All my Ex-Lovers are Dead, Theatre
Next Performance: Friday 3 July 16:00
Review and interview
By Rosa-Karoo Loewe
Next Performance: Friday 3 July 16:00
Review and interview
By Rosa-Karoo Loewe
I watched All My Ex-Lovers Are Dead while in the fiery hell of a new, romantic obsession. Though not drowning in a teacup nor yearning to profess my love to a person I have just met, there’s something about this kind of heat, that writer, director and performer Dara Beth ruminates on.
They compare the warmth of “good-for-you’” love to setting yourself on fire. Cause like, passion is hot. And what if your crush is super hot too?
The show which is running in the Spark Hub at the National Arts Festival, is about love. Beth’s relationship to love (both to self and others), all in the guise of professing love to someone else. Us, the audience.
They speak candidly, yapping about past mistakes and bed-rot days, the scent of skin left on linen, the bitterness of sugar at the bottom of your mug tasting like failed relationships.
A white, painted cardboard teacup is pasted on a box adjacent to Beth, who sits on a black box holding an actual mug with a dog on it.
It’s memories of sexy time with boys or girls or non-binaries; it’s self-deprecating, embarrassing encounters where your bed-buddy has an adult sleepover with someone else, and you are still there washing his dishes.
A UCT Theatre and Performance graduate, Beth understands how to use the elements of theatre. They have nice lights, they do voice-over recordings from the speakers, they change pace by moving on and off stage, snacking on chips, talking about love as potatoes. At times the chats were a bit too fast and I lost the trail of metaphor, something about a dead dog?
A cautionary tale about knowing your own worth, older teens will probably dig the occasional F-bomb and poetry about bonking. A cautionary tale to myself, not to dive headfirst into the coals.
Post show, Beth, 31, from Cape Town, called this NAF run its “swansong” after four years of various iterations of the play. The show was selected for Artscape’s New Voices Programme in 2021, STAND Foundation’s Pen to Paper Programme in 2022, Toyota SU Woordfees 2023, the National Arts Festival’s Curated Programme and Cape Town’s inaugural Heat Festival in 2024, and most recently POPArt’s Next Draft programme in Johannesburg.
“Every time I stage it, I stage it a different way,” they said. “I had a bit of an epiphany a few weeks ago that I thought, I’m just going to tell the story the way I wrote it. “And be present with it, and not try to make it a show and dance. This is the most honest, pared-down version of the show so far.
“The thing that draws me to NAF is that the Cape Town community is so familiar with one another already, and this is a chance to share the work with other people from other places.”
The Spark in the Dark collective has set up a vibey venue called the Spark Hub in the Gymnasium at Victoria Girls’ High School near the Village Green. In addition to their performance, Beth said they had helped run the tech for 14 shows, and was doing the technical cues for more than seven productions over the fFstival.
“I am really proud of the hub, we have made a community where artists can feel supported, and we have received a lot of feedback that people feel ‘held’ in the space which is such a hard thing to do when making theatre by yourself.
“So, we have got three Ovation Awards in three days, which is a wonderful affirmation, not just that the work is good, but that we see people and we are making sure other people see them too.”
