A searing solo theatre piece dramatizing the intersections between race, land and water in the urban United States, performed by Margaret Laurena Kemp (USA) & produced by The Mothertongue Project (Cape Town) for this South African run. Read more – ‘A Negro Speaks of Rivers’.
"After Cardenio", written and directed by Jane Taylor (Ubu and the Truth Commission), in collaboration with Gavin Younge, Aja Marneweck and Paper Body Collective, is an imagined reworking of the historically archived "missing" play, Cardenio, one of the last pieces Shakespeare wrote. The play was apparently based on an episode involving the character "Cardenio" from Cervantes' "Don Quixote". Read more – ‘After Cardenio’.
Through the subtle slow motion of the Bunraku-style of "Anubis", as well as the extravagant design and engaging sound world, Uta Gebert draws you into the visual theater. Anubis, the same God and judge of the dead, leads the souls to the underworld; this is visual theatre that highlights both an extravagant scenography and atmospheric sound world. Engrossing and unforgettable. Read more – ‘Anubis’.
Benchmarks is a small story of great hope and rebirth. A timid middle-aged clerk. A reclusive widow. A young Zimbabwean refugee. In the Mother City, three desperate and lonely individuals get drawn into an unlikely relationship that will lead them on a journey of discovery, companionship, tragedy, and reconciliation - one that will ultimately transform their lives forever. Read more – ‘Benchmarks’.
Devised Collaboratively by Athena Mazarakis and Renos Spanoudes, 'Blow' first performed to capacity houses at the 2010 Wits Drama For Life 'Sex Actually' Festival. This innovative piece is an investigation of functionality flipping into dis-functionality within the journeys of daily life: within the places where we love, live, hope and hurt. Read more – ‘Blow’.
A Butcher's shop. A retired ballroom dancer and his loyal servant. A slumberous parcel awaits to be discovered... The Dark Laugh Theatre returns with a mask show full of twisted contradictions, meat and meetings, rump and rambunctious play, laughter and slaughter... Read more – ‘Butcher Brothers’.
This is the story of a door. In front of the door stands the Doorkeeper. He guards the passage and holds the key. A voyage, a journey through one world into an unknown imaginative world, a rite of passage, a transformation. Mythical landscapes and enchanting universes unfold as the scripts of our lives are written, told and lived. Read more – ‘Door’.
elev(i)ate2 is a solo Physical Theatre work created and performed by Athena Mazarakis. This work was awarded the Silver 2010 Standard Bank Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival in the Physical Theatre Category. Read more – ‘elev(i)ate2’.
The Handspring Awards, launched in 2010 by Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, adds significant prestige and appeal to the Out The Box festival, for both local and international artists striving for excellence. This year will be the second of five annual competitions. Read more – ‘Handspring Puppetry Awards’.
In this multi-layered live performance art installation a performer moves for the benefit of a taxidermy dog in order to elicit a response. The work is a response to Joseph Beuys' "How to explain pictures to a dead hare" (1965), and is both humourous and disturbing. Read more – ‘How A Dead Dog Explains Soccer To Sonja Smit’.
In a timeless space, a woman sets off on a shapeshifting journey meeting arctic creatures, and the untamed forces of Nature. Inspired by Scandinavian and Greenland landscapes, Snell's shape-shifting physical theatre piece combines multi-media imagery and sound with the subtleties of physical movement and searing emotion. Read more – ‘Inua’.
Iqonga, initiated by UNIMA SA and now a project of the Handspring Puppet Company, provides a platform for experimentation in short pieces by diverse emerging and established artists wishing to test out new ideas in the field of puppetry.
Read more – ‘Iqonga’.
A cabaret clown noir spectacle, as not yet seen on South African stages. It is a universal story of love and abuse underneath the guise of a second rate carny sideshow act. Read more – ‘Kardiavale’.
Kismet is an exploration of self in a post 1994 South Africa, as a brother and sister try to propitiate their provocative past, their prolonged prejudices and their imminent, personal perditions. Read more – ‘Kismet’.
The Handspring Award winning company, The Space Behind The Couch, would like to invite you to come spend some time in the Touxflouwe Estate on the top of the hill... the Madame of the estate may have been dead for hundreds of years, but she still takes the time every night to make sure the servants aren’t slacking on their duties. Read more – ‘Madame Touxflouwe’.
Massacre de Mueda brings the most prominent East-African masking tradition, Mapiko, vividly to life in this vibrant and exciting music and dance performance. The group takes the concept of mapiko to a wholly new level, interpreting the dance with minimalist instrumentation and modernist elegance. It is experimental, but spiritual; rarefied, but wholly carnal. Read more – ‘Massacre de Mueda’.
Created by 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for Theatre, Janni Younge, Ouroboros is a tale of dreaming and the cycles of life. At its heart, it is a love story between a dancer and a poet finding the courage to commit. Read more – ‘Ouroboros’.
"Outside In" is a masked journey that lives at the heart of South African culture today. Masks that borrow from a mixture of European and African styles will offer the audience new perspectives on their own lives and the world around them. Laughter and imagination will open the door to a new world of possibilities. Read more – ‘Outside In’.
"PARAdistinguidas" is a startling dance and live art installation, and the latest in the series of "Distinguished pieces", produced by La Ribot since the 1990s, a project which has had a great impact on the performing and visual arts world. Lasting from 30 seconds to 7 minutes, the pieces were short solos, adaptations of concepts, poems in motion, or living pictures performed by the artist herself. Read more – ‘PARAdistinguidas’.
Sometimes, in war, famine and radical times of change, there is someone still standing. And sometimes, they are not alone. Amongst the dunes of post-2050 earth a mirage of humanity glimmers in the heat. Read more – ‘Planet B’.
Neville Tranter, considered one of the world's finest puppeteers, presents "Punch and Judy in Afghanistan", which preserves the fun and directness of Punch and Judy plays while exploring a more profound theme: what happens when naivety and cynicism meet? Read more – ‘Punch and Judy in Afghanistan’.
After his beloved grandmother's death, a man has to stare down the eyes of
the Wolf in his grandmother's closet before he can finally say goodbye to
her. In this process he is enveloped and immersed in the disturbing and
complicated web of realities and illusions of his past, and he finds that
saying goodbye means having to renegotiate who we are. As the secrets of his past reveal themselves, this dark humoured story takes a sinister turn. Read more – ‘Red’.
A once-off performance translating the idea of 'sampling' to theatre. (It borrows the concept from music, where sections of songs are used as instruments to create new songs). GIPCA fellow, Sanjin Muftic will create a text-less combination of gestures, songs, movements already performed by his group of 6 actors to create a new story for the audience. The performance will be further discussed in the "Thinking out the Box" Conference, Thur 8 September, 14h00.
Read more – ‘Sample’.
The Last Man Standing hails from Kenya, and is the tale of a brave wildebeest called Mara. Mara goes through the most trying moments in her life, ending up as the last carcass - (BONES). The story is told by BONES in 2070; and through a letter written by the Mask in 2010 warning of the pending danger caused by climate change years before the wildebeest were wiped away. The story takes the audience through the life cycle of the wildebeest, and is full of unbelievable events, struggle, bravery, feast, famine, life and death. Read more – ‘The Last Man Standing’.
This multi-media, multi-disciplinary piece of physical and visual theatre piece addresses all the ways in which we try in our lives. Whether it’s trying to be something we’re not, or trying a relationship, or trying a new culture or new language... Read more – ‘Trying’.
Using a physical theatre aesthetic, the five performers offer their personalities in spoken text and dance. It is a personal sharing in the public space of the theatre stage. It is at different times vulnerable, intimate, hilarious, uncomfortable and beautiful. Nicola Elliott’s trademark style of physical theatre casts the performers as lovable-yet-flawed characters and creates poignant moments in the stories created on stage. Read more – ‘Ways of Exposure’.
