Presented by Rhodes University Master’s student, Tristan Jacobs (Hats, Stilted), Hanamichi is a thrilling theatrical hybrid, a dialogue between Western and Eastern theatre forms.
Presented by Rhodes University Master’s student, Tristan Jacobs (Hats, Stilted), Hanamichi is a thrilling theatrical hybrid, a dialogue between Western and Eastern theatre forms.
In content Hanamichi embodies Ted Hughes’s poem The Thought Fox.
By blending contemporary performance practices such as clowning, puppetry, mask-work and physical theatre with Tadashi Suzuki’s actor training method, the piece explores our interaction with inspiration.
Conceptually, Hanamichi explores the isolation, boredom and imagination that fluctuate in that writerly space, the nothingness in a blank page and also the infinity it represents.
The result is a rather explosive tension built out of visual delights and alarmingly effective humour.
The theatre will be transformed into a Butai, reinventing the traditional Noh stage. With original set pieces designed by multiple Standard Bank Ovation Award winner Gavin Krastin (Discharge, Rough Musick), Hanamichi displays artwork that moves through traditional Japanese print to comic-book manga via Visual Poetry.
It is foremost a collaborative event, one that is magically inquisitive; it is an imaginative storytelling performed on the Axis Mundi – that liminal space where reality shifts and warbles, with each breath allowing audiences a completely fresh experience of theatre’s endless possibility.
Hanamichi will be performed at PJ's at the following times: 10.30am on 2 July, 2.30pm on 3 July, and 8pm on 4 July.
