Rhodes University Drama Department's annual festival of student work, Theatre in Motion, takes off tonight, 22 October with 'Ikaros', an interpretation of the myth of the boy who flew too high; 'Douche', which explores the toll keeping up male bravado can take; 'Lefetlho', which explores culture and identity through dance; 'Sipping Lapping Slap', an exploration of human attachment, and 'Deja Vu', about a little lady training to tell big lies.
Rhodes University Drama Department's annual festival of student work, Theatre in Motion, takes off tonight, 22 October with 'Ikaros', an interpretation of the myth of the boy who flew too high; 'Douche', which explores the toll keeping up male bravado can take; 'Lefetlho', which explores culture and identity through dance; 'Sipping Lapping Slap', an exploration of human attachment, and 'Deja Vu', about a little lady training to tell big lies.
Programme A features Honours and Masters choreography works and will be repeated Friday 24 October.
Programme B, which features physical and visual theatre by third year students and an Honours contemporary performance work, will be Thursday 23 October and Saturday 25 October.
The programme includes the physical theatre work 'shift', a structured improvisation on the idea of shifting; a visual theatre piece entitled 'Wearing a Face That They Keep in a Jar by the Door', five short stories broadly based on the themes of loneliness, hope and fantasy; and the contemporary work, 'Human Zoo: Exhibits h,i,j,k,l,m and n', in which people are exposed in an imaginary zoo.
Theatre in Motion is an annual festival showcasing examination pieces from young, innovative and talented performers in the Drama Department.
The programme begins at 7pm and is held in various venues in the Drama Department.
The complete programme follows:
Programme A – Wednesday 22 October and Friday 24 October:
Ikaros
Choreographed by Ananda Paver
Venue: Main Theatre Recess
Set to the mournful music of a solo cello, Ikaros is a dance-based response to the myth about the boy who flew too high. Using stylised expressions of flight and failure, Ikaros evokes the fantasy of flight and the beauty of the fall.
Douche
Choreographed by Sandisile Dlangalala
Venue: The Dock
Set in an abandon warehouse where four male characters meet to escape their daily lives. Douche explores what it means to be masculine and the obstacles that are faced in keeping up the male bravado. Performed to the bone chilling sounds of David 'Glover Lover' Glover and Steven 'Ellers' Ellery.
Lefetlho
Choreographed by Kamogelo Molobye
Venue: Box Theatre
“Life is a journey, and you add the traveller. Before you become, you must first go through”. Lefetlho is a dance piece that explores questions of culture and identity through the celebration of the performing body. It aims to create an experience for the audience, through the process of observing ritual performance, which allows them to be witness a transcendent space.
Sipping Lapping Slap
Choreographed by Lexi Meier
Venue: Main Theatre Recess
‘Attachments are tentacles in your brain, vomit seaweed in your belly button and screaming stringy jealousy… You revolt me as much as you compel me… You intoxicate me and it is beautiful… Tomorrow the hangover will be terrible.’ Sipping Lapping Slap is an exploration of human attachment and an investigation into the intimate relationships that dancing bodies must physically (and subjectively) enter into with the performance space.
Deja Vu
Created by Ester van der Walt
Venue: Movement Room
A tiny lady who has been told she is a terrible liar has trained for years to produce a fairly plausible lie. She knows that fiction in the theatre is dangerous, because “Fiction is the Truth inside the Lie” (according to Stephen King). So she will avoid creative thought and rely on fact alone to convey her falsehoods. You have seen this lady and heard this lie before, but you have never seen it all quite like this… almost, but not quite.
Programme B – Thursday 23 October and Saturday 25 October:
Shift
Devised collaboratively by Juanita Praeg, Sonja Smit and the performers
Text: Anton Krueger
Costumes: Illka Louw
Venue: Box Theatre
“You’re in another country, though the landscape seems the same… everything seems similar, but somehow rearranged there’s been a shift” … With special guest performance by Pumelela Nqelenga, this work allows space for moments of structured improvisation using Bogart’s Viewpoints to provide spatial and temporal responses to the idea of shifting as physical action, emotional landscape and socio-political impulse. Using ensemble and embodied performance, the landscape migrates between stillness and agitation to embody the instability of change.
Wearing a Face That They Keep in a Jar by the Door
Presented by Drama Visual Theatre 3 students
Facilitated by Liezl de Kock and Rob Murray
Venue: Box Theatre
Developing from its inaugural introduction to the Drama course in 2103, third year students have been exploring the techniques and potential of a visual and non-verbal approach towards making original theatre. From early investigations of movement quality and animation of materials (plastics, brown paper, and the like), through basic elements of puppetry and object animation, to neutral masks and latterly full character masks, the work has charged the performers to discover the truthful inner monologue, rhythms, tensions, and mannerisms to bring an object to life. Dealing with broad themes of loneliness, hope, and fantasy, the programme consists of five separate short stories or encounters between masked characters. Styles and approaches vary wildly – from an old couple dealing with the loss of their child, through an exploration of power within different facets of women, to an abandoned toy-chest that comes alive at night.
Human Zoo: Exhibits h,i,j,k,l,m and n"
Devised by the cast under the direction of Andrew Buckland
Venue: Box Theatre
The performance consists of a series of discrete episodes in which examples of homo-sapiens are revealed, observed and exposed in an imagined contemporary human zoo. The work explores contemporary performance as a medium in which the performer takes the central creative role of crafting individual modes of expression and is responsible for the content, the form, the structure and the style of expression as a means to discovering new truths about ourselves. The candidates are invited to take, and have willingly taken, risks in responding to deeply felt emotional and psychic sources.
Tickets are R40 full, R20 student
For more information contact: Prarochna Rama: p.rama@ru.ac.za
