Young Directors Season at Rhodes

The Rhodes Drama Department is presenting its annual Young Directors' Season (YDS). The 2016 productions promise three nights of mind-blowing theatre.

This year’s line-up has an eclectic range of plays with thrilling, humorous and gripping content: Reza de Wet’s Missing directed by Michelle Mosalakae, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive directed by Laine Butler and Pumla devised by the cast and director Masixole Heshu.

Laine Butler’s How I Learnt to Drive tackles a challenging subject matter. This is a play full of nuances, subtleties and contradictions when it comes to the theme of sexual abuse. Although very American, it's a universal story and particularly relevant to South Africa today.

Michelle Mosalakae directs Missing by Reza de Wet, set in a shabby little house on a smallholding on the outskirts of a platteland town in central South Africa the lulling sound of a Sesotho broom swiftly sweeping away the remains of manure on the stone floors can be heard.

In juxtaposition to that, the howling and ominous wind blows outside. The town is quiet. Still. Silent. A lustful danger lurks around salivating with desire to intertwine itself with the mundane and ordinariness of this quiet town. There is an undeniable brewing of magic and danger at the very centre of this play.

Masixole Zinzo Patrick Heshu directs Pumla. Outside the railway tracks Pumla traces a dreadful memory of herself. Pumla as a devised piece interrogates the challenges of a relationship that resulted in suicide at a train station, through the use of physical recollections, Pumla conjures up a path to attain rest.

YDS is being presented at the Rhodes Box Theatre, Rhodes Theatre on 18, 19 and 20 August.

Schedule of shows: Pumla – 7pm; How I l Learned to Drive – 7:45pm; interval – 8:15pm; Missing – 8:45 pm.
The shows are 30 minutes each.