE ALTA CLASSE Bailarinos de Salão & Tocadores de Mbira: Euro-Portuguese
Muronda, Alf E. F.
Paperback
Contemporary African Art Abstracted by Valentine Mutasa: A 20 Year Portfolio of Abstract Expressionism from Mbare, Zimbabwe
Muronda, Alf E. F.
Mutasa, Alf E. F.
Paperback
Also in
Plays
Four Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, a Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem
Miller, Arthur
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Paperback
The Laramie Project and the Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
Pierotti, Greg
Kaufman, Moises
Fondakowski, Leigh
Paperback
FRANKENSTEIN or The Modern Prometheus (The Revised 1831 Edition - Wisehouse Classics)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paperback
Four Major Plays: A Doll's House/Ghosts/Hedda Gabler/The Master Builder
Arup, Jens
Ibsen, Henrik
McFarlane, James
Paperback
A Doll's House and Other Plays: With Pillars of the Community, Ghosts and an Enemy of the People
Ibsen, Henrik
Paperback
KJV, Pew Bible, Large Print, Hardcover, Burgundy, Red Letter Edition (Large Print Edition)
Thomas Nelson
Hardcover
Our Town and the Cosmic One-Acts: The Long Christmas Dinner, the Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, and Pullman Car Hiawatha
Wilder, Thornton
Paperback
Five Plays: Ivanov, the Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and the Cherry Orchard
Hingley, Ronald
Chekhov, Anton
Paperback