Pieter Dirk Uys Aims to Reboot Live Theatre with When In Doubt Say Darling

March 25, 2018March 25, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

It’s show time and Pieter Dirk Uys is on the march as he opens his latest show at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival followed with a season of the same show – albeit with a switch of languages from Afrikaans to English – with a stated mission: Live theatre has slipped down to the bottom of page 5 of everyone’s priorities. Let us reboot it back to page one!

He speaks to DIANE DE BEER about this time of performance:

The wonderful thing about artist Pieter Dirk Uys is his maturity, the way he is looks back yet keep his eye on the future as he confronts, charms and sometimes chills us with his stories about our past, present and what to expect in years to come.

“The age of 72 is a very specific place to be,” he says. “You can see your sell-by date. The audition is also over. The disease to please has been cured. You don’t have to prove anything; just improve. To quote from (a previous show) The Echo of a Noise: sort out your legacy. Make sure you flush before you go.”

That’s exactly what he is doing with Weifel oor Jy Twyfel: When in Doubt say Darling which plays at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival on March 29 and 30 followed by a season at Montecasino’s Pieter Toerien Theatre from April 4 to 22.

“The stage setting is an area filled with cardboard boxes, crates and black bags. Packing-up time. After 40 years I have a collection of props, costumes, wigs, eyelashes, hats and Koornhof masks among old Nat emblems. The show is about sorting out, and reinventing.

“Out of a box comes a prop. I give it a place in our history, and then it also becomes the centre of a new sketch, character, issue. I also weave throughout stories about my d—word: darling. And living in Darling: the kids, the community, the hope, the humour and the reality that if we do not look after our communities, the country will dissolve.

“Too much focus on government as a superman; no, government is the essential toilet paper to help us clean up and move on!”

As always, this one also started with the title which began in 1968 when he was the only one in CAPAB’s PR department brave enough to deal with Taubie Kushlick who was arriving to direct The Lion in Winter.

“Pietertjie-darling, she called me, and I was at her bek se call! Instinctively I knew how to handle her demands and maybe that was the beginning of the rest of my life as a one-man band. PR is essential. Diplomacy is a foundation to negotiation. When I kissed her goodbye, I said: ‘Mrs Kushlick, you call everyone darling.’ ‘Yes, darling?’ she asked. I said: ‘You must call your autobiography When in doubt say darlng.’ She looked at me as if I had coughed. Didn’t get it. Didn’t use it. Now I use it!”

Proof again, that his way of thinking is instinctive and is always there – in the early days as much as it is now. But now, many decades on, he can reach back and recycle the past while reinventing the future.

He understands that he has a broader horizon behind him than ahead and that’s why he dusts off those targets to remind audiences that bad politics easily reinvents itself as a democratic solution.

“In this new show I even do Piet Koornhof in a sketch from 1984 with his focus on illegal blacks, and then reinvent him in the same voice as an officer at Heathrow Airport, sorting out refugees and illegals who want to get into the UK – not unlike what we did in the old days of apartheid.

“Yes, it is a full English Brexit. I am moving away from the brittle political reflections. Let the younger generation sort out their future. I am already in my future!”

And as he points to his future, he also gives credit to his health. “If you can do it, get on with it. And so far, touch wood and stroke kitty, I still have the discipline and energy to tour with three 70-minute solo shows in the boot of my car. I also treasure my independence. I have no staff: I am my own stage manager, writer, director, performer (he or she) driver, publicist and sometimes my own worst enemy.”

“All you need to do is speak clearly and not bump into the furniture.”

His shows are all about the audience. He wants to make a difference to their view of life and their belief in themselves. No small task!

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It’s about laughing at your fear, confronting fear, giving it a name, understanding its lethal ability but never allowing it to win, he explains. “There is no time for knock-knock jokes. The reality of the absurdity around the obscenity of daily life is enough to fill 70 minutes. And then someone leaves my theatre and realises that they have laughed at something they don’t even dare think about.”

He points out that we have just again teetered on the edge of a cliff only to see “the Ramaphosa wind gush up and level the playing field. We must stop blindly believing that things will get better. They won’t. What you see is what we’ve got. Just make sure things don’t get worse.”

Instead of watching the world, he suggests we look in the mirror and ask the stranger his/her next move.

“Courage, honesty, compassion, healthy anger, information, respect and maybe a talent to amuse,” are his keys to success.

But not just any old talent. It is one that he has kept shining for more than half a century – and now sparkles more brightly than ever.

PS: ‘Evita’s Free Speech’ on You Tube every Sunday is now in Episode 132! On Daily Maverick on Mondays. She has 140,000 on @TannieEvita.

* KKNK: Thursday and Friday (March 29 and 30) at 6pm at Oudtshoorn Civic Centre

Pieter Toerien Theatre, Montecasino: (April 4 to 22); Wednesday to Friday at 8pm, Saturdays at 4pm and Sundays 3pm.

Staging a Change from Actress to Director

March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

DIANE DE BEER

Too few women directors’ was a topic of discussion a few years ago following the Afrikaans festivals. Things are changing with two new directors, both accomplished actresses – brought into the fold. DIANE DE BEER speaks to Nicole Holm and Tinarie van Wyk Loots about this debut directing outing:

For Nicole Holm directing wasn’t an option. “I didn’t like the idea that the buck stopped here,” she said about that role.

Yet that’s exactly what’s happened with her first stint as director. The text by Ingrid Winterbach, Ons Is Almal Freaks Hier, isn’t an easy one as it deals with Saartjie Baartman, a loaded issue in especially these fraught times, for women.

Ons is Almal Freaks Hier, as the title suggests, deals specifically with the Other, the way they are exposed and viewed by those who feel entitled and empowered – white people, to state the obvious. And then the text is written by a white woman and directed by yet another one, to further contaminate the issue.

Ons is almal freaks hier © Nardus Engelbrecht — Ons is almal freaks hier with Albert Pretorius, Kay Smith and Lee-Ann van Rooi. Picture: Nardus Engelbrecht

But she’s been fielding those missiles and believes the growth value for her as an artist has been extraordinary. What she didn’t expect for example was the isolation she felt before coming together with the actors while studying the text. “I felt as if I had to make these huge decisions without any input, no chorus,” she explains.

But once they moved into the rehearsal space and the collaboration kicked in with her cast (Lee-Ann van Rooi, Albert Pretorius and Kay Smith), she could tackle and get to grips with the process and the issues. Who has the right to tell the story, and could she take the Saartjie Baartman issue wider than it has been viewed before? Is it time now to grapple with the issues from a 2018 perspective?

Or should it be that of collaboration so that all the different perspectives are covered? In the final product it was exactly that, taking the issues from a new vantage, combining the past and the present and asking whether anything has changed for the victims/oppressed of the past?

The venue in Stellenbosch (which changes perspective again in Oudtshoorn) was the Stellenbosch Museum which, for Holm, brought in the historical as well as a theme of knowledge, which is part of any university. “It seemed as if many narratives were served, in retrospect; probably too many.”

That has all been part of the learning curve for this experienced actress who chose to wear this new hat albeit a touch gingerly at the start. One of the challenges in the museum was the way they presented the piece. On the first night, because the audience was led from room to room, it lengthened the performance by 20 minutes which added rhythm problems for the context and the cast.

But thinking on her feet, she quickly changed the format by the next performance to fit the scale and movement of the audience better. “Someone advised me that you could not expect the audience to move more quickly. They had to be allowed to follow at their own pace,” she said.

Speaking to Holm early in the Stellenbosch run, I was impressed by the way she reacted, how she was coping with the criticism, and how she experienced this first-time adventure. It wasn’t a comfortable ride because of the subject matter and the differing opinions about the performance, but probably because of her maturity as an actress, it was less daunting to deal with this kind of exposure and her decision to face it head on was a good one.

While she found the responsibility quite stressful, she also processed the joyful aspects of this new venture. In a way this was her narrative to tell with the collaboration of her cast, and while it wasn’t a familiar place for her to be, she revelled in this discomfort and the growth that followed.

Oudtshoorn will bring its own challenges, but at least this time she will be aware of the possibility of problems. They will be moving into a new space with very little time to acclimatise, which is the old bugbear at festivals, but her head space will accommodate everything thrown at her. She has got through it once, a second time round will be less stressful.

And even though this wasn’t a smooth ride – is there ever one? – the thing Holm discovered is that she wants to do this again.

Gif - Tinarie van Wyk Loots © Hanno Otto — Gif with Tinarie van Wyk Loots Picture: Hanno Otto

For Tinarie van Wyk Louw, the process was different and perhaps not as unexpected. She had walked a long road with her text, Swerfgoed by Bauke Snyman, which she had been involved in from the start as well as passing it on to different people to read until it finally reached the text market which has been set up to feed the Afrikaans festivals.

Once it had been accepted, Van Wyk Louw was selected to direct. “That was unexpected and a push that I needed,” she says hardly containing her excitement about the project ahead. Speaking to her while she was performing in four different pieces at the Woordfees, the bulk of the process still lay ahead.

Swerfgoed © Robert A Hamblin — Richard September, Andrew Laubscher, Nicole Holm and Anna Mart van der Merwe (front) in Swerfgoed. Picture: Robert A Hamblin

But she was ready to bolt. The script is unusual, she says, “out there” and her casts includes Anna Mart van der Merwe, Nicole Holm (yes the director of the first piece), Richard September and Andrew Laubscher, any director’s dream. And she is salivating.

Water and land is at the centre of the story and with a script which gave birth in 2009, it started happening long before the current crises. She describes the text as colourful, visceral and focused and she’s pushing it as far as she can. “I want to see how far we can stretch it,” she says.

If anyone is passionate about theatre it is this completely compulsive actress – or so it seems when you look in from outside. In the world of theatre, there’s more to that story of course. But when she speaks about theatre, you pay attention.

She’s one of a younger generation that fuels Afrikaans theatre and she believes that it is the stage that takes you into a personal space with universal stories. “This is where you find understanding, beauty and where you find yourself. It’s intimate and immediate, it’s raw and it has to be live.”.

Speaking about the process so far at that stage, she was excited by the cast and how they allowed her to be the facilitator, putting it all together. “The actor is the real tool, the one telling the story,” she argues.

She has handpicked those with whom she surrounds herself and for the design, she has the best with Jemma Kahn. Most of their props were purchased at the Milnerton Market, which she knows will add authenticity to the venture.

She’s also relieved that she is only committed to one other production (Gif with Mbulelo Grootboom) at the festival. This is rare for this prolific actress, who has found herself on a bit of a treadmill – which is difficult to disentangle once you’re there. It is the nature of the beast because of the precarious world of theatre, when you’re offered work, it is tough not accept it. It is a case of juggling and trying to balance as best you can but sometimes the pendulum swings too far which happened with her at Stellenbosch.

It’s an accumulation of work, years of running too fast that catches up with you, with often your health showing the first signs of strain. “It’s madness when the very thing that you love, destroys you,” she notes.

But she takes a deep breath, giggles about the production she holds so tenderly in her hands and concedes that fortunately, the more you surround yourself with people you admire, the more they inspire you. “We’re a team,” she says, “which means equality,” is how she speaks about the Swerfgoed team.

She’s been inspired by the generosity and the spirit and the lesson she has learnt is to let go and to focus on her new task at hand – directing.

Both of these will be seen at the KKNK from March 29 to April 4 with a run in 2019 at The Baxter for Swerfgoed backed by Kunste Onbeperk and Ons Is Almal Freaks Hier produced by Kunste Onbeperk and the US Woordfees.

Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking with Dorothy Ann Gould at The Market

March 19, 2018March 19, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

Pictures: Lungelo Mbulwana

DIANE DE BEER

The Year of Magical Thinking

Playwright: Joan Didion (based on her memoir)

Actor: Dorothy Ann Gould

Director: Mark Graham Wilson

Set and Costume Designer: Nadya Cohen

Lighting Designer: Thapelo Mokgosi

AV Designers: Jurgen Meekel and Andrea Rolfes

Sound Designer: Paul Riekert

Venue: Barney Simon at The Market

Dates: Until April 1

Death is something that affects all of us.

It’s a scary thought and probably why we don’t spend much time thinking or talking about it on a personal level. This is exactly what the extraordinary writer Joan Didion does following the loss of first her husband John Dunne, while their daughter Quintana is in a coma, and then dies a few years later, leaving a devastated wife and mother behind.

Described as an unusually close family threesome, that’s probably what turned this into such a dramatic life-changing trauma that propelled her to share what she had experienced. With this play, she talks directly to her fellow travellers, all of whom will experience this nightmare in some form or another – hopefully not many as traumatic as hers.

She compels her audience to participate, not allowing them to simply watch, but addressing them directly, almost in confrontational fashion, because she feels she must.

She can do this, because she knows in different forms, everyone sitting in the theatre, listening to her, will have to deal with death. That’s a fact. The only thing she cannot predict is how they will experience it and how their particular journey will challenge them. But sitting there, we all know that it will.

Even though she accepted her husband’s death intellectually once she had survived the initial shock, emotionally she imposed a full set of rules to live by to ensure his coming back. As ridiculous as that might sound, when you hear her story, the anguish and the horror she experienced with her partner and soul mate’s death while dealing daily with her daughter’s induced coma, the coping mechanisms that kicked in make perfect sense.

Who of us hasn’t woken up after a particularly bad day and for a moment believed that the bad stuff of the previous day was just a nightmare? Someone close to you dying can have a similar effect depending on your relationship.

Playwright Rachelle Greef wrote in Die Naaimasjien that death is like someone turning their back on you. It is the inevitability, the fact that we can’t control any of this and everything else that comes and goes with the finality of death that makes this such a taboo subject and, in this instance, such a riveting one. There’s not much said in the 80-minute-long play that doesn’t have resonance on some level for everyone participating.

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It’s a masterclass all round. Dorothy Ann Gould and director Mark Graham Wilson are solid gold as a team. He has a delicacy when directing while she slips into character in a way that pulls you directly to the centre of the story.

Gould had to battle the text, the American accent as well as the fact that she is basically doing this long monologue in which she has to engage an audience on a topic that’s deathly serious and scary. But being Gould, she grabs the text by the throat and becomes one with Didion’s sublime and insightful words in a way that holds your thought processes in almost vice-like grip as you navigate your own narrative of what this woman experienced in her life. None of us will be spared, that’s what we all know and are told by this wife and mother who is trying to make sense of her life – even when she has finally let her loved ones go.

The staging adds to the narrative with a visual reflection of her emotional as well as physical presence in the story as a backdrop. Depending on where you sit, it will have specific impact.

The stage is set almost horseshoe-style and for those sitting on the side, almost on stage, the actor draws most of the attention, while from the more traditional auditorium side, there will be a somewhat fuller visual picture.

Moving around the demarcated stage, Gould often stands closer to the audience than the centre of the stage, as if looking on as she talks about her life. The only physical aid is a chair that she sometimes sits in or stands behind.

Dorothy Ann Gould6

So subtly has Graham Wilson worked the production that the striking thing is the conversation that she maintains throughout. It’s as if someone is sharing a story about their life, sometimes -as a relief to both audience and narrator – she slips into a side stream that takes us away from the immediacy of what she wants to unpack. But then she faces the full force of her life and attacks it with the veracity of someone who has lived it.

The despair is devastating and yet, there’s a grace that accompanies her pain and her eventual understanding of what it means for her – and eventually those who are willing to share.

It’s tough but tackled with such dexterity, you want to be there to witness the fullness of what it means to live and love.

Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking With Dorothy Ann Gould and Mark Graham Wilson

March 7, 2018March 7, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

Pictures: Lungelo Mbulwana

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Dorothy Ann1 — Dorothy Ann Gould as Joan Didion

It took someone the quality of writer Joan Didion to get actor Dorothy Ann Gould and director Mark Graham Wilson together for a stage production following their much-acclaimed Hello and Goodbye with her husband Michael Maxwell, a decade ago. They speak to DIANE DE BEER about The Year of Magical Thinking that opens on March 9 and runs until April 1 at The Market’s Barney Simon Theatre in Joburg:

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

Thus begins the American writer Joan Didion’s haunting memoir of the year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The unexpected event ended a partnership of 40 years in a second, just days after their only child, Quintana, had fallen dangerously ill and slipped into a coma.

During Didion’s New York promotion of the recently published memoir, Quintana became seriously ill again. Following massive brain surgery, she died. She was 39.

Following these catastrophic events, it was the famed director David Hare who asked Didion to change her memoir into a play and six months after her second tragedy, the death of her daughter, she began working on the play. This time she was dealing with both the death of her partner and her daughter – a double tragedy.

Both director and actor knew this was the play that would embolden their stage partnership. It is said that The Year of Magical Thinking is a journey through that most universal experience of human pain: bereavement. And while it is frequently harrowing, it is also often amusing and, ultimately has been described as an expression of the power love has to give life meaning. All of that describes the remarkable writer Joan Didion and that is what struck both Graham Wilson and Gould.

How much can one person take? That’s the question Gould asked herself when reading the memoir. “We all cope differently,” she acknowledges but we all encounter these kinds of tragedies at some point in our lives.

It is the way Didion thinks, the way she escapes, the way she writes that makes this such a harrowing yet healing experience and just thinking about Gould and Graham Wilson tackling this depth of feeling is exciting. Watching them work, the detail and thought that goes into every breath, the way they battle one another to get to the truth, is extraordinary and the stuff theatre is made of.

“It’s the scale of the mountain of loss that’s daunting,” says Gould as she wonders about Didion’s husband’s death who she believes just “let go of the fence,” because he couldn’t cope with the sadness of his daughter’s coma. “Some people do that, and I think he told Joan that he was going, he warned her. But she wasn’t listening.” Gould was also affected by the ordinary circumstances in which tragedy occurs hence the opening stanzas of this marvelous text.

“She goes on a big journey with this lament but because she’s deprecating and wry, it is bearable to witness,” is how Gould explains it. She talks for example about the games Didion plays with her mind to cope, something we will all recognize.

How often do we not wish for a different outcome when we go to sleep and hoping for comfort when we wake up? “Joan wills things to turn around, believes she can shift reality with her strong will,” says Gould. We all recognise those games we play with the universe.

For Graham Wilson, one of the joys of the text is the perfection. “There’s not a word you want to cut, not a word out of place,” he says. Gould at the time we were speaking was still worried about remembering her words because we are speaking solo performance and 62 pages of monologue.

But we’re also dealing with someone who knows how to work through tough situations. She started memorizing the text earlier than she would have normally because she knew how important it was to get this one to a point where she didn’t even have to think about what she was saying.

It’s all in the text. The tension is held in what is being said, notes Graham Wilson, and as importantly being left unsaid. That was why every word is so important. “It isn’t a conventional play,” he acknowledges, but that is why this pairing is so valuable. Both these artists are risk takers, daring with their art and pushing the boundaries. Gould feels safe with Graham Wilson because they have worked successfully together before and that allows her to step beyond her comfort zone – to the benefit of audiences.

For Graham Wilson returning to stage after many years in the television world of soapies where he has been in the writing side because of family commitments and financial stability, this project is terrifying – but in the best sense of the word. “It’s such an exposed world,” he says of the stage. And he regards himself as very private. He likes being out of sight, but working in live theatre changes that.

To watch these two experienced artists work, delve into the work, manage every movement, every thought, how something should be placed, when she should turn and how to connect with her audience, is quite something. It’s an exciting and beautiful play written by a woman who has an extraordinary ability to express her deepest feelings in a most unusual fashion.

Gould in her own way has all those qualities on a different level and that’s why this is such a heavenly match. With Graham Wilson as her guide, her star gazer, the two of them will make theatre magic. All the ingredients are there – and this is not above expectation.

“I have to channel her energy of thought,” says Gould about the process.

This is only the second day of rehearsal and already they’re grappling with meaning and movement – the words flowing as if they come from the actress herself.

And she takes flight.

Sylvaine Strike and Jenine Collocott – Homage to Inspired and Inspiring Artists

March 4, 2018March 4, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

DIANE DE BEER

Artists are the people I love writing about most.

They’re creative, think out of the box, live to entertain and make people smile, think, dream, cry and much more – all at the same time. They teach, learn, tell stories, show us how to view the world differently, how to admire and accept or simply entertain to take us away from a harsh world – if only for a moment.

Talking to two remarkable women artists recently, I was reminded of the privilege to be given access to their work but also to the magic they achieve through blood, sweat and tears. And in the artistic world, especially at this moment in time, stage is probably bottom of the rung. Not for those of us who love theatre but for the multitudes who haven’t discovered it yet.

Jenine Collocott, artist extraordinaire and director, most recently formed a new theatre company Contagious with actors James Cairns and Tarryn Bennett as well as long-time Fringe producers Simon and Helen Cooper with the aim of “producing independent fringe theatre that brings the creative freedom, simplicity and energy of the festival circuit to mainstream audiences” – so wherever you are in South Africa, watch out for them on their current rounds with their much loved The Snow Goose.

She’s currently rehearsing for a clowning show for the annual Oudtshoorn-based Klein Karoo National Arts Festival at the end of March (29 until April 4). Even though she trained for this specifically in Italy, it is her biggest venture in clowning with a cast of seven, most of whom she hasn’t worked with before and most of whom haven’t done any clowning before, even though you can see why they were picked.

Included are actors Jemma Kahn, Roberto Pombo and actor/producer De Klerk Oelofse who got the whole thing off the ground as the producer.

Speaking to a terrified Collocott is what got me excited. Even though what she was doing was mammoth, she was as excited as fearful in what can be said was a healthy balance.

Not only did she have to take her cast through what could be a painstaking process of becoming a clown, once there and only then, could they start to workshop the performance. Fortunately, she is working with a bunch of actors who know how to create their own work and with her as the gentle yet guiding teacher, the results will be something awesome to witness whether they pull it off or not.

“I’ve never seen anyone be as caring with a cast as Jenine was throughout this challenging process and she didn’t know us. I will never forget it,” says Oelofse who is on a mission to develop a skill set that is as broad as it is empowering.

They are at play in full swing as I write and few shows at this year’s Klein Karoo National Arts Festival excite me more than this novel attempt at a family show with something completely different. Titled Babbelagtig (which means something like chatterbox-ing) the idea was also fuelled by Oelofse’s response to the recent Slava Snow Show.

As with most things Collocott tackles, it’s innovative, imaginative and invigorating. Can it go wrong? Of course, but that’s how artists grow their craft – by pushing those boundaries and taking leaps not of faith but of grandeur and bravery because they’ve worked their way towards this.

No one works harder and with more precision than Sylvaine Strike, director extraordinaire, who has built a reputation for her unique work which is remarkable in its individuality. And she’s constantly changing like a chameleon the work she chooses – and then she makes it her own. It’s her particular Strike style that can be adapted to work with any play she selects in a way that’s quite astonishing.

From her standout The Travellers and Coupe in which she also played, the recently revived Black and Blue in which she recast Atandwa Kani opposite herself to the two Molière plays The Miser followed by Tartuffe and now making a U-turn with Sam Shepard’s The Curse of the Starving Class, the road she travels allows her fans to jog along with excitement.

What will she do next and how is she going to approach this? Casting on its own is an art as she turns to Andrew Buckland for the extraordinary Tobacco and the Harmful Effects Thereoff and then adds extra bang with the exceptional Toni Morkel.

Gerard Bester, Brian Webber, Daniel Buckland and now Neil McCarthy have all taken on a special Strike hew when working with her. It’s as if her visual acuity allows her to use these actors, formidable as they usually are, in a completely new light.

With Buckland in Tobacco for example, she didn’t simply apply his amazing mime and clowning skills, she allowed the actor in him to flourish with accents of his many skills popping up to accentuate certain points she wanted to make.

If you watch her work, she plunges to a depth with detail that is quite exhausting but triumphs in the final production. Nothing escapes her eye which is both a visual and a visceral one and with her current Shepard production, she used music to tap out the rhythms for the actors to give their characters grounding.

“Shepard can be quite messy and chaotic,” she says, but in that is where you find the meaning and the magic of his message.

It is both what she brings and the way she does it that has netted her such a strong following. They know whatever she does, it will have intent and innovation. From the visual spectacle to the quirky casting, nothing is done without juggling many different balls to find the exact formation for this specific production.

That’s why a Strike show will sweep you off your feet – and then it lingers and plays with your mind.

Sylvaine Strike Pays Homage to Sam Shepard in Curse of the Starving Class

February 28, 2018October 1, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

Pictures: Antoine de Ras

Sylvaine Strike is presenting her latest work, Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, at this year’s Stellenbosch-based Woordfees (March 2 to 11). She tells DIANE DE BEER about her connection with the late playwright Sam Shepard, this specific play which is perfect for this time, and how she works with her merry band of actors to establish her Fortune Cookie Theatre Company brand:

And now this riveting production is finally also playing at the Baxter Flipside from October 15 to 27. For production and performances alone it is sublime and then there’s Sam Shepard’s amazing words and story:

Curse Poster

“We meet the Tate Family at their worst.”

That’s director Sylvaine Strike speaking about her latest work, Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, which premiered at the Stellenbosch-based Woordfees (March 2 to 11) before returning to Gauteng (still holding thumbs) and hopefully seasons around the country with this run at the Baxter Flipside the first of many.

“I’ve always felt that I completely get him,” she says about the American playwright who died last year and whose work is being looked at again as a result, with a few local productions planned, Honeyman’s Fools for Love recently at The Market one of them.

When Strike was asked by Saartjie Botha, director of the Woordfees, to do something for this year’s festival, she suggested a Shepard play and together they decided that they wouldn’t adapt but put on the play as is. Strike giggles at the synchronicity when she points out that their first performance was scheduled – to the day – 40 years after it was first performed on Friday March 2.

This is Shepard’s most autobiographical work about his father, someone who features in different variations in many of his plays. Writing was the way he described dealing with his despairing childhood. “Part of him was growing on me. I could feel him taking over me. I could feel myself retreating,” says the son in Curse of the Starving Class. The father might be at the centre but the playwright is reaching wide, as he deals with the little people, those targeted most cruelly by the greed of the day, people who feel they have nowhere to turn.

Sound familiar? Think of the poverty numbers in our country, those targeted most brutally by the greed of the ruling classes. Even when written more than 40 years ago, it plays perfectly for our times and not only because of Donald Trump. Curse of the Starving Class circles around a dysfunctional family fighting the financial hardships, the disintegration of their family farm.

“It’s the perfect nucleus family, a mother, father and two children, a son and a daughter. And they’re completely dysfunctional,” says the director, conceding that this is all right up her street – especially on stage. How did they get there? What has happened to them? These are all questions she investigates. Even the door to their home is broken down and the father feels he can’t protect his family. That kind of desperation and neediness comes with its own set of intruders, waiting for easy prey.

For Strike, it was also time to walk a different road and the way her mind works, moving from Molière (The Miser and Tartuffe in the past few years) to Shepard makes complete sense – the choice seeming almost as dysfunctional as the family in the play. But it’s Strike and watching her work is a theatrical experience – completely magical.

But don’t let the title of the play mislead you. It’s not all about the horror of the hardship, there’s always hope and with Strike and Shepard, there’s always a smile. Even though Sherpard is scratching around in a family’s wounds, he never loses his sense of humour and Strike makes light of things where she can with movement and certain characters who in their lewdness are also laughable in a good way. It’s part of her branding, a hopefulness with something mystical hovering.

Neil McCarthy and Leila Henriques in Curse of the Starving Class

Her cast is an indication of her intent. It’s a wildly talented bunch, including Neil McCarthy, Rob van Vuuren, Leila Henriques, Roberto Pombo, Anthony Coleman, Inge Crafford-Lazarus and Damon Berry, some of whom might strike a certain comical chord.

Playing the father is McCarthy, who returned to the stage with a flamboyant flourish for Tartuffe and asked Strike, following the hugely successful season and his reconnection with live performance, to consider him for her next work. She did, hence his casting as the father in a completely different role to his previous outing. And this time opposite Henriques, someone who was seen on stage more recently in the brilliant Florence . With her unique qualities, including a heart-wrenching vulnerability required for the mother in this particular story, it’s another casting coup. And the pair live up to all the promise magnificently and are a sheer joy to experience.

The two children – 17 and 15 – are played by relative newbies for this type of play, Pombo and Crafford-Lazarus, who were both put through strenuous auditions because of their pivotal part in the play which they passed with flying colours; with Van Vuuren, Coleman and Berry completing the cast with their own specific talents.

Nothing is ever random for this director and that’s what makes the casting so exciting and intriguing.

There’s something messy and chaotic about a Shepard play which is why the rhythms of these characters are so important. “It also gives the actors a sense of safety,” Strike says assuredly.

Music looms large in the rehearsal room. Shepard was as much a musician in his early days as a writer. It has been recorded that rhythm led him to character and with that in mind, Strike, always unique in her acting and performance methods, uses music to get her actors marching to the right beat. It’s extraordinary to watch as they work their way through a scene musically before they do it with dialogue. There’s as much meaning in the movement as there is in the text and that is as much Strike as it is Shepard.

Roberto Pombo and Inge Crafford-Lazarus as the children of the family in Strike’s Sam Shepard play

“I adore bluegrass music,” she says about her choices of Canadian band The Dead South and Australian Paul Kelly. “It is often profound,” she says about the genre, “despite its joviality and upbeat rhythms. Shepard’s writing is musical, he himself was a percussionist, and adored music, from Dixieland to Dizzy Gillespie – he was a great lover of jazz, and his work in many ways reminds one of jazz compositions. It is unpredictable, and yet impeccably structured.”

It is exactly the way she thinks about theatre and why she feels this bond. Listening and watching just a few scenes in early rehearsals, already it is the emotions that come pouring out and engulf you. That’s where the heart of this work lies.

Other influences include the paintings of Edward Hopper and the photographs of Gregory Crewdson, both of whom hold a certain desolation and deep feelings of loss.

Holding all of this together is her trademark and where Strike’s genius comes into play – gloriously.

One Night In Miami Not Explosive Enough In Text But Play Delivers in Exposition

February 9, 2018February 9, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

one night in miami 172 — David Johnson in Nadya Cohen’s world in A Night in Miami.

Pictures: Iris Dawn Parker

DIANE DE BEER

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI

PLAYWRIGHT: Kemp Powers

DIRECTOR: James Ngcobo

CHOREOGRAPHER: Gregory Maqoma

VOICE COACH: Iris Dawn Parker

LIGHTING DESIGN: Wesley France

SET DESIGN: Nadya Cohen

COSTUME DESIGN: Nthabiseng Makone

CAST: David Johnson (Malcolm X), Richard Lukunku (Jim Brown), Lemogang Tsipa (Cassius Clay), Seneliso (Sne) Dladla (Sam Cooke), Nyaniso Dzedze, Sipho Zakwe

VENUE: John Kani at The Market Theatre

DATES: Until February 25

One Night in Miami Captures Iconic Moments With Vibrant Young Cast

February 8, 2018February 8, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

one night in miami edit178 — Sne Dladla, Sipho Zakwe, Richard Lukunku, Lemogang Tsipa, Nyaniso Dzedze and David Johnson.

Pictures: Iris Dawn Parker

February is Black History Month in the US, Canada and the UK for the remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. One Night In Miami by Kemp Powers, directed by artistic director James Ngcobo, is The Market’s way of honouring this observance. The play is based on the fictional retelling of a night shared by four iconic men including Cassius Clay on the verge of converting to Islam and becoming Muhammad Ali; Malcolm X who was at odds with the Nation of Islam; soul singer Sam Cooke; and famous footballer Jim Brown. DIANE DE BEER speaks to the director about his choice:

It’s what the play represents and speaks about and addresses that so excited James Ngcobo. “The meeting is in what has become the iconic Hampton House Motel on February 25 1964. Cassius has just beat Sonny Liston to become the new and youngest world heavyweight champion. In the room are four hugely successful men but in their own country and with all their success, they’re still negroes. It’s a time of madness,” he says.

And from where he is looking now, not much has changed. The similarities between the US and here are obvious he believes and that’s why for example a musical like The Color Purple slots so easily into this timeframe.

Selecting this play while honouring Black History Month is obvious to him. “It’s a new play, was performed in London to great acclaim last year and is a first for the continent. The playwright will be attending a performance during the run,” he says quite nervously about that expectation. For him as a director, it’s also about growth. He talks about a basket of diversity which is what his programming is all about. “We can’t just be one voice.”

What he loves about the play, which is based on a real meeting at the time but is a fictional account of what happened, is that you have four famous black men who would have felt safe in this private space allowing them to speak freely. They love each other and thus spoke frankly, starting out quite jovially yet becoming more confrontational as the night wore on.

one night in miami edit140 — David Johnson (Malcolm X), Richard Lukunku (Jim Brown) and Sne Dladla (Sam Cooke).

There are quite a few tensions in the room between these friends because of the four, Sam Cooke was the one they all believed had a crossover voice – because of the music. “He is the one who would have been heard by everyone,” explains Ngcobo. But he was singing gospel and soul, and according to Malcolm X, not using his power to progress his people. Clay, on the other hand, was having his own struggle and the feelings in the room about especially the Muslim faith, were also bumping against one another.

Ngcobo also talks about the playwright’s ability to play with the celebrity status but also the concerns of the civil rights movement at the time in which this is set and how these famous men were being pulled this way and that – not always in their own interest but because of their popularity pulling power.

These are four men sitting with their own dreams – on the cusp of something we know about but they still have to live through. It’s intriguing stuff and with a powerful cast of young actors, all of them drama graduates, who have been put on this one stage.

In the course of rehearsals, Ngcobo brought in different specialists – Iris Dawn Parker and Dorothy Ann Gould for example – to help with the American accents as well as Gregory Maqoma to choreograph the fights as well as guide them with their movement. “I have never believed that a director can work in isolation,” he says as he points to long-time collaborators Nadya Cohen (design) and Wesley France (lighting).

What he wishes for the Market Theatre it is that it should be the destination of storytelling. “It’s never been about black or white or particular constituencies. I curate with my patron’s eyes. Some they will love and others not and that’s how it should be. We can’t please everyone and do everything.”

one night in miami edit114 — Sne Dladla as Sam Cooke.

“I’m so excited about this new generation of leading men,” he says about the young actors he is working with for this one. From David Johnson (perhaps best known for his role in local soapie 7de Laan) to Sne Dladla (most recently seen as Pop in King Kong), Sipho Zakwe (who wrote and starred in Isithunzi), Richard Lukunku (popular TV and film actor) and Lemogang Tsipa (starred in Craig Freimond’s Beyond the River), these are all young men building their careers and eager to be on stage.

“It’s great to be in the room with such dedication and determination,” says their director. “I know they will honour the work every night and that’s what I’m looking for. The Market is one of the stops in their acting journey and that’s as it should be.”

one night in miami edit98 — Nyaniso Dzedze as a Nation of Islam disciple.

Part of his mission is to mentor young people as well as doing work which allows them to test new skills and sharpen others.

The Market Theatre Foundation’s Sophie Mgcina Emerging Voice Award is barely five years old and already all its winners are making their mark as they continue to celebrate the indomitable spirit of the late artist, teacher and cultural activist, Sophie Mgcina.

The inaugural winner in 2014, Lulu Mlangeni has just performed in her new production Confined at the Market Theatre. Khayelihle Dominique Gumede, winner in 2015 is currently working in Cape Town as co-director with Neil Coppen in his first opera, Tsotsi, based on Athol Fugard’s work of the same title. Tsotsi which plays at Artscape from February 8 to 17 and will move to the Soweto Theatre at a future date.

The 2016 winner Thandazile Sonia Radebe, is also part of creative team of Tsotsi as the choreographer.

The latest winner, Lesedi Job who made her directorial debut with Mike van Graan’s When Swallows Cry at the Market Theatre in 2017, is currently reviving a new production of the work at the Baxter Theatre and will be directing at the Market Theatre soon.

One Night in Miami runs at The Market’s John Kani Theatre until February 25.

Some of James Ngcobo’s basket of diversity at The Market this coming year:

Winner of the 2017 Zwakala Theatre Festival and the 2017 Standard Bank Fringe Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival, the political thriller Dikapapa shines the spotlight on a struggle stalwart who becomes a traitor but is hailed as a hero in a democracy. Dikakapa is co–written by Teboho Serapelo, Isaac Sithole and Lebeko Nketu mentored by Kgafela oa Magogodi starring Karabelo Khaalo, Kholisile Dlamini, Mdengase Govuzela, Mduduzi Mdabuli, Mojabeng Rasenyalo and Thembi Qobo. (February 9 to 25).
Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking with Dorothy Ann Gould directed by Matthew Graham Wilson. (March 9 to April 1). Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. So begins American writer Joan Didion’s memoir. *
Lesedi Job directs Meet Me at Dawn by Zinnie Harris starring Pamela Nomvete and Natasha Sutherland. It is a modern fable that explores the triumph of everyday love, the mystery of grief, and the temptation to become lost in a fantasy future in March.
The Gibson Kente Musical 13 – 29 April 2018 ( the one that was staged at the Soweto Theatre) honours the father of township theatre, who will be remembered in song and dance by a remarkable cast under the direction of Makhaola Ndebele.
Athol Fugard’s Train Driver which has never been staged at The Market starring John Kani and Albert Pretorius from May 16 to 31. Kani has also written a new play with Michael Richard which will be staged with the two of them later this year.*
A return of Nongogo directed by James Ngcobo five years ago is restaged from June 15 to July 15.*
The acclaimed Die Reuk van die Appels based on the Mark Behr award-winning book, starring Gideon Lombard, directed by Lara Bye will run from June 13 to 24.*
Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love will have a female director and will run from July 8 to 29. (There’s a sudden interest in this late US playwright’s work with Sylvaine Strike directing Curse of the Starving Class for this year’s Woordfees which will hopefully travel to Joburg for a later run.)

The Colour Purple is Bold, Black and Beautiful

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ debeernecessities ~ 1 Comment

Pictures: @enroCpics

DIANE DE BEER

color purple7 — Shug Avery (Lerato Mvelase) leads the pack in The Color Purple

THE COLOR PURPLE

DIRECTOR: Janice Honeyman

CAST: Didintle Khunou (Celie), Lerato Mvelase (Shug Avery), Aubrey Poo (Mister), Neo Motaung (Sofia), Sebe Leotlela (Nettie), Yamikani Mahaka-Phiri (Harpo) and the rest of the 20-strong ensemble

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Bernard Jay

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Sarah Roberts

RESIDENT DIRECTOR: Timothy LeRoux

LIGHTING DESIGNER: Mannie Mannim

SOUND DESIGNER: Richard Smith

MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Rowan Bakker (and part of an orchestra of 8)

CHORO0EGRAPHER: Oscar Buthelezi

VENUE: Nelson Mandela at the Joburg Theatre

DATES: Until March 4

It’s always a gamble these huge musical productions but following Dream Girls and King Kong specifically, we have built up enough of a track record to understand that we can pull it off.

color purple6 — Didintle Khunou as the indomitable Celie in The Color Purple.

And as this one proves incontrovertibly, we easily have the depth of performance talent. This is BIG music, but what that means is that it gives a musical veteran like Aubrey Poo an opportunity to sing a number like Celie’s Curse as he has never sung before – and he has had many amazing moments on stage in the past, but here he lets rip with an emotional heft that is completely in sync with the character. On the other side of the spectrum, it gives a solo newcomer like Didintle Khunou the chance to shine as she takes Celie and gives the character life. Both make these moments majestically their own – again and again.

color purple5 — Aubrey Poo as Mister opting for change in Celie’s Curse.

As a musical, it is the perfect storm for right now. Based on the acclaimed Alice Walker story, the reach is wide and covers a multitude of sins, including substance, gender and domestic abuse so dominant in our current world which is what makes this such a relevant piece.

In our country with so much strife, a celebration of especially black talent in a world where the stories are still told from a predominantly white point of view is important and poignant, hence the magical reaction and participation of the audience. There was no doubt about their appreciation of what they were encountering on stage.

And rightly so. For audiences, this is a musical to get stuck into. It’s not about pretty songs and lively dancing. It’s grappling with intense emotions while telling a story of a young girl who after being raped by her father resulting in two pregnancies, is given to a brutal man who treats her in similar fashion. She’s his to look after and he can do with her as he wishes. She has absolutely no say in the matter.

color purple3 — Didintle Khunou as Celie (front) with Lerato Mvelase as Shug Avery.

Anyone who could bring some light into her days is banished, like her sister Nettie, with Mister (her husband) making sure she never hears from her again. It’s a miserable life still experienced by so many voiceless in this world.

While abuse tops the list, many other issues are dealt with, including refugees – a problem of our time, but as this one shows, nothing new. But even in the worst of times, redemption is a possibility and that is what gives this musical its power. People can step up and change and others can embrace the moment in all its authenticity. It’s a musical with quite a few teary moments – which is not the norm with these kinds of spectacles.

Speaking to some of the soloists beforehand, all of them commented on the music and how tough these songs are to sing. But they have stepped up and inhabited the music – all of them, soloists and ensembles included.

color purple8

From the chorus of three women (Lelo Ramasimong, Dolly Louw, Ayanda Sibisi) who throughout comment sharply on what is on their mind, to Khunou as the earnest Celie and Mvelase as the flamboyant Shug Avery, the show-stopping Any Little Thing by Sofia (Motaung) and Harpo (Mahaka-Phiri), which brings much needed light relief, while Leotlela taps into her emotions as Nettie when she tells her sister about her children, it’s musical heaven.

color purple4 — Harpo (Yamikani Mahaka-Phiri) and Sofia (Neo Motaung) performing the glorious Any Little Thing.

With a stunning set design, which is uncluttered and allows the lighting to tell magnificent tales, to the choreography that pushes boundaries, underpinned by the Honeyman staging which pulls the story together – which is no easy task – this is a sublime coming together of all the elements.

It is a musical where you have to engage, you have to listen to the lyrics and allow the performers to take over with their emotions in full flow. It’s high notes and low in both song and understanding, it’s detailed with heaps of humanity first trampled on and then celebrated.

And in the South African context, it’s about time. We have so many stories to tell and with our diversity at the forefront, it should cover the full spectrum and allow everyone to shine as they do on that stage.

It’s truly glorious to experience how we take a universal story and make it our own.

Halleluja!

The Color Purple – a Musical of our Time

January 31, 2018 ~ debeernecessities

TheColorPurple 07 — Africa Scene ensemble

Pictures: enroCpics (Corné Du Plessis)

The Color Purple; The Musical opens at the Joburg Theatre this week. Director Janice Honeyman and three of the soloists speak to DIANE DE BEER about the challenges of both the singing and storytelling in what has become an iconic production which many have attempted to stage locally – but this is the first time and arguably, the right time:

“Begeisterd” is what Janice Honeyman felt when she first saw The Color Purple.

Based on the classic cult novel by Alice Walker, she feels strongly that it speaks accurately about the black experience and reflects the influences so evocatively with the build-up and then final release of Celie. The young African American girl is the focus of this provocative story which deals with hardship and anguish yet finally joy, with abuse focussed on in the harshest light. It couldn’t reflect our times more aptly.

But, notes the experienced director, as a production, the storytelling leaves no room for manoeuvre. And that is what she loves best. The story is what propels the musical forward and that’s what she is intent on honouring in this production which has finally made it to local shores.

It’s about the top dog, people in power, feeling entitled to abuse those without voice. It’s a huge story that goes beyond gender and race and it’s a story of our time – as it has been through the ages. “It’s a story of the heart that has nothing to do with separatism,” she concludes as she gives a thumbs up to her talented cast – which she always is so good at putting up and then pulling together.

For all three the soloists, the joy and the challenges of this show go hand in hand.

TheColorPurple 06 — Shug Avery (left) and Celie (right)

In the pain of the story of The Color Purple, there’s joy, says Lerato Mvelase who plays Avery Shug, the jazz singer, who becomes Celie’s (Didintle Khunou) friend and support.

When retelling this story of violence and abuse written in 1982 and filmed by Steven Spielberg in 1985, it shines a light on the friendship and support of the women that drive the story strongly. Could it be staged at a better time? It’s now when women all over the world are reaching out to one another to break cycles of abuse that seemed never-ending looking back.

Bringing it closer to home, wi.th our high incidence of violence and abuse against women, this coming together of the women in The Color Purple tells a story many can relate to.

TheColorPurple 01 — Lerato Mvelase as Shug Avery (centre) with ensemble

But, says Mvelase, who we last saw as Petal in the glorious King Kong, it’s the music that has her excited and energised. “I thought I knew it all,” she explains. “I am personally challenged not only by the people in the room, the magnificent voices, but also by the music. I am singing notes I thought were impossible,” she says about her newly-discovered range.

“It’s humbling to work on your craft in a story that is still of this time.”

“It will help us all to heal, reflect and take something away to think about,” she adds. She thinks there are many things confronted in this story that we turn away from. “It’s an extremely emotional show that underlines that no matter what we go through, there’s always laughter.”

Questions arise from the show including those so part of the zeitgeist. “What has been done to our women? But also, what have men endured to become who they are,” she continues.

Her character, Shug Avery, is the one who best embodies these dilemmas. “She has been rejected by her own people but through her liberation, the other women are given the key. They don’t know how,” says Mvelase, “but once Shug has their attention, men and women start relating to one another.”

Attention is what the auditions brought a young Didintle Khunou who plays Celie in her first solo role in this big a production. But she’s not flustered and obviously up for the challenge. As a Wits drama graduate, she has maintained her singing lessons because she knows growing as an artist is a process and she wanted to work on her craft in all areas.

She’s excited about participating in this story of oppression and liberation which her Celie so embodies. And she loves the fact that in this time of strength for women, it is a musical and a story that shows exactly that. “That’s where the focus lies.”

TheColorPurple 04 — Mister (Aubrey Poo)and Celie, plus ensemble

Celie was raped and abused from the age of 14 – first by her daddy and then her husband who her father sold her to, called simply Mister.

In response to playing this aggressive, abusive character in these times of sensitivity, Aubrey Poo had to dig deep to find the source of this man’s hatred and harshness towards others. But with Mister coming from a place of slavery (and simply understanding how African American men are still treated in their own country), gave him understanding and a place to work from. It takes time for those things to change says Poo and this is how he crafted his character.

Like his two fellow artists, he is hugely excited about the score. “It’s a tough one though. It’s beautiful music but a challenge to sing. It’s quite high for my voice but very cleverly written,” he believes.

It’s interesting that after so many years (arguably decades), it is now that The Color Purple will finally be staged locally. It wasn’t planned this way, but that’s why certain stories are classics, as they stand the test of time – and can usually slot into a specific period. But, it could hardly be more appropriate than right now.

TheColorPurple 09 — Shug Avery (pink pants) and Harpo (Yamikani ). Celie is at the sewing machine. with the female ensemble in dance

And while the story is set in the US, the two countries share so many similarities in their dire record of race relations that this story plays out with authenticity.

But locally, the excitement of The Color Purple is also the cast. Many of these performers have been given their first big chance and just listening to some of the big sounds, it’s no great risk to predict that they are going to rock their audience.

And if by any chance you think the topic is too much to handle in a musical, think Sarafina. It doesn’t get much heavier than that.

Tickets are available now: phone 0861 670 670, go online at joburgtheatre.com or book in person at the Joburg Theatre box office. Theatre patrons can also pay at selected Pick N Pay stores. Show runs at the Joburg Theatre on the Mandela Stage until March 4.

He speaks to DIANE DE BEER about this time of performance:

* KKNK: Thursday and Friday (March 29 and 30) at 6pm at Oudtshoorn Civic Centre

Pieter Toerien Theatre, Montecasino: (April 4 to 22); Wednesday to Friday at 8pm, Saturdays at 4pm and Sundays 3pm.

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Too few women directors’ was a topic of discussion a few years ago following the Afrikaans festivals. Things are changing with two new directors, both accomplished actresses – brought into the fold. DIANE DE BEER speaks to Nicole Holm and Tinarie van Wyk Loots about this debut directing outing:

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Pictures: Lungelo Mbulwana

DIANE DE BEER

The Year of Magical Thinking

Playwright: Joan Didion (based on her memoir)

Actor: Dorothy Ann Gould

Director: Mark Graham Wilson

Set and Costume Designer: Nadya Cohen

Lighting Designer: Thapelo Mokgosi

AV Designers: Jurgen Meekel and Andrea Rolfes

Sound Designer: Paul Riekert

Venue: Barney Simon at The Market

Dates: Until April 1

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Pictures: Lungelo Mbulwana

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

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Pictures: Antoine de Ras

And now this riveting production is finally also playing at the Baxter Flipside from October 15 to 27. For production and performances alone it is sublime and then there’s Sam Shepard’s amazing words and story:

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Pictures: Iris Dawn Parker

DIANE DE BEER

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI

PLAYWRIGHT: Kemp Powers

DIRECTOR: James Ngcobo

CHOREOGRAPHER: Gregory Maqoma

VOICE COACH: Iris Dawn Parker

LIGHTING DESIGN: Wesley France

SET DESIGN: Nadya Cohen

COSTUME DESIGN: Nthabiseng Makone

CAST: David Johnson (Malcolm X), Richard Lukunku (Jim Brown), Lemogang Tsipa (Cassius Clay), Seneliso (Sne) Dladla (Sam Cooke), Nyaniso Dzedze, Sipho Zakwe

VENUE: John Kani at The Market Theatre

DATES: Until February 25

SPONSORED: American Embassy in SA

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Pictures: Iris Dawn Parker

Some of James Ngcobo’s basket of diversity at The Market this coming year:

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DIANE DE BEER

THE COLOR PURPLE

DIRECTOR: Janice Honeyman

CAST: Didintle Khunou (Celie), Lerato Mvelase (Shug Avery), Aubrey Poo (Mister), Neo Motaung (Sofia), Sebe Leotlela (Nettie), Yamikani Mahaka-Phiri (Harpo) and the rest of the 20-strong ensemble

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Bernard Jay

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Sarah Roberts

RESIDENT DIRECTOR: Timothy LeRoux

LIGHTING DESIGNER: Mannie Mannim

SOUND DESIGNER: Richard Smith

MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Rowan Bakker (and part of an orchestra of 8)

CHORO0EGRAPHER: Oscar Buthelezi

VENUE: Nelson Mandela at the Joburg Theatre

DATES: Until March 4

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