Pillow Fort Productions

Pillow Fort Productions is an exciting new collective of Cape Town-based theatre practitioners brought together by a shared commitment to the development of quality theatre for the very young. Combining their skills in puppetry, children’s theatre, music and theatre making, they explore the power of the human imagination to transform the everyday into the magical. Director and performer Joanna Evans makes theatre for children of all ages, and recently won a Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award for ‘The Year of the Bicycle’ at the 2013 National Arts Festival, Puppetry Director Gabriel Marchand is one of Handspring Puppet Company’s lead puppeteers, Pedro Espi-Sanchis or ‘Pedro The Music Man’ (as he is known to children all over the world) is a children’s entertainment icon who has travelled the world as a storyteller and expert on African music, puppeteer and actress Asanda Rilityana recently performed at the Charleville World Puppet festival in the award winning ‘Sadako’ and designer Merryn Carver has been creating and designing puppets for three years and builds puppets for local TV show ZA News. The team came together in early 2013 when they were selected as the only non-European group to receive the Small Size Seed Funding Grant to make a new show for children under six; from this Patchwork was born! Pillow Fort Productions is currently a Mentee of the ASSITEJ South Africa Theatre4Youth Mentorship Programme. This programme is supported by UNESCO’s International Fund for Cultural Diversity (IFCD) and the UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.