MBABANE – Emantjwele Children’s Theatre will be presenting their seventh production called ‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat’ from November 5 to 8, 2025 at the Eswatini Theatre Club.
According to the Artistic Director Frances Farrell, the Emantjwele Children’s Theatre will showcase the play as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Little School (the school all the children attend). She stated that they decided to present the play again, but this time bigger and better after they did the play for their very first show 14-years-ago. On November 4, the Emantjwele Children’s Theatre had a dress rehearsal at the Eswatini Theatre Club in Mbabane where they were doing final touch-ups.
‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat’ is the seventh production, some of her performance include; ‘Oliver’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’, ‘The Jungle Book’, ‘Annie’ and last year ‘Charlie and The Chocolate Factory’.
Frances mentioned that it consist of 34 children between the age of eight and 13 years and an adult. She stated that this was the first time an adult had been in one of their shows, Billy Motsi, who plays the role of Joseph , came to help with the singing and directing, but was so good that Farrell decided to cast him as Joseph, “ Billy’s performance has surpassed my expectations, but that you should come and see for yourselves” he said.
Frances added that this year was also the first time they would have musical accompaniment with the very talented pianist Simphiwe Mbhamali, who has worked side by side with the musical Director Thandiwe Motsi. The Emantjwele Children’s Theatre started by accident 14 years ago when Joy Farrell, the Founder of The Little School suggested to Simoline Chagwinya, a teacher at the school at the time and the previous musical director that she put on the play of ‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat’ with her class. Joy then suggested that Frances, her daughter, should make costumes for the play. The final result was so good, they decided to perform it at The Eswatini Theatre Club and at House on Fire .
The Emantjwele Children’s Theatre is named so as Gogo Shabangu used to call Frances’ children ‘emantjwele’ was born. Frances said the preparations for the show started six months ago, dedicating four hours a week to rehearsals and many hours behind the scenes with painting of backdrops, making of costumes and construction of props.
Show times are in November; yesterday and today at 6:30pm, tomorrow at 2pm and on Saturday, at 6:30pm. Tickets are available from The Little School
About the play:
‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat’ is a musical written in 1969 by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The show has very catchy music, which goes from lively and jovial, to serious, emotional and cleaver, complicated lyrics, which have really put the cast to the test. The show is based on the character of Joseph from the book of Genesis in the Bible.
The story is of Jacobs’s 12 sons, Joseph is his favourite son and Jacob spoiled him by giving him an amazing multi-coloured coat. This makes Joseph’s brothers very jealous of him and annoyed because Joseph also has dreams that he will one day reign over his brothers . The brothers devise a plot to get rid of him and at their first opportunity, they sell Joseph to passing merchants. Benjamin, the youngest brother is not part of this evil plot.
Joseph is sold as a slave to Potiphar, a very wealthy businessman in Egypt. Joseph is framed by Potiphar’s evil wife and gets thrown in jail, where he explains his dream to his fellow prisoners. Pharoah is so impressed, he gives Joseph a royal pardon and asks him to help Egypt through the predicted famine. Meanwhile, Joseph’s brothers are still in Canaan and starving, so they decide to go to Egypt to ask for help. When they get there, they do not recognise Joseph and he decides to play a trick on them to see if they are now honest.
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