A poignant, bunraku-style puppet play for older children and adults based on the life of Sadako Sasaki. At two, Sadako survived the Hiroshima atom bomb but ten years later developed leukemia. A Japanese legend tells: ‘if you fold 1000 origami cranes, your wish will be granted’; Sadako began folding paper.
We leave our children a complicated legacy, growing up in a world where they face the consequences of adults’ actions: war; nuclear power; global warming; HIV. Sadako’s experience transcends culture and period and is able to speak to a contemporary South African or French youth audience. Young people who have shifted from picture books to art galleries; from nursery-rhymes to pop music. They are ready for theatre that can offer them cathartic and transformative experiences; challenge them with profoundly moving and thought provoking ideas. Sadako is real theatre for young people.
Jittery Citizens perform a “Whose Line is It Anyway?” styles show. We play short form improv games based on suggestions from the students and teachers. Totally unrehearsed, totally unscripted, totally hilarious!
Jittery Citizens perform Long form Improv in which they create one long story using a series of short scenes based on audience suggestion. This improv format known as “Armando” starts with a storytelling-style monologue, based on an audience suggestion. After the monologue, players play improvised scenes inspired by the monologue, and the monologue may even continue, later on in the performance.
A Girl Called Owl charts a friendship that starts in the heat of the Overberg summer between two ten-year-old girls, finding them again six years later. Olivia arrives in the town with her Dad; she is the new girl, the quiet girl, the weird girl. Then she meets Kay, the girl with the scar. Horwitz performs over ten characters, from the two young girls and their teenage counterparts to both their fathers and a group of boisterous men. Owl is a story about climbing trees, punching boys and kissing girls, touching sensitively, and not without humour, on issues including: coming of age – identity and choice; teen sexuality; homosexuality; domestic abuse; being/feeling different; friendship; love; violence – physical/implicit; changing relationships with authority figures/parents/teachers. The lead character is a girl so the play may be classed under ‘women’s issues’. However, the way in which she relates to the men in her environment, and they to her, makes this play important for men as well.
Written and directed by Jon Keevy, performed by Briony Horwitz, with staging by Fiona du Plooy and music composed for the show by Brydon Bolton, A Girl Called Owl premiered as Owl in 2012, receiving praise such as ‘Horwitz delivers an enchanting performance. Her versatility as an actress is astonishing…moving and evocative.” (Cape Times); “… beautifully observed…totally delicious …” (Megan’s Head) and four stars from the Cape Argus. Since then it has travelled all over SA and at the 2012 National Arts Festival it was invited to the Brighton and Prague Fringe festivals. At Brighton it gathered more praise, including two 5-star reviews and a nomination by Latest magazine as Best International Performance.
Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, the winner of Sibikwa Storytelling without Borders Competition 2011 for Bohlale bja Tswene and other stories and the judges included Gcina Mohlophe. It was encouraging to see so many young entrants and the winner is only 18. “This bodes well for the future of storytelling in South Africa,” said Phyllis Klotz, the artistic director of the Sibikwa Arts Centre, which hosted the event.
Bohlale bja Tswene and other stories is a set of African folktales put together giving children and young people half an hour of exciting, energetic and funny African storytelling experience. The stories include life lessons and also help us understands why are things the way they are in this world that we live in. All the stories are told through the use of old age African songs, puppets, and visual arts.
Written by Clinton Marius and directed by Mpume Mthombeni, this is a heartwarming story about a young Zulu herdboy who learns that the little calf he loves is to become a gift for the king. It is about Nguni cattle and their role in African society, growing up, honesty, and doing the right thing.
The production is available in English or isiZulu, as a puppet show, and also as a stand-alone reading.
A barman, trapped by the codes of the bar that render him invisible; a flamboyantly macho cowboy, with a flair for the Argentine Tango; and a guarded woman, whose sensuous alter ego is released as she nurses her wine as if it were mother’s milk; all hover at the edge of existence, ever short of bridging the gaps between them. The one minute they’re keeping time to the music, the next they’ve slipped out of the real time of their unfulfilled lives and into the vacuous space of the bar. They flirt, fight, drink and forget, fuelled by the answers they find at the bottom of the glass.
Andrew Buckland directs the latest exciting offering by physical theatre performer Craig Morris.
Evil is attacking the City of Gold and stalking its citizens indiscriminately. Will the Fris Four, led by Captain Bliksem, be able to save them?
A heroic, physical hour of fun!
Untouchable Productions presents:
BLOOD ORANGE
a new work
Directed by Greig Coetzee
Performed by Craig Morris
Scripted by Greig Coetzee, Craig Morris & Troy Blacklaws
From the Novel by Troy Blacklaws
Greig Coetzee directs the latest exciting offering by physical theatre performer Craig Morris.
The story of Gecko, a boy who has an oblique, out-of-sync way of seeing the world, of his childhood among the green hills of Natal and of his jagged school days in the Cape, where the Simonsberg drinks the Blood Orange sun at dusk. James Dean and Wilbur Smith have two-bit parts in this drama that begins with man landing on the moon and ends with Mandela riding a mermaid to freedom. A zany “Catcher in the Rye“! Festival favourite Greig Coetzee is well known to Natal audiences, and has performed extensively here over the last decade. He has recently decided to devote more time to his first love, writing, and less to performance.
Craig Morris was schooled at Port Shepstone High before studying at Rhodes University under Andrew Buckland and Prof. Gary Gordon as a founder member of The First Physical theatre Company. Festinos will remember Craig from Attachments 1-6, and Hero (directed by Andrew) which performed at Hilton last year.
Troy Blacklaws is the author of the original novel Blood Orange. He was born in Pinetown, studied at Rhodes and now teaches and writes in Germany! He recently flew out from Germany to attend the premiere performances of Blood Orange in Grahamstown!
Three very distinctive creative voices have come together to create, in collaboration, what is fast becoming a contemporary Physical Theatre classic!
This is a tale that shows the cruelty of life, and how if you don’t respect life or don’t have a direction, you will not succeed. It tackles themes like abortion, unprotected sex with multiple partners, peer pressure, irresponsible teenage parenting, school drop outs and the importance of education in life.