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.
Bar Flies
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.
This performance deals with global warming as a cause of climate change. The presentation is interactive, entertaining, fun-filled and suitable for children, teenagers and adults. It integrates creative dance, song and dramatisation, which seeks to “edutain” and makes information about global warming accessible and easy to understand. Research has shown that using innovative teaching tools, means that learners are more likely to remember and internalise the subject matter.
The presentation explores the causes, effects and solutions or ways of minimising global warming, in order to save our tomorrow. It will educate people about the role they can play in saving our planet. The presentation also shows how each person can help through changing everyday habits which contribute to Global Warming.
The presentation is a clarion call to every individual to save tomorrow.
A new play by Craig Higginson
First commissioned by the National Theatre, London, for the 2012 Connections Festival
Directed by Malcolm Purkey
Production Design Neil Coppen
Little Foot was first commissioned by the National Theatre, London, for the 2012 Connections Festival. Craig Higginson is one of ten writers from around the world participating in this prestigious festival, and Little Foot is to be performed at the National Theatre prior to the 2012 Olympics. The National Theatre has generously agreed to allow the Market Theatre, in association with the Grahamstown Festival, to put together a South African production of their own – a production that will be an extended version of the original play.
This powerful and poetic new South African play is situated on a farm in the Cradle of Humankind, where much of the world’s pre-human remains have been found. It takes the audience down into the vast network of caves where the three-million-year-old hominin Little Foot was discovered. Out of sheer co-incidence, the production will be released at the same time that Little Foot’s remains will finally be freed from the rock. It has taken thirteen years to extract the hominin’s calcified bones, using brushes and dentists’ drills.
In Higginson’s play, we experience the caves through the eyes of a group of young South African university students – who went to school together and are having a reunion on New Year’s Eve, exactly a year since they last saw each other. One of them (Wizard) brings along a new girlfriend from England (Rebecca). He wants her to meet his oldest friends, not suspecting that a terrible trap is being set for him. What starts as a practical joke soon leads to a series of events that appear to have tragic consequences. As the students delve deeper into the caves – and we travel ever deeper into their psyches and their shared histories – a Chorus of ancient hominins steps through the walls of the caves. The play finally dramatises the coming together of our most primal and contemporary identities
Little Foot draws on Greek theatre, Philosophy, Palaeontology and South African mythology to create a powerful portrayal of modern relationships. Not only does the audience come to a deeper understanding of their common ancestry, but the play powerfully illustrates how the best and the worst of us has its roots in the ancient past, and how these two capacities are carried through into our contemporary democracy.
Since we first learned to control fire, light has been used to satisfy our best and our worst impulses as a species. It is what we do with the light handed down to us that we define ourselves. The theatre – which provides a darkened space into which we introduce light for the telling of our stories – is surely the perfect place to explore these themes and concepts.
For this production, writer Craig Higginson and director Malcolm Purkey are collaborating with Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award-winner Neil Coppen to create a multi-media event that will include a composer, videographer, sound designer, sculptor, editor, choreographer, as well as a lighting, costume and set designer. Huge cloths will be used to create different spaces and textured surfaces, as well as being used for surfaces for video projection and shadow puppetry. The Chorus will be created using masks, sculpture and projection. In both content and form, this promises to be a unique piece of storytelling that will redefine the boundaries of contemporary South African theatre.
Previous collaborations between writer Craig Higginson and director Malcolm Purkey include the internationally acclaimed plays Dream of the Dog and The Girl in the Yellow Dress – both originally produced by the Market Theatre.
Performers
- Dylan Nicol Horley
- Jenna Dunster
- Phumzile Sitole
- Khayelihle Dominique Gumede
- Glen Biderman-Pam
- Mlondolozi Bradley Zondi
- Chorus – Kyla Davis, Jaques de Silva, Sibulele Gcilitshana, Peter Langa, Sello Sebotsane
THE MARKET THEATRE in association with DFL presents, THE LINE.
THE LINE is the culmination of multi-award winning Actor, Director Gina Shmukler’s Masters Research on trauma and theatre making.
THE LINE is a play about the nature of human and moments in time in South Africa. Having spent several months in the townships THE LINE is constructed from a series of interviews with South Africans involved or affected by the xenophobic attacks that took place in May 2008.
THE LINE explores the fragility of goodness and questions how the attacks were born, who is responsible, what makes good people do bad things and how one crosses the line?
THE LINE is written and directed by Gina Shmukler with music by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder and Production Design by Niall Griffin.
Starring Khutjo Green and Gabi Harris.
TACTICS is a collection of daring short plays written by young South African writers who have worked with The Framework.
Five short plays are performed by performers, they will play different parts, and the plays will be performed in a different order to create a completely new whole. In keeping with the Framework’s ethos, no two performances will be the same.
All the plays are multiply cast, allowing the actors to play different roles each time. Both actors and audience formulate relationships and meaning afresh at each showing. To this end, the actors have been Framework-trained, but not rehearsed, so that they have to thrash out their virgin choices before the audience.
The Framework’s team brings this new, totally edgy, intersection between text and performance in a style that demands the following of the performers: Play yourself, play the best part of yourself, don’t ever apologise and play to win.
- It is low cost: there is no set, no costumes, no lighting and no sound equipment. The performances can take place in any simple performance space, without having rehearsed in that space.
- Props are provided by the audience who are asked to bring things to give to the performers. These are supplied to the actor at the moment of necessity at the beginning of the act or scene – whatever they may be: a blow-up dolphin, an Alice-band, a laptop, a sock etc.
- Each actor has prepared two or more roles. Which of the two (or more) he or she will perform on the night is decided by a game of chance five minutes before the show.
- A multi-venue production style that revisits classic and other texts, in which the performance is informed by the venue, audience engagement and the performers themselves. No two shows are alike.
- The productions use adapted text, which is contextualised during performance. This makes it entirely of the moment. Its spontaneity allows each performance to be uniquely relevant for each audience and venue.
Designed by Jenni-Lee Crewe and Alistair Findlay, Performed by James Cuningham.
Mat is a successful photographer who has his life exactly how he likes it – ordered, neat, and beautifully composed – until the day his girlfriend tells him she is pregnant. In an attempt to process this disturbing information he goes out for a run. Straying from his regular route, he ventures into a strange part of the city where he makes a gruesome discovery that changes everything.
Comedy-drama. In a country on the Mediterranean Sea that has seen many decades of war, two brothers live a peaceful, unfettered existence. Then a foreign occupation disrupts their lives in unimaginable ways.
Kaput has played to many school audiences, including the National Schools Festival in Grahamstown 2012, with an over-whelming audience response.
Directed by James Cuningham (Jutro; Black and Blue; Sunday Morning), featuring Helen Iskander (Planet B; The Famished Road; Baobabs Don’t Grow Here), Taryn Bennett (Sie Weiss Alles; Doctor Collinger’s Funeral Services), Dorian Burstein (Pictures of You).