Stephanie Grau founder of the Theater Zeppelin in Hamburg (Germany), a theatre school for more than 200 children and youth, visited DCMA in Feb/ March 2008. For one month, she donated her vacation to team-up with DCMA’s Said Vuai, a teacher in our Children & School Programs, to work on her ealier creation of the Jumping mouse as well as develop a new play.

During the course of that month, they developed “Sisimizi”, a theatre play with music in Kiswahili for children of Nursery and Primary School age. In this story a little ant lost its family and wanders alone and hungry through a forest. But then it finds a house full of food and manages to keep that food and fight of all the bigger animals that want to drive it out of the house and to find a new friend in the end to share all the bounty with. Sisimizi premiered on March 12th and has been a great success with the kids. Said Vuai will perform several times in the next few months before touring to the mainland. The dates for the performances will be announced later on.

During the same period, Stephanie Grau also performed her play “The Jumping Mouse” twice to visiting children from various schools around Zanzibar. Jumping Mouse is her adaptation of an Native American Tale of a little mouse’s adventures as told by Hyemeyohsts Storm.

DCMA wishes to thank Stephanie Grau for dedicating her time and expenses to come all the way to Zanzibar to assist in the further development of our children’s program