Almasi Collaborative Arts Announces the 2026 Edition of Africa Voices Now!

 Almasi Collaborative Arts, Zimbabwe’s leading dramatic arts organisation - today announced the 2026 edition of Africa Voices Now!, its annual festival of new African plays, returning to the Jasen Mphepo Little Theatre in Harare from 17 October to 6 November 2026.

This year’s festival will present three brand new Zimbabwean plays in rotation, offering audiences a first look at original work that will undoubtedly become part of the year’s wider cultural conversation.

This year’s play lineup includes; 30 Acres by our 2026 NAMA Award-winning playwright Tatenda Mutyambizi, Shards by Cynthia Marangwanda, and Quixotic by Tawanda Vombo. Together, the three works offer a vivid and wide-ranging portrait of contemporary Zimbabwean life from land, legacy, existential crisis and youth culture.

Built over more than 14 years of intentional and rigorous developmental work, Almasi Collaborative Arts has become one of the clearest arguments for why Zimbabwe’s leading dramatic arts deserve structural support. Its work has focused on professionalising the sector through training, mentorship, global access, and meaningful artistic opportunity.

Co-founded in 2011 by Zimbabwean-American actress and playwright Danai Gurira, the organisation has trained more than 250 African artists, developed 31 new African plays, facilitated international fellowships and Masters Degree pathways for Zimbabwean artists, and created year-round artistic  employment for performers, writers, technicians, and crew.

Almasi’s ethos is built around the Zimbabwean philosophy of Kudzidza Hakuperi - learning never ends, and through training with the top artists from around the globe and intensive development, Almasi seeks to “Bring the African narrative to the Global Stage."  African Voices Now is a crucial component of that ambition. The structure Almasi has built enables the steady growth of prestigious, original Zimbabwean and continental African storytelling, helping to build a sustainable local entertainment sector.  

The 2026 announcement follows the breakthrough public success of the inaugural Africa Voices Now! festival in 2025, which brought Almasi’s long-standing developmental work into the public eye and earned two prestigious National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA): Outstanding Director for Leonard Matsa’s direction of Can We Talk? By NAMA Award-winning poet Batsirai Chigama and Outstanding Playwright for Tatenda Mutyambizi’s These Humans Are Sick. The first edition of the festival also demonstrated real audience demand, with sold-out  performances at the 60-seat Jasen Mphepo Little Theatre and an additional showing of Can We Talk? added to meet demand. Can We Talk? is now in planning for a New York production at the prestigious Public Theatre.