Ovation Award
Venue: City Hall
Next performance: 1 July 14:00
Interview
By Thubelihle Mathonsi
Saulspoort Dam The Musical received an Ovation Award on Monday. This award, according to the NAF, is in recognition of excellence, innovation, and the courage to explore new ideas that resonate with audiences and critics. This show exemplifies these qualities. It is, moreover, a tribute to the 51 victims of the bus that crashed into the Saulspoort Dam in Kimberley on 1 May 2003.
Three extra performances have been scheduled for the production from 1-3 July: grab your ticket here.
The show is a collaboration between a large cast and crew, but the cooperation also extended to financing.
“Everyone came with what they could,“ said Thabo Motlhabi, writer and director of the show. For it to work, they had to take money from their own pockets and their families.
The production is a testament to the “resilience of our story”, and it emphasises remembering. People tend to forget.
“In 1888, miners died in the De Beers mine, and no story was told. Twenty-three years ago, a tragedy happened, and again no story was told,” Motlhabi said.
Everyone in the community was either affected directly or knows someone who was affected. Knowing each other’s strengths also translated this vision into success on the stage.
The musical tells a story that touches people’s hearts. ”People don’t do musicals any more, but we wanted to do it and do it well,” said Motlhabi, who was trained by Mbongeni Ngema.
This production was also a way to show people in the rest of the country that there are stories from Kimberley. “Often we bring our stories to the NAF and go back home with them, and they are watched at home, but they don’t go anywhere else,” said Motlhabi. The hope is to pry the industry open for stories of unsung heroes in the forgotten corners of our land.
