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.
An adaptation of Paul Gallico’s classic novella The Snow Goose. Tells the story of storm tossed snow goose who brings together a young girl, Frith, and a reclusive hunchback outcast, Rhayader, together. Set against the second world war and the miracle of Dunkirk. The Snow Goose is a story about bravery and friendship.
Produced by KBT Productions, directed and designed by Jenine Collocott (Sunday Morning, Dirt, A Day in the Desert, High Diving), performed by James Cairns (Dirt, Three Little Pigs) and Taryn Bennett (Kaput!), adapted by the director and the cast.
The story of Fiona and Andromeda who travel from the confines of the inner city to outer space and back… Along the way they encounter an Elephant that changes them and allows them to see the world differently and perhaps a little more.
A Day in the Desert is a collaboration between Jenine Collocott (The Snow Goose, Sunday Morning, Dirt, High Diving) from South Africa and Barbara Draeger from Germany. They studied together at Helikos International School of Theatre Creation under master pedagog Giovanni Fusetti – who is particularly renowned for his clown work. It was here that the first seeds for A Day in the Desert were planted. Jenine and Barbara then teamed up with the internationally awarded writer Nick Warren (Sunday Morning, Dirt) who came on board as dramaturge.
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.
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.
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.
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).