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Playscript Series No. 6
Out of Boundsq
by Rajesh Gopie
Rajesh Gopie, Durban-born actor and writer, takes us into the life and times of a South African Indian family. He brings to life some 28 characters in this thought-provoking play that both wounds and heals the human heart and ultimately celebrates family - here and everywhere.
FNB Vita Award for Best Play 2002
Fleur du Cap Award for Best Original South African Text 2002
Best Actor Award Durban Theatre Awards 2008
Soft cover perfect bound 72 pages 130 x 197 mm 2008
Price: R144.00
ISBN 978-0-620-41648-1
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Playscript Series No. 7
Dalliancesq
by Pieter Jacobs
Janet is looking for love. Leo and Janet are friends. Ken is involved with Andy. When Ken meets Leo in a supermarket, the lives of these four characters intersect with extraordinary results. Dalliances is a complex moral tale reflecting a world in which everything is possible but ...
Nominated for Best Play at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival 2008
Soft cover perfect bound 80 pages 130 x 197 mm 2008
Price: R160.00
ISBN 978-0-620-42031-0
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Playscript Series No. 8
Sister Breyani
by Malika Ndlovu
What happens when five sisters get together over a weekend for the first time in three years, lugging with them all the baggage which siblings carry? Is this a recipe for disaster or could it contain all the ingredients for a lovely pot of breyani?
Soft cover perfect bound 72 pages 130 x 197 mm 2009
Price: R144.00
ISBN 978-0-620-43788-2
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Playscript Series No. 9
The Return
by Fatima Dike
What happens in a settled parental home in Langa in the Western Cape when son Buntu returns after eighteen years in the United States? Will his African American wife find common ground with Mama and Tata? Will Buntu find relief from the nightmares troubling him? The play explores both the humour and the tragic reality of a South African family in this time of varying and challenging transitions.
Fatima Dike received the Living Legend Award at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, USA, 2009; The Return was presented as part of the Festival
Soft cover perfect bound 96 pages 130 x 197 mm 2009
Price: R192.00
ISBN 978-0-620-44290-9
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Playscript Series No. 10 becomes No. 17
Cockroach:
a trilogy of plays
by Jonathan Khumbulani Nkala
A young man finds himself in a situation that seems hopeless – he sees no future for himself in a country on the edge of disintegration.
The young man was Jonathan Khumbulani Nkala, and the country was Zimbabwe. The solo presentation under the title The Crossing tells the story of what he decided to do in order to achieve his objective, which was ‘life in abundance’.
Now, in this new incarnation, that play is preceded by Jonathan Khumbulani Nkala’s two short plays The Bicycle Thief and Faith in Love, so that it is now possible to follow the arc of his life from his childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood.
Together the three plays, under the encompassing title Cockroach, form a testament to the courage, the spirit – and the wit – of this enterprising multi-talented artist: writer, actor, musician, craftsperson.
Educational support material is supplied to make exploring The Crossing in the classroom an engaging and rewarding experience.
Soft cover perfect bound 92 pages 130 x 197 mm 2011
THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT AND WILL NOT BE REPRINTED.
ISBN 978-0-986-98756-4
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Playscript Series No. 11
Green Man Flashing
by Mike van Graan
It is six weeks before the country’s second elections in 1999. Gabby Anderson, a white personal assistant, alleges she has been raped … by her boss, a black, high-profile government minister with an impeccable anti-apartheid struggle record. Sent to persuade her not to go through with the charges is Gabby’s former husband, Aaron Matshoba, the party’s major trouble-shooter.
How do past tensions between Aaron and Gabby affect the situation? What does Inspector Abrahams know that will impact on Gabby’s attitude? How will her lawyer and long-time friend Anna advise Gabby, and why? What will Gabby be offered in exchange for dropping the charges? What will she decide?
Green Man Flashing is a fast-paced political thriller that takes on the challenge of deep moral and political questions for which there are no ready answers, and certainly no easy ones.
In a remarkable instance of life imitating art, the events depicted in the play were to become real-life drama in all the South African news media.
After Athol Fugard’s early work, Mike van Graan is South Africa’s finest working playwright.
Jury Award Winner PANSA Festival of New Writing 2003
Nominee: Best New Play Naledi Theatre Awards 2005
Nominee: Best New Script Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards 2005
Standing Ovation Award presented to Mike van Graan at National Arts Festival 2012
Soft cover perfect bound 100 pages 130 x 197 mm 2010
Price: R200.00
ISBN 978-0-620-45825-2
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Playscript Series No. 12
Lord Hamlet
aka iHamlet
NEW ENLARGED SECOND EDITION
text by
William Shakespeare
collaged by
Robin Malan
Robin Malan is a well-known compiler, editor and theatre person, with successful titles in his career both in education and in theatre.
The book offers actors, directors, teachers, students and the general reader a new and valuable insight into the title-character of Shakespeare’s most enduring and most frequently presented play.
It belongs in all public libraries and – most certainly – in all high school and university libraries.
About This Book
This new enlarged edition comes in two versions, with two different titles, two different covers and two different ISBNs, to coincide with two different stagings of the collage scheduled for 2012:
* Lord Hamlet, with Clayton Boyd, directed by Tara Notcutt, National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, June-July 2012, where it won an Ovation Award
* Lord Hamlet aka iHamlet, with Ashraf Johaardien, directed by Jade Bowers, at the Fringe Joburg Theatre and the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town, May 2012
The Contents of the book are as follows:
An Introduction by Robin Malan. This starts with an examination of a number of productions of Hamlet, assessed and evaluated by the compiler. These cover some British and South African presentations, as well as an account of his own production of the play at Cape Town High School, where three aspects of the character of Hamlet were played by three different actors.
The Introduction features a good number of photographs of these productions.
Then the collage itself follows. The text is the same for each version, except that iHamlet includes an alternative ending appropriate to the style and presentation of that staging.
After the collage, there is a section titled ‘Hamlet is …’: views on the character by actors, writers and directors from South Africa and the rest of the world.
The British theatre critic Benedict Nightingale’s article ‘In search of the perfect Hamlet’ follows.
The final section of the book is ‘Some Facts and Figures’ – interesting snippets of information about play and character.
Ovation Award National Arts Festival 2012
Soft cover perfect bound 92 pages 130 x 197 mm 2012
Price: R184.00
Lord Hamlet Second Edition ISBN 978-0-9870182-3-6
iHamlet ISBN 978-0-9870182-6-7
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Playscript Series No. 13
Iago's Last Danceq
by Mike van Graan
Iago's Last Dance is a trilogy of betrayal and vengeance, set against the backdrop of South Africa's HIV/Aids pandemic. Each play has a different set of three characters, to be played by the same three actors. Each title bears the initial letter that spells out 'HIV':
Heartbreak Medea, Iago's Last Dance and
Valiant Spartacus.
Nominee: Best New Script Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards 2010
Standing Ovation Award presented to Mike van Graan at the National Arts Festival 2012
Soft cover perfect bound 120 pages 130 x 197 mm 2010
Price: R210.00
ISBN 978-0-620-45826-9
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Plascript Series No. 14
London Road
by Nicholas Spagnoletti
Stella is a Nigerian immigrant who lives in Sea Point in dodgy circumstances until ... enter Rosa.
'... a mature and touching exploration of friendship between an elderly Jewish woman and her Nigerian neighbour.' - Marianne Thamm
Fleur du Cap Award for Best New Play 2010
Winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize fo Drama 2011
Soft cover perfect bound 64 pages 130 x 197 mm 2010
Price: R128.00
ISBN 978-0-620-45827-6
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Playscript Series No. 15
The Quiet Violence of Dreamsq
by Ashraf Johaardien
adapted from the novel by K Sello Duiker
The play traces the turbulent life of a young graduate adrift in an unwelcoming world, searching for friendship.
'... Tshepo finds himself, much as the nation-state, born of violence, violation and male-directed brutality.' - Sam Raditlhalo
§ K Sello Duiker was
right at the top of the literary charts at the time of his death, and he
remains a very popular writer.
§ Ashraf Johaardien is
a well-known and respected figure in the South African theatre and arts
community.
§ The stage adaptation offers readers a chance to access the
many themes and complex relationships explored in the novel in a way that
renders them both clear and impactful.
§ It gives us an insight into areas of our current existence
that many do not willingly move into.
§ It belongs in all public libraries and in high school and
university libraries.
About This
Book
§ The Contents of the book are as follows:
§ Biographical notes of the novelist K Sello Duiker, the adapter Ashraf
Johaardien, and the director of the 2010 staging of the play Fatima Dike.
§ The stage history of the play is given, covering its first production at
the National Arts Festival in 2008 and its recent 2010 production in Washington DC in the US.
§ There is an interesting note on adaptation from novel to stage-play by
Ashraf Johaardien.
§ Then the full text of the play is given, with footnotes of local
references and non-English words and phrases.
The Novelist and Adaptor
K Sello
Duiker grew up in Orlando, Soweto, in the 1980s. At
the time of his death in January 2005, he was considered the most promising of
the emerging generation of black South African writers. His first novel was Thirteen
Cents and he researched it by living on the streets of Cape Town for three-and-a-half weeks with the
street kids. The novel was awarded the 2001 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for
Best First Book for the Africa Region. Published by Kwela in that same year, The
Quiet Violence of Dreams was his second novel and garnered the Herman
Charles Bosman Prize for 2001. After his death, his novel for young readers The Hidden Star was published, and was
nominated as an Honour List book by the International Board on Books for Young
People South Africa (IBBY SA).
Ashraf
Johaardien
is a playwright, performer, columnist and arts manager. His plays have been
produced at mainstream theatres and festivals in South
Africa, Ireland,
the UK, the Netherlands and the USA. He was born in Cape Town but currently lives in Johannesburg
where he is the general manager of the Wits Theatre at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Plays: Coloured Son X; Salaam Stories/Salaam; Happy
Endings Are Extra; Miracle; Stripped.
Highlights as a
performer:
Suip!; Sando to Samantha (film).
Adaptations:
Ecce Homo! based on Body Blows
by Tim Miller; The Quiet Violence of Dreams based on the novel by K
Sello Duiker.
Short story: Through the
Looking Glass.
Columns: The Perfumed Closet
in The Pink Tongue.
Soft cover perfect bound 130 pages 130 x 197 mm 2010
Price: R210.00
ISBN 978-0-620-48153-3
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Playscript Series No. 16
Myth of Andrew & Joq
by
Gideon van Eeden
The Artscape New Writing Programme, devoted to developing new South African plays, has been travelling its productions of new gay plays to the Absolut Gay Theatre Festival Dublin since 2006. In May 2010 Artscape toured Gideon van Eeden’s play, The Myth of Andrew and Jo.
Andrew (an opera set designer) and Lawrence (a copywriter who moonlights as a drag queen) are lovers; Jo (a wildlife photographer) and Saartjie (a game ranger) are lovers.
Jo and Andrew meet in a club. Suitably ‘intoxicated’, they go to Jo’s flat to come down … and then they wake up ‘the morning after’ and realise, ‘Yes, they’ve done it’!
Are their respective lovers furious … or are they furious? The result of ‘having done it’ is a pregnancy, a child, and high comic chaos as four very sexy and delightful young gay people, whose last thought in life is ‘children’, take on their responsibilities with a combination of high camp and down-to-earth coping.
Nominated for Best Play at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival 2010
Soft cover perfect bound 96 pages 130 x 197 mm 2011
Price: R192.00
ISBN 978-0-9869875-5-7
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Playscript Series No. 18
Mary and the Conquerorq
by Juliet Jenkin
Mary Renault, historical novelist of Ancient Greece, lived and wrote in the seaside suburb of Camps Bay in Cape Town. Her novels during the 50s, 60s 70s and 80s became iconic works especially for gay people, dealing as they did, with love and war, homosexuality and heroism during key periods in the history of Ancient Greece. Juliet Jenkin’s new play imagines an encounter between Renault and her hero, Alexander the Great. A witty, gentle and moving piece of theatre.
Soft cover perfect bound 96 pages 130 x 197 mm 2011
Price: R192.00
ISBN 978-0-9869875-8-8
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Playscript Series No. 19
Brothers in Blood
by Mike van Graan
Brothers in Blood pummels you with political and human truths bouncing off the tensions and torsions between Jew, Muslim and Christian in a violence-torn and fundamentalism-bruised contemporary South Africa. It hits close to the bone commenting on how religion is used as a code to social behaviour.
Soft cover perfect bound 96 pages 130 x 197 mm 2011
Price: R192.00
ISBN 978-0-9870182-4-3
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Playscript Series No. 20
Abnormal Loads
by Neil Coppen
‘How much of our history is in our genes? I believe we pass it down from one generation to the next. We carry the insecurities, the joys and the losses of the hundreds of people who have come before us. It is interesting to see how the dynamics between [three interlinked fictional families: an English, a Zulu and an Afrikaans one] have emerged over generations. They are people who have grown up together but are so separate. The servants are not family friends. There have been six generations of servitude. How do you escape this cycle?’
– Neil Coppen in interview with Mary Corrigal, Sunday Independent, 5 June 2011
Now Abnormal Loads reaches many more people with performance-runs at the Playhouse in Durban in March 2012, and at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in April-May 2012.
Soft cover perfect bound 102 pages 130 x 197 mm 2011
Price: R204.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-0-6
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Playscript Series No. 21
Cadre
by Omphile Molusi
Writer-actor Omphile Molusi’s internationally acclaimed play Itsoseng was first published by Junkets Publisher in 2007.
‘His newest work, Cadre, was written to honour the many people who died during apartheid. It reveals a poignant portrait of a family who must reconcile past betrayals with present realities, and how one member’s dream of a better future can reap disaster for the rest … a personal tale of dreams and change.’
– Chicago Shakespeare Theater, where the play had its world premiere on 15 February 2013.
Soft cover perfect bound 68 pages 130 x 197 mm 2011
Price: R136.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-2-0
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New Voices
This is a series of five new plays which emerged in 2012 and 2013 from the small theatre venues in and around Cape Town: The small studios, church halls and makeshift theatres.
Playscript Series No. 22 New Voices
The Beneficiary
by
Sinethemba Twani
This is the first in the New Voices series of plays. Other plays in this series will follow shortly.
Sinethemba Twani’s play raises a number of South African inter-generational issues:
How does Lifa, bent on a career in professional soccer administration, react when his grandfather makes him the beneficiary of the clan’s family homestead and farm in the Eastern Cape?
How does Lifa’s mother react to the Rastafarianism of Lifa’s girlfriend?
These and other issues raised in the play make it very much a play of our time and our place.
The dialogue is in English and isiXhosa (with English translations).
It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and university libraries.
How the play developed
2009 – The draft script is submitted to the Artscape New Writing Programme
March 2010 – The play is accepted for development under the supervision of Fatima Dike
December 2010 – The play is given a Showcase presentation at the Artscape Arena, Cape Town
October–November 2011 – The play is given a full-production season as part of the Spring Drama Season at the Artscape Arena, Cape Town
August 2013 – The play is published as a New Voices Playscript by Junkets Publisher
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Sinethemba Twani matriculated in 2007 from Fezeka High School. He went on to study Retail Business Management at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, but, after a year, discovered that his passion lay elsewhere. He then founded the Gumba Squared community theatre group in 2009, and since then has been working for various different community arts projects. Working with his community inspired him to write this play.
Soft cover perfect bound 88 pages 130 x 197 mm 2013
Price: R176.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-3-7
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Playscript Series No. 23 New Voices
Bullets over Bishop Lavis
by
Christo Davids
and Jody J Abrahams
This is the second in the New Voices series of plays.
Christo Davids’s script, on which Jody J Abrahams collaborated, is very much a play of our time and our place.
The dialogue is in English and Afrikaans, with translations.
It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and university libraries.
What the play is about
The play examines some of the unexpected consequences of the Struggle when two men, brothers in those desperate times, re-connect years later, after their separate lives have taken very different directions.
THE PLAYWRIGHTS
Christo Davids has been a very popular and accomplished actor since he was a small boy. Now, with his first published play, he emerges as a New Voice to be heard often, one hopes. Some of his recent theatre productions include: Athol Fugard’s Booitjie and the Oubaas, for which he received a Fleur du Cap nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Shirley Goodness and Mercy, for which he won the Naledi Theatre Award for Best Breakthrough Performance (both plays directed by Janice Honeyman); Bloedbroers, an Afrikaans translation of Athol Fugard’s The Bloodknot directed by Zane Meas; Adam September en die Nazi-Skat directed by Chris Vorster; and Die Krismis van Map Jacobs and Some Like it Vrot, both directed by David Kramer.
Jody J Abrahams is no stranger to the entertainment industry. Besides winning the Laurence Olivier Award in 1999 in London’s West End and a Tony nomination on Broadway for his performance in the acclaimed Kat and the Kings, he has received many awards and nominations.
Jody has been seen in television dramas such as 7de Laan, Hopeville, Jacob’s Cross; and inter-national movie features and advertisements. He consults on local films and storylines; he writes, directs, produces and develops original South African works. He is passionate about re-imaging our history, documenting our present and sharing his experience with industry hopefuls.
Soft cover perfect bound 92 pages 130 x 197 mm 2013
Price: R184.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-8-2
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Playscript Series No. 24 New Voices
iSystem
by
Anele Rusi
This is the third in the New Voices series of plays. The final two plays in this series will follow shortly.
Anele Rusi’s play raises a number of South African issues:
Can we rely on our police system to serve us well?
How does a police officer allow or not allow his personal life and his survival dilemmas to influence his work?
These and other issues raised in the play make it very much a play of our time and our place.
The dialogue is in English and isiXhosa (with English translations).
It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and university libraries.
How the play developed
2010 – The draft script is submitted to the Artscape New Writing Programme
2011 – The play is accepted for development under the supervision of Fatima Dike
October 2012 The play is given a Showcase presentation at the Artscape Arena, Cape Town
November 2013 The play is given a full-production season as part of the Spring Drama Season at the Artscape Arena, Cape Town
November 2013 – The play is published as a New Voices Playscript by Junkets Publisher
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Anele Rusi was born in King William’s Town in November
1983, attended school in different towns in the Eastern Cape,
matriculated in 2001 from Xolani Senior Secondary School
in Zwelitsha township. In 2003 he went to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in Cape Town and completed a National Diploma in Electrical Engineering in 2006. It was during this time that he was struck by the performing arts bug. In 2003 he joined the CPUT Drama and Poetry groups. He went on to become the chairperson of both of these groups; he participated in various arts workshops, programmes and festivals, including the annual National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. After attending acting and scriptwriting workshops – including scriptwriting workshops
conducted by Professor Roy Sargeant of Artscape – he wrote and acted in a short theatre production Maqwesha, which won two gold awards at the Montagu Youth Festival in 2005. He is currently working in the Telecomms industry, but continues to write more poems and short stories; and attends performing arts events.
Soft cover perfect bound 82 pages 130 x 197 mm 2013
Price: R164.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-9-9
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Playscript Series No. 25
Rainbow Scars
by
Mike van Graan
Mike van Graan is, since the early work of Athol Fugard, South Africa’s finest working playwright.
He is, without doubt, a highly respected figure in the South African theatre and arts community.
The play deals with a young born-free black girl adopted into a white family – with the best of intentions, of course.
Inadvertently, this brings about an alienation from her township family.
The catalyst in attempting to resolve this situation is her cousin Sicelo, who finally succeeds in making contact with both Lindiwe and her adoptive mother Ellen.
The play raises many pertinent and very contemporary issues that South Africans either are battling with at the moment or definitely need to be!
The play won an Ovations Award at the National Arts Festival in 2013.
It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and university libraries.
About This Book
The Contents of the book are as follows:
A biographical note of the playwright and a list of all his plays.
The stage history of the play is given, covering its first production in the Artscape Arena and its subsequent production at the Market Theatre
Production credits and casting are given.
There is an interesting note by the author.
Then the full text of the play is given.
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Mike van Graan was born in 1959 in Cape Town. He matriculated from Harold Cressy High School in 1977, and then graduated from UCT with a BA Honours degree in Drama and a Higher Diploma in Education.
Over the years, Van Graan has served in leadership capacities in various cultural non-government organisations.
His recent plays include: Green Man Flashing, Some Mothers’ Sons, The General (Die Generaal), Bafana Republic (x 3), Brothers in Blood, and Gevalle Engel.
Van Graan lives in Cape Town with his wife, Janet Purcell, a senior lecturer in the Department of Graphic Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. They have two sons, Nicholas and Adam.
Mike van Graan was appointed as the first Festival la Playwright at the National Arts Festival in 2013.
Soft cover perfect bound 86 pages 130 x 197 mm 2013
Price: R172.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-4-4
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Playscript Series No. 26 New Voices
The Viewq
by
Philip Rademeyer
This is the fourth in the New Voices series of plays. The final play in this series will follow in February 2014.
Philip Rademeyer’s play raises some crucial questions, in an invigoratingly different and new way.
Set in some post-apocalyptic future, all homosexual people have been shipped out into space. The Boy finds himself in a hermetically sealed pod, looking down at a ruined and devastated Earth.
He is granted his last request: a cassette tape of messages from the people and figures he knew in his life on Earth.
How the play has grown and developed
o December 2012 – Intimate Theatre, Cape Town, produced by Rust Co-operative
o May 2013 – International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, Dublin, Ireland
o July 2013 – National Arts Festival, Grahamstown
o October–November 2013 The play is given a full-production season as part of the 9th Spring Drama Season at the Artscape Arena, Cape Town
o Awards and nominations: the Fleur du Cap Awards, the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival (Oscar Wilde Award for best writer), the Aardklop Festival.
o December 2013 – The play is published as a New Voices Playscript by Junkets Publisher
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Philip Rademeyer is a theatre writer, director and academic. In 2012 he co-founded the award-winning Cape Town-based theatre collective, Rust Co-Operative, with Penelope Youngleson. In its first year the co-operative produced four new plays - The View, Expectant, AN(t)ONIEM and Lie - with two new plays, Full Stops on Your Face and Tee, premiering in 2013. In February 2013 Rademeyer was nominated for a Fleur du Cap Award, the Rosalie van der Gucht Prize for New Directors; for The View. In May 2013 he won the Oscar Wilde Award for Best New Writing for The View at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, where the piece also won the Doric Wilson Intercultural Dialogue Award. He completed his Master’s in Theatre & Performance (Directing) at the University of Cape Town, with his research focussing on developing a queer directorial aesthetic. He also holds an Honours degree in Drama from the University of Cape Town and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Theatre from Ohio Wesleyan University. He is currently a part-time lecturer in the Drama Department at the University of Cape Town.
Soft cover perfect bound 64 pages 130 x 197 mm 2013
Price: R128.00
ISBN 978-0-9922154-2-2
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Playscript Series No. 27 New Voices
Crepuscule
by
Khayelihle Dom Gumede
§ This is the fifth and final play in the New Voices series of plays.
§ In the small
theatre venues around town – in studio theatres, in church halls, in old
warehouse buildings – some really interesting theatre is happening night after
night, written by new and emerging playwrights. This series brings together some
of these New Voices.
§ Khayelihle’s play
is a stage adaptation of a Can Themba short story of the same name.
§ It is set in the
swirling, living excitement that was Sophiatown in the 1950s.
§ Can and his fellow
Drum writers meet in Can’s ‘House of
Truth’ or moved about the place from shebeen to shebeen.
§ Then he meets a
young white woman, and they fall in love. Suddenly there is someone new – and
unexpected – in the Kofifi haunts where Can is known by everyone. Including the
apartheid police.
§ Add to the mix the
fact that Janet is married, and drama has to result.
How the play has grown and developed
October, 2010 – a 20-minute extract of Crepuscule was first staged at the Wits
Amphitheatre
October 2011– in the Nunnery as a reading, part of the
New Writers Festival at Wits University; and then in a full production at the
Wits Amphitheatre
October/November 2012 – at the Theatre
Arts Admin Collective, Cape Town, as part of the Emerging Theatre Director’s Bursary,
awarded to Khayelihle.
February 2014 – The play is published as a New Voices
Playscript by Junkets Publisher
The playwright
Khayelihle Dom Gumede completed a BA (Dramatic Arts) at Wits University
in 2011. He has had a diverse and eventful career as a practising professional
artist. He has written mainly for the stage but also for the screen. At the
beginning of 2013 he was commissioned by the Market Theatre Laboratory to write
a piece to commemorate the centenary of the 1913 Land Act: he co-directed Milk and Honey with Artistic Director
James Ngcobo. Gumede currently has a residency with the Royal Court and is
developing a new play. Among Khayelihle’s other directing credits include: Paul
Slabolepszy’s Over the Hill (2012); The People’s Republic, an adaptation of
Ibsen’s Enemy of the People (2012),
and When We Are Naked. He co-directed
Afrocartography: Traces of places and all
points in between (2013) with Mwenya B Kabwe, who wrote the choreopoem. The
production of When We Are Naked led
to Khayelihle’s being a contributing author to the academic work, Social Work beyond Borders: Social Work
Artfully.
Publication date
22 February 2014
Price R 210.00
ISBN 978-0-9922154-0-8
Paperback perfect bound
130 x 197 mm
108 pages
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Playscript Series No. 28
Hinterland
by
Duncan Buwalda
§ The play deals with an imagined interaction between
two (very different!) giants of South African history, Cecil John Rhodes and
Sol T Plaatje.
§ While serious issues are dealt with concerning white
British imperialism and black South African nationalism, the heart of the play
is ‘playful’ in that the interactions depicted never happened. Rhodes and
Plaatje never met. But how interesting if they had!
§ The play has had several successful seasons, two of
them at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown; and continues to attract the
interest of theatre managements and the public.
§ The play offers university students and school
students a fascinating account of one of the big What Ifs of our history.
§ Particularly, what if Rhodes had acted indiscreetly?
§The play belongs in all public libraries, and in school and university libraries.
What the play is about
This is an extract from an
interview with the author, Duncan Buwalda:
Towards the end of 2007, I
read a book called Goodbye Dolly Gray: The Story of the Boer War. There
was one part of the book which described the siege of Kimberley. It told about
how Cecil Rhodes was in the town during the siege, and how he fought endlessly
with the British garrison commander in the town, Colonel Robert Kekewich. The
book said that there was ‘high comedy’ in the way these two men must have been
at odds all the time. Then I remembered that Sol Plaatje was in Mafeking during
the siege of that town during the war. I immediately starting thinking
how incredible it would have been if Plaatje had been in Kimberley during that
siege, and had met and worked for Rhodes: the young, bright, up-and-coming
African nationalist working for the most famous (infamous?) Imperialist in
South Africa’s history. I ran with that idea and Hinterland was the end
product.
The Playwright
Duncan Buwalda
was born and went to school in Johannesburg and received his Honours degree in
Drama from Rhodes University in 2003. His first play Dream, Brother was
produced at the Intimate Theatre, Cape Town, in 2011 and won the Standard Bank
Silver Ovation Award for Drama at that year’s National Arts Festival in
Grahamstown. Hinterland won three awards at the PANSA/NLDTF Festival of
New Writing in 2012, and was produced as part of the National Arts Festival
Arena Programme in 2013. Duncan lives in Cape Town.
Publication date
16 September 2014
Price R 192.00
ISBN 978-0-9922154-7-7
Paperback perfect bound
130 x 197 mm
96 pages
Age Range: Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 01
Worst of Both Worlds
by
Bulelani Mabutyana
§
BaxterJunkets is a series of plays emanating
from the Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town.
§
Each year BaxterJunkets will publish the Winner
of the Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§
We start retrospectively: this play was the
winner of the 2012 Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§
Widely
regarded as one of the premier development theatre festivals in the country,
the Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival was launched in 2011 with a new team,
identity and vision.
§
This
has resulted in the emergence of plays of the calibre of Worst of Both Worlds.
§
The dialogue is in English and isiXhosa (with
English translations).
§
This play belongs in all public libraries, and
in high-school and university libraries.
What the play is
about
Using the
whirlwind techniques of physical theatre, the two male actors portray the
horrors of female human trafficking and the drug trade. They depict the
seductive ways in which South African girls and young women are lured into a
way of life they do not understand; and how they often find themselves in
European or North and South American countries, unable to make their way back
home. The two actors play a myriad of characters, switching roles, genders,
ages, at lightning speed and with seamless ease.
The Playwright
Bulelani Mabutyana was
born in 1987 in the Transkei. He
moved to Cape Town at the age of eleven, and completed high school in 2008 at
Usasazo High School in Khayelitsha. He is a writer and director and founder of
the Khayelitsha-based UKAO (Uthando Lwe Kamvalethu Arts Organisation) theatre
company, which he established in 2007. Bulelani studied drama at the Independent Theatre
Movement of South Africa under Tauriq Jenkins and Abduragman Adams and he is
currently a second-year trainee with Magnet Theatre. He is the Theatre
Arts Admin Collective Emerging Theatre Directors Bursary winner for 2013.
Publication date: February 2014
Price R 116.00
ISBN 978-0-9921791-7-5
Paperback perfect bound 2014
130 x 197 mm
58 pages
Age Range: Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 02
Skierlik
by
Phillip M Dikotla
BaxterJunkets is a series of plays emanating
from the Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town. Other plays in this series will
follow.
§ Each year BaxterJunkets will publish the Winner
of the Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§
This play was the winner of the 2013 Baxter
Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§
In
January 2008 a 17-year-old white boy walked through the informal settlement of
Skierlik randomly shooting; he killed four people, injured many, and devastated
a community. This is a horrific South African story, but it is one that needs
to, has to, be told.
§
The dialogue is in English with some phrases of
seTswana (with English translations).
§
This play belongs in all public libraries, and in high-school and university libraries
What the critics
said
s ‘Skierlik is a remarkably mature work … a moving example of
the power of theatre to illuminate.’
– Tyrone
August, Cape Times
‘… an astonishing portrayal of a man who
survives a white racist’s attack on his settlement in 2008 but loses his wife
and child.’ – Nigel Vermaas, Cue
‘… a deeply moving piece.’ – Chelsea Haith, Cue
‘… this breathtakingly good performance.’ – Marilu Snyders, What’s On in Cape Town
Accolades
2012
Phillip M Dikotla was the Winner of the Arts & Culture Trust Impact Award
for Theatre
2013
Skierlik was the Winner of the Baxter
Zabalaza Theatre Festival
2013
Skierlik was the Winner of a
Fringe Ovation Award, National
Arts Festival, Grahamstown
2013 Skierlik was the winner of Encore Award, National Arts Festival, Grahamstown
Winner of Best Performance in a One-Person Play, Fleur du Cap Awards 2013
Nominated for Best New South African Play, Fleur du Cap Awards 2013
Winner of the English Academy of Southern Africa Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama 2014
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Phillip M Dikotla,
aka Lesedi, is an up-and-coming theatre practitioner, born in 1990 in Turfloop
in Limpopo Province. Phillip started acting in his high school days, after a
friend introduced him to the school’s drama club, where he discovered his love
of acting and entertaining people. In 2009 Phillip enrolled at the Market
Theatre Laboratory for two years and was trained as a theatre practitioner,
before he started regarding himself as an actor, writer, and comedian. As the
founder of Arch Entertainment, he has co-produced, with Velaphi Mthimkulu, his
own play, Ordinary. Today, Phillip continues
to work in the theatre, present stand-up comedy, and tell the story of
Skierlik.
Publication date: February 2014
Price R 100.00
ISBN 978-0-9922154-1-5
Paperback perfect bound 2014
130 x 197 mm
50 pages
Age Range: Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 03
The Champion
by
Khayalethu Anthony
§ BaxterJunkets is a series of plays emanating from the
Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town.
§ Each year BaxterJunkets will publish the Winner of the
Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§ This play was the winner of the 2014 Baxter Zabalaza
Theatre Festival.
§ The play is
an account of a young man Thulani trying to find his way in the world of the
townships – and in the world – ‘without the presence of a
biological father’.
§ The dialogue is in English with some isiXhosa (with
English translations).
§ This play belongs in all public libraries, and in
high-school and university libraries.
What the critics
said
§ He achieves the nigh impossible task of eliciting sympathy for a man
whose behaviour is brutal by laying bare his motives and honestly interrogating
his actions. As he hurtles towards the inevitable ending, he draws you in to
his battles. You join him in his corner as he faces a multitude of opponents,
including himself, his history and those he loves. – Tracey Saunders, Cape Times
§ Anthony strikes the perfect
balance between humour and seriousness. The turmoil of the character and the
violence he witnesses give a fresh perspective of gritty realism that scours
against the grain of idealistic and romanticised views of life. – Lauren Vogt, Artslink
Accolades
o 2015 The Champion was the Winner of the
Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival; as well as receiving the Best Script
Award; and Khayalethu was named Most Outstanding Artist – all for The
Champion.
o 2015 Khayalethu
Anthony was nominated for Best Performance by a Lead Actor in a Play for
Thulani in The Champion in the Fleur
du Cap Awards
o 2015
Khayalethu Anthony was the winner of Best Performance by an Actor in a
One-Person Play for Thulani in The
Champion in the Fleur du Cap Awards
o 2015
Khayalethu Mofu was nominated for the Rosalie van der Gucht Prize for New
Directors for The Champion in the
Fleur du Cap Awards
The
Playwright
Khayalethu
Anthony, 29-year-old
Khayalethu Anthony attended Matthew
Goniwe Secondary
School in Khayelitsha. He continued his studies
at New Africa Theatre
Academy. He is a
founder-member of the Imbawula Theatre Company. Khayalethu made his mainstream
theatre debut with Lara Foot’s acclaimed Solomon and Marion, for which he received the 2014
Naledi Best Newcomer/ Breakthrough (Brett Goldin) Award.
Publication date
20 March 2015
Price R 108.00
ISBN 978-0-9922154-9-1
Paperback perfect bound
130 x 197 mm
54 pages
Age Range: Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 04
Fruit
by
Paul Noko
§ BaxterJunkets is a series of plays emanating from the
Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town.
§ Each year BaxterJunkets will publish the Winner of the
Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§ This play was the winner of the 2015 Baxter Zabalaza
Theatre Festival.
§ The play sees
a young girl, trapped in her childhood memories, claiming back her innocence.
§ The dialogue is in English with some isiZulu (with English
translations).
§ This play belongs in all public libraries, and in
high-school and university libraries.
What the critics
said
§
‘Powerful Fruit
hits home hard … The whole piece is a wonder. It’s playful,
heart-wrenching, elegiac, wry and funny in parts.’ – Robyn Cohen, Weekend
Argus
§ ‘This play is awesome in all
respects … technically proficient, well conceptualised, beautifully written and
directed.’ – The Sowetan
§
‘With the
writing and direction of Paul Noko, we were transported to an empty land,
filled with broken people where nothing but hope survives … This piece of South African
theatre is the kind of theatre I want my children to see. This is the kind of
theatre of which we can be truly proud.’ – Thola Antamu, What’s On in Cape Town
Accolades
§
Best Script, Sancta Gauteng Province Festival 2014
§
Best Actress: Mathsidiso Mokoteli, Sancta Gauteng
Province Festival 2014
§
1st Runner-up, Best Production, Sancta Gauteng Province
Festival 2014
§
Best of the Festival,
Zabalaza Theatre Festival, Cape Town 2015
§
Best Script, Zabalaza
Theatre Festival, Cape Town 2015
§
Most Promising
Actress: Matshidiso Mokoteli, Zabalaza Theatre
Festival, Cape Town 2015
§
Best Visiting
Production, Zabalaza Theatre Festival,
Cape Town 2015
The
Playwright
Paul Noko was
born in 1982 in Diepkloof, Soweto. He started taking part in theatre in 1998 at
Fidelitas Secondary School. In 2001 he attended workshops on Robben Island for
Phakama Project. In 2005/6 he studied performance art at the Market Theatre
Laboratory. He directed a
student production, The Very Next Breath.
In 2007/8 he went to Luleo University in Sweden. He acted in a play, Echoes, written by Vice Motsabi and
directed by Oscar Motsikoe, which won the Naledi Award for Best Community
Theatre Production. He acted in a Market Theatre Laboratory project, Storms and Valleys. He wrote and
directed Gifted and Fruit. He became a field worker at the
Market Theatre Lab. He also taught children’s theatre at the Market Theatre
Laboratory.
Publication date
11 March 2016
Price R 88.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-4-7
Paperback saddle-stitched
137 x 207 mm
44 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 29 Junkets10Series
iVirgin Boy
by
Peter Krummeck
§ This is the first in the new Junkets10Series of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s
tenth birthday!
§ While the play was included in the Junkets collection S.A. Gay Plays 2 in 2013, this is the
first time it has been issued as a stand-alone Playscript, in memory of Peter
Krummeck, entirely sponsored by his sister Judith.
§ The play was first staged in 2005, the same year as
Junkets Publisher was launched; so there is a synergy and a logic to its being
the first in the Junkets10Series.
§ iVirgin Boy was the winner of the Drama category in
the NLDTF/PANSA
Festival of Contemporary Theatre Readings in 2005.
§ The play has had several successful stagings, at the
Actors’ Space in Johannesburg, both the Intimate Theatre and the Baxter Studio
Theatre in Cape Town, and at the National Arts Festival in 2006.
§ Outside of South Africa, it have been staged at the Oval
House Theatre in London and at the Baltimore Theatre, Maryland, USA.T
§ The play deals with the issues of policing, and of HIV
infection as a result of unfounded cultural mythmaking.
What the
play is about
A white almost-18-year-old boy ‘borrows’ his
mother’s car to celebrate his Matric results. Exceeding both the speed limit
and the alcohol limit, he is arrested and placed overnight in police holding
cells. Also in the cells is Tjokkie, an isiXhosa-speaking young man infected
with HIV, who has been told by his township ‘doctors’ that he can be healed by
having sex with a white virgin. The tragic consequences are foreseeable.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
‘… a magnificent script.’ – E P Herald
‘… bold and powerful … it eschews traditional
stereotypes with wit and subtle humour.’ – Cue
‘It’s a great story, meaningful and very relevant.’
– www.meganshead.co.za
The Playwright
Peter Krummeck
founded ACTS (African
Community Theatre Service), which pioneered the use of drama as a tool for
reconciliation. His solo-play Bonhoeffer toured the USA and Canada. He
also worked in Europe and the United Kingdom. He had more than 70 productions to
his credit (including his nativity Lodestar
and his Easter play The Passion) when
he died in 2013.
Publication date
11 November 2015
Price R 196.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-0-9
Paperback perfect bound
137 x 207 mm
98 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 30 Junkets10Series
Uhm …
created by
The
Papercut Collective
written by
Alex McCarthy &
Callum Tilbury
§ This is the second in the new Junkets10Series of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s
tenth birthday!
§ Uhm … was the winner of the Best Student
Writing at the 2014 National Arts Festival.
§ Koleka Putuma was nominated for the Rosalie van der Gucht
Prize for New Directors at the 2014 Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards
§ The play has had several successful stagings, at the Bindery
Lab, Hiddingh Campus, University of Cape Town, the Artscape Arena Theatre in
Cape Town; at the National Arts Festival and the Klein Karoo Nasionale
Kunstefees in 2014.
§ The play deals with the highly topical and relevant issues
of the grey areas between language, race and culture.
What the play is about
A Master’s student, Coceka is writing a thesis
about Victorian literature, but she is assailed by doubts about the propensity
of English as a colonial language to dominate (and obliterate?) indigenous
languages. As manifestations of her subconscious, she is visited by the ghosts
of Queen Victoria and Cecil John Rhodes, on the one hand, and Sol T Plaatje, on
the other. Their battle for her soul is told with a bright and quirky humour.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
‘One of the ten most memorable theatre productions
in Cape Town in 2014 … This is what the future of local theatre looks like.’ – Steyn du Toit, Cape Times
‘Fresh and inventive … plays cleverly with a number
of edgy ideas and themes … fantastic images and motifs …’ – David
Fick, Broadway World
‘Clever miniature culture clash.’ – Tracey Saunders, Cape Times
The Creators
The Papercut Collective was formed from the 2014
Fourth-Year UCT Theatre Makers. The six members of the Collective are: Koleka Putuma, Sive Gubangxa, Alex McCarthy,
Kathleen Stephens, Callum Tilbury, and Jason Jacobs. Through brainstorming and
structured improvisation, the play Uhm
… was created, and finally written by Alex McCarthy and Callum Tilbury.
Publication date
26 November 2015
Price R 136.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-1-6
Paperback perfect bound
137 x 207 mm
68 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 31 Junkets10Series
Ashes
by
Philip Rademeyer
§ This is the third in the new Junkets10Series of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s
tenth birthday!
§ The play takes its origin from a number of brutal attacks
on young gay men in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, resulting in their
deaths.
§ The dramatist transmutes this horror into a kind of beauty
rarely seen in the theatre.
§ The playscript belongs in all public, school and
university libraries.
What the
play is about
One young man’s story is told through his voice and
those of five other personalities: father, mother, lover, assailant and
looker-on. Born and brought up in the small-town atmosphere of the Boland, his
parents urge him to go to Cape Town, where the more accepting society will
protect him from the hurtfulness of others – with tragic consequences.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
o
‘Ashes is unsettling and
challenging; an impactful and important production. It will leave you bare and
vulnerable. – Sarah
Roberson, The Critter
o
‘Ashes tells
the story of two queer brown boys in Cape Town – a description that belies the
depth of the story. … Don’t let the words queer and brown throw you off. It’s a
story that many can relate to.’ – Jerome Cornelius, Jaw on the Floor
o
‘Inspired by a series
of real-life events, writer-director Rademeyer dives into the murky waters of
systemic homophobia.’ – David Fick, BroadWayWorld
The Playwright
Philip
Rademeyer is
a theatre writer, director and academic. In 2012 he co-founded the
award-winning Cape Town-based theatre collective, Rust Co-Operative, with
Penelope Youngleson. In its first year the co-operative produced four new plays
- The View, Expectant, AN(t)ONIEM and
Lie - with two new plays, Full Stops on Your Face and Tee, premiering in 2013. In February
2013 Radmeyer was nominated for a Fleur du Cap Award, the Rosalie van der Gucht
Prize for New Directors; for The View.
In May 2013 he won the Oscar Wilde Award for Best New Writing for The View at the International Dublin Gay
Theatre Festival, where the piece also won the Doric Wilson Intercultural
Dialogue Award. He completed his Master’s in Theatre & Performance
(Directing) at the University
of Cape Town, with his
research focussing on developing a queer directorial aesthetic. He also holds
an Honours degree in Drama from the University
of Cape Town and a Bachelor's degree
in Psychology and Theatre from Ohio
Wesleyan University.
He is currently a part-time lecturer in the Drama Department at the University of Cape Town.
Publication date
20 January 2016
Price R 120.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-8-5
Paperback saddle-stitched
137 x 207 mm
60 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 32 Junkets10Series
The Year of the
Bicycle
by
Joanna Evans
§ This is the third in the new Junkets10Series of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s
tenth birthday!
§ The play deals with two young children from very different
backgrounds who strike up a friendship – which our fractured society may not
want to allow them.
§ Joanna Evans’s style is individualistic and highly
successful in transmuting the subconscious to the physicality of the stage
What the
play is about
Amelia and Andile have suffered a simultaneous
concussion, and they meet in one another’s subconscious to relive aspects of
their childhood which deeply affected and influenced their growing up. We move
with them across the blurred border between the real and the dreamt in a
fascinating bicycle ride.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
‘Viewing South Africa’s tense transformation, through
children’s innocently perceptive eyes, makes for a superb, moving, haunting
piece of theatre.’ – Sarah Robertson, The
Critter
‘We don’t cry during The Year of the Bicycle because it is soppy. We wail because it is so
damn defiant.’ – Mike Loewe, The Critter
‘Writer and director Joanna Evans has
created an extraordinarily captivating play, steered by an intense array of
emotions.’ – Cassandra Rowley, Artslink
The Playwright
Joanna Evans is a theatre maker, performer and writer based in Cape
Town, South Africa. In 2012 she graduated with Distinction from the University
of Cape Town with a degree in Theatre and Performance, focusing on Theatre
Making. Her specialisation lies in the creation of new plays through a process
of collaboration, improvisation and writing; and she creates theatre for
children, youth and adults.
She won the 2014
Imbewu SCrIBE competition for her script Four Small Gods; and was
awarded the Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award for excellence for her
production The Year of the Bicycle at the 2013 National Arts Festival.
Publication date
29 January 2016
Price R 112.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-5-4
Paperback saddle-stitched
137 x 207 mm
56 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 33 Junkets10Series
Mob Feel
by
Kline Smith
§ This is the fifth in the new Junkets10Series of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s
tenth birthday!
§ The play is a stage adaptation of Can Themba’s short story
‘Mob Passion’.
§ As such, it carries all the power and realism of Themba’s
1950s’ original, but gives it a highly imaginative re-creation in the idiom of
contemporary theatre.
§ Kline Smith is certainly one of the new young
theatre-makers to watch out for.
What the
play is about
In the gritty township life of Westbury in 1952, a
Romeo-and-Juliet story is played out when two young people from different
rival-clans fall in love. Using only two male actors, the playwright-director
creates the life of the township, with a musician and singer providing the
undertone of foreboding that permeates the play.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
‘Mob Feel is simply four people with a guitar, a drum and an
abundance of talent. … It is so good
…’ – Carissa Govendor, Cue
‘Using lyrical and at time almost balletic
movements, TQ Zondi and Mpilo Nzimande combine physical theatre with the
age-old tradition of storytelling to tell this tragic story. … a poignant,
moving, funny and deeply thought-provoking piece of theatre.’ – Estelle
Sinkins, The Witness
The
Playwright – Kline Smith
‘Born in Eshowe, a
small, semi-rural city in the heart of Zuluand, I relocated to
Pietermaritzburg, where I obtained an Honours degree in Drama, Journalism and
Performance Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). I went on
to write, direct and produce an experimental adaptation of ‘Mob Passion’, which was
entered into the National Arts Festival’s Student Theatre Programme the
following year. The play, which I called Mob Feel, received the awards for Best Writer and Best Director. A
year later, Mob Feel won
the award for Best Fringe Production at the Musho! International Theatre
Festival and has been performed in theatres around the country. I’m an
advocate for social justice and transformation in KwaZulu-Natal; I run the Stories for Change theatre project
with homeless youths in Pietermaritzburg.’
Publication date
16 February 2016
Price R 80.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-2-3
Paperback saddle-stitched
137 x 207 mm
40 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 34 Junkets10Series
Last Cow Standing
by
Menzi Mkhwane
§ This is the sixth in the new Junkets10Series
of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s tenth birthday!
§ Through a deceptively simple story, it delves into areas of questioning
power and inequality.
§ There is an insightful foreword by Prof Deborah Arlene Lutge.
§ The
play can be performed by one actor, playing all the roles, or by a number of
actors, each playing a different role.
§ Menzi Mkhwane is certainly one of the new young theatre-makers to watch
out for.
What the
play is about
Last Cow
Standing
is an epic fictional story set against an African backdrop that resembles rural
Nguni land. It tells the story of a young boy named Samira, who grows up in a
kingdom where all the inhabitants’ cows, which are their wealth and pride, are
infected with a strange sickness and are dying … Samira takes the rope tied
around the neck of the last cow his family has and heads to the land of King
Marufu, not knowing what his journey will hold for him.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
‘Young theatre maker Menzi Mkhwane blazed a trail with his new piece Last Cow Standing … a showcase for his
extraordinary talent in handling multiple characters …’ – Gisele Turner, Going Places SA
‘The success of Mkhwane’s writing lies in taking a pertinent topic and
addressing it in a manner that is not too socio-politically intense, yet still
gets the message across. … A must-see.’ – Latoya Newman, Tonight
The
Playwright – Menzi Mkhwane
He matriculated at
Carter High School in Pietermaritzburg in 2007. After doing well in drama and
winning awards as a director of his own written work in high school, he was
certain he wanted to pursue a career in the arts. His journey as an actor
formally began at DUT (Durban University of Technology) where he began his
training in 2008. During his first year of study as an actor he won a number of
awards, such as Best Newcomer, Best Supporting Actor and Creative Performer
Award. He performed a two-hander with his father, Bheki Mkhwane, titled Belly
of the Beast, which premiered at the Playhouse Loft Theatre in 2011. He started
working on his first professional play, titled Pockets of Knowledge, alongside
Sabelo Ndlovu. This work was nominated for Best New South African Script at the
Durban Mercury Theatre Awards. In 2012 he created and performed a second solo
piece, Looking into the Abyss. The production won the Audience Award in the
Musho! Theatre Festival. In 2014 he wrote and performed Last Cow Standing, which
premiered at the Catalina Theatre in Durban. Menzi continues to write, stage
and produce his own plays, as well as working as a full-time actor.
Price R 120.00
ISBN 978-0-9946902-2-7
Paperback saddle-stitched
137 x 207 mm
60 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 35 Junkets10Series
Ndendile
(I
am married)
jointly devised by
My Home Theatre
Productions
original idea &
direction by Sinoxolo Cezula
scripted by Bongani
Pontsana
Selling Points
§ This is the seventh in the new Junkets10Series
of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s tenth birthday!
§ It tackles the contentious issue of male-to-male marriage set against
the values of deep rural Xhosa traditionalists.
§ Linguistically, the play breaks new ground: the urban scenes are in
English, and the rural scenes in isiXhosa (with English translations).
§ Innovatively, it sports a kind of Brechtian Chorus of three ooNonzaba,
the ancestors, onstage throughout, who comment on the action as well as
stepping out of character to play other roles, as required.
What the
play is about
Thabani leaves his wife and father in
their rural Eastern Cape homestead and heads
for Cape Town.
There he meets, falls in love with and marries a young man Bongile. Three years
later, troubled, Thabani insists they go to his father’s kraal to receive his
blessing on their marriage. How do the urban and the rural, the modern and the
traditional, the young and the old find some kind of accommodation of one
another?
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
‘Very, very brave subject matter … It seems your group
really want to change how we do things and what we believe to be right. … The
whole predicament of contrasting beliefs is very well portrayed and nobody wins
everything.’ – Gay
Morris
‘Homosexuality in traditional African culture is seldom explored on
stage; and this is a glimpse into the interpretation of traditional culture and
the impact of urbanisation … a reminder that whom we fall in love with is a
matter of the heart, not the head.’ – Tracey Saunders
The
development of the play
The director Sinoxolo Cezula brought his original idea
to the six actors making up the Khayelitsha-based My Home Theatre Productions;
and jointly they devised the play and
the songs. Bongani Pontsana then produced the script – as published
We thank our Ndendile sponsor:
Evita se Perron
Price R 112.00
ISBN 978-0-9946902-0-3
Paperback perfect bound
137 x 207 mm
56 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 39 Junkets10Series
Three Radio Plays
by
Robin Malan
Selling
Points
§ This is the 8th in the new Junkets10Series
of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s tenth birthday!
§ This volume forms part of The Collected Series of anthologies of plays,
published by Junkets Publisher.
§ Robin Malan is known for his work with and for young people in his
anthologies of poems, plays and short stories; as much as for his long
editorship of English Alive, the annual anthology of writing by high
schools and secondary colleges.
§ A high-school teacher in the 1960s and early-70s, he was also a radio
actor. He has not done any radio acting since 1971; these are the first radio
plays he has written.
What the
plays are about
o
Band
of Brothers deals with a sex scandal in an independent boys’
high school
o
The
British Maharajah and the German Rentboy is
sub-titled ‘A fantasy woven from facts’ and imagines the ‘real story’ about
Shrien Dewani
o
Clayton
Crawford PhD: a celebratory evening goes wrong – and then goes
right!
The Playwright
Robin
Malan (born 1940) has spent his working life in
education, theatre and publishing. He is known for his theatre work at Cape
Town High School in the 1960s (particularly his Midsummer Night’s Dream and
Hamlet) and at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland in the
1970s and 1980s (where he directed, among others, an Africanised The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Fall and Redemption of Man, Tartuffe, Little Malcolm and His Struggle against the Eunuchs, Whose Life Is It, Anyway? and The Biko Inquest). He was the artistic
director of CAPAB’s theatre-in-education company in 1970-71, and the artistic
director of Pact Playwork theatre-in-education company from 1972–78. He wrote Drama-Teach:
drama-in-education and theatre for young people. Among his compilations of plays for schools are: The
Distance Remains and other plays; South African Plays for TV, Radio and Stage; and Short, Sharp & Snappy: southern
African plays for high schools 1 and 2. From 2007, as Junkets
Publisher, he has published over forty new southern African plays as individual
Playscripts and more than ten anthologies in The Collected Series.
Awards
§ 1959
Class Medal for Drama, University of Cape Town
§ 2000
The Cape 300 Foundation Molteno Medal in Gold for Lifetime Service to
Literature
§ 2005
The Stoffel Spoon as a Finalist of the NLTDF/PANSA Festival of Contemporary
Theatre Readings for his play The
boy who walked into the world
§ 2009
Junkets Publisher received the Arts & Culture Trust Excellence Award for
Literature
§ 2014
The Play Club Dassie Award: Theatremaker of the Year
§ 2015
The English Academy of Southern Africa Gold Medal for Services to Education, Theatre
and Publishing
§ 2016
The Zabalaza Theatre Festival Token of Appreciation Award
Publication date
21 November 2016
Price R 240.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-6-1
Paperback perfect-bound
137 x 207 mm
140 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults &
Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript No. 40 Junkets10Series
Little Poof! the
Homonologues
by
Bruce J Little
Selling Points
§ This is the xxx in the new Junkets10Series
of playscripts to celebrate Junkets Publisher’s tenth birthday!
§ The volume is sub-titled ‘Queer-themed monologues and scenes’.
§ The author has presented a number of such pieces ideal for students in
search of interesting monologues for auditions, class exercises, or exam
performances.
§ The volume also serves as a valuable insight into certain kinds of
LGBTI+ character-types, and therefore useful for research purposes.
§ This is a valuable addition to the Queer literature of South
Africa.
WHAT
THE CRITICS SAID
o
‘It is a charming, very funny, relaxed,
intimate little show. Bruce is delightful. He has a lovely, pleasing singing
voice.’ – www.meganshead.co.za
o
‘It’s fun, it’s a laugh and it's deeply moving." – Mambo online 2011
o
‘Bruce J Little will have you reaching for your rainbow flag and feather
boa in no time. … A talented performer, armed with great comic timing, Little
works his pink wit relentlessly.’ – Rudi
Sadler
The Playwright
Bruce J
Little was born in Pretoria, South Africa, but has lived
and/or attended schools in Mafikeng, Mareetsane, Grahamstown, Cape Town; and
currently resides in Johannesburg. Bruce
completed a BA Theatre and Performance degree from the University of Cape Town
in 2001, and has appeared in numerous local and international commercials and
television series, most notably as Carl Anderson, a controversial gay character
in the soap Generations.
Passionate
about community upliftment and theatre in education, Bruce spent several years
in rural areas across South Africa working as an actor and director for
industrial and educational theatre companies.
Bruce
toured South Africa with the self-penned cabaret shows Little Poof!; Little Poof 2:
The Fat the Femme and The Fabulous; Little
Poof 3: A Handful of Queens; and Little
Poof! Big Bang! He also appeared in the South African productions of the
musicals Rent and Hair, and briefly MCed Madame Zingara Theatre of Dreams during
their London tour.
Bruce
taught Acting, Voice and Improvisation at Wits University and Michelle Ayden
Dramatix and a 12-week course in Independent Theatre-making at the University
of Johannesburg. He has contributed a number of articles to The Pink Tongue, MambaOnline and Health4Men.
Currently,
Bruce is a copywriter and project manager for a marketing and internal
communications agency.
Publication date
01 May 2017
Price R112.00
ISBN 978-0-9946791-9-2
Paperback perfect-bound
137 x 207 mm
56 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 05
TIP-ex
by
Lauren Hannie
Selling
Points
§ BaxterJunkets is a series of plays emanating from the Baxter Theatre
Centre, Cape Town.
§ Each year BaxterJunkets will publish the Winner of the Baxter Zabalaza
Theatre Festival.
§ This play was the winner of the 2016 Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.
§ The play sees a young girl,
exploring her sexuality in her friendship with another girl, with predictably
tragic outcomes because of her family reaction.
§ This play belongs in all public libraries, and in high-school and
university libraries.
What the critics
said
- ‘She is washing a piece of clothing in a zinc
basin, attempting to rinse out the blood. With echoes of Lady MacBeth’s
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” she
rubs furiously to no avail. The crime which she attempts to expunge is no
less murderous and her scrubbing is as futile. It is this moment that is
one of countless others where Hannie uses visual and verbal metaphors to
ensure that this is a memorable script.
– Tracey Saunders, IOL
- ‘This dynamic and powerful piece is a must-see.’– CapeTownETC
Accolades
§
Best of the Festival, Zabalaza Theatre
Festival, Cape Town 2016
§
Best Script, Zabalaza Theatre
Festival, Cape Town 2016
The
Playwright
Lauren Hannie
I was born in Mafikeng, now
known as Mahikeng, in the North West Province. I grew up in this town and even
though I left for Cape Town at the age of 12 I feel a sense of pride knowing that some of the best talent comes
from this place . I grew up in a household with my father, mother, older sister
and younger brother. This however makes me the middle child; says a lot about
my experience growing up (yes the notions about middle child syndrome are
generally true). I have had a passion for the Arts from a very young age, and
when I was only 9years old I would gather my sister and brother to practice
songs and various items, only to later summon my parents in to watch our
‘amazing productions’.
I
completed my University degree at UCT (University of Cape Town); A Bachelor of
Social Science, majoring in both Psychology and Drama, while doing extra
courses in Script Writing.
Publication date
17 March 2017
Price R 104.00
ISBN 978-0-9946902-4-1
Paperback saddle-stitched
130 x 197 mm
52 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults &
Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript Series No. 41
Fishers of Hope
Taweret
by
Lara Foot
Selling Points
§ To publish this important addition to the oeuvre of Lara Foot, Junkets
Publisher is partnering with her.
§ Unlike her previous plays, Fishers
of Hope Taweret is not linked to South Africa in its setting or its
political preoccupations.
§ The play has had several successful seasons, one at the Baxter Theatre
Centre and one at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown; in addition, it
has toured to Vienna, Austria, and Mannheim, Germany, as well as the State
Theatre, Pretoria, and the Hilton Festival.
§ The play has been prescribed for IEB Advanced Programme English.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and university
libraries.
What the
play is about
This
is an extract from an article by Marianne Thamm, Daily Maverick:
Fishers of Hope Taweret is Lara
Foot's first play set outside of the mental and physical landscape of South Africa.
To research the play, Foot journeyed
to a
small fishing village near Kisumu in Kenya. …
Experiencing
a country and its citizens 80 years after independence has enabled Foot to engage
with the material unencumbered by a recent ‘colonial’ or ‘struggle’ history, ghosts that
so often still haunt work set in South Africa. This is a story that ripples out way beyond
the shores of this lake and this village.
And while
it does this, Fishers of
Hope Taweret is, to all intents and purposes, an apparently simple
story of one household. While it may literally and metaphorically be
a million miles from the modern world, as we know it, this ‘home’ is well and truly part of a ‘global
village’.
The Playwright
Lara Foot
has
a plume of successful plays over her name. Tshepang (2002)
was based on a real event, the alleged gang-rape of a nine-month-old baby by
six men in a remote, impoverished community. Foot used refined, ironic humour
to sketch a portrait of the community, and then turned everyday objects into
symbols with horrific poetic effect. Karoo Moose (2007) returned to the subject of child rape and a
rural town – a shattered, forsaken community where ‘there are no fathers’. A
15-year-old girl is sold for sex to pay off the gambling debts of her jobless
and spiritually crushed father, ‘an opportunist with no opportunities’. Solomon
and Marion
explores the cruelty of the meaningless murders which betray her country.
Publication date
17 March 2017
Price R 136.00
ISBN 978-0-9946902-3-4
Paperback perfect bound
130 x 197 mm
68 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults &
Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 06
The Fall
by
Ameera Conrad, Cleo Raatus, Kgomotso
Khunoane,
Oarabile Ditsele, Sihle
Mnqwazana, Sizwesandile Mnisi,
Tankiso Mamabolo, Thando
Mangcu
Selling Points
§ It is important to place on record the aspirations and experiences of
the students who participated in the #RhodesMustFall and subsequent
#FeesMustFall movements.
§ This collaborative play presents the actual lived experiences of the
students who fashioned art out of raw actuality.
§ Of interest is the fact that the play documents real events the actors
were involved in, often using their own words verbatim, e.g. the final scene
portrays a mass meeting over which the actor Tankiso Mamabola herself presided
as chairperson.
§ The Fall and its company were graced with a special Encore Award by the Fleur du
Cap Theatre Awards in 2017.
§ The play has had two successful seasons at the Baxter Theatre Centre; before
going to the 2017 Edinburgh Festival.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and university
libraries.
What the
play is about
The Fall is
a play collaboratively written by the original cast as a reaction to and
reflection on the South African student protests in 2015 and part of 2016.
The #RhodesMustFall and
subsequent student-led movements in South Africa alerted the country and the
world to the latent on-going issues brought about by colonialism and apartheid
in South Africa. The Fall details the
experiences of these particular students within this movement and how they deal
with their traumas, while still moving towards activism for a free decolonised
education.
The Company
All
were students who graduated from the Drama Department at the University of Cape
Town in 2015, all achieving an Honours degree in Theatre and Performance. As individuals,
they have succeeded in emerging as some of the strongest voices in the South
African theatre. Ameera Conrad wrote and directed Reparation; Oarabile Ditsele and Sizwesandile Mnisi played two
seasons of Woza Albert! at the Baxter
Theatre Centre; Sihle Mnqwazana took the lead in My Children! My Africa! Cleo Raatus reprised his role in District Six: Kanala. Thando Mangcu
co-wrote with Ameera Conrad Don’t Shoot
the Harbinger, which won the Most Promising Writer’s Award at the National
Arts Festival.
Publication
date
6 June
2017
Price R
180.00
ISBN 978-0-9946902-5-8
Paperback
perfect bound
130 x 197
mm
92 pages
Age
Range:
Young
Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript Series No. 42
Reparation
by
Ameera
Conrad
Selling Points
§ The play is No. 1 in The Time Sequence of playscripts.
§ Young playwrights project into a South African future that
not everyone will want to know about!
§ It daringly posits the reparation demands required at some
future date in the country’s history.
§ Cleverly, the author manages to make the play funny as
well as unnerving.
§ The play has had a successful season at the Theatre Arts
Admin Collective in Observatory, Cape Town, before going to the 2017 National
Arts Festival in Grahamstown as part of the Arena Programme.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and
university libraries.
What the
play is about
Reparation is an imagining of what a future government of South
Africa may require as reparation for past ills and evil. The Supreme Cadre
works with her adviser on planning the three-pronged approach to reparation:
economic, land and sacrifice. A young white Afrikaans-speaking woman is
selected as the sacrifice.
The Playwright & Director
Ameera Conrad was born in Cape Town, and graduated
with distinction from UCT’s Drama Department in 2015 as a Theatre Maker
(Honours). She has received acclaim as a writer, director, and
performer on stage and screen. Ameera has performed in Dr Godenstein’s Man, performed in What Remains, performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival
in People Beneath Our Feet. She was
one of the recipients of the 2016 Theatre Arts Admin Collective’s Emerging Theatre
Director’s Bursary, under whose auspices she directed her self-written piece, Reparation – which has subsequently
been performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. Ameera is also an
alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab in New York. She is a
co-curator, co-writer and performer in The
Fall. She is a twice-published playwright, and is taking the South African
theatre scene by storm.
This playscript was
published with the generous support of the KhulaCape Foundation.
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Price R 160.00
ISBN 978-0-9946902-6-5
Paperback perfect bound
130 x 197 mm
80 pages
Age Range:
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript Series No. 43
KUDU
by
Lwanda
Sindaphi
Selling Points
§ The play is No. 2 in The Time Sequence of playscripts.
§ Young playwrights project into a South African future that
not everyone will want to know about!
§ The play has had a successful season at the Magnet Theatre
in Observatory, Cape Town.
§ The play marries a heightened poetic style of dialogue and
all the elements of physical theatre.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and
university libraries.
What the
play is about
KUDU is an imaging of a delegation of Khoi people to the amaXhosa in the
Eastern Cape. Their demands are simple: they want their land and homeland
returned to them. There are complex and complicated negotiations around this.
The dialogue is poetic; and the physical staging of the play is faithfully
reproduced.
The Playwright & Director
Lwanda Sindaphi was born in Fort Beaufort and moved to Cape Town in the early 1990s. He
is an actor, playwright, theatre director and poet, co-founder and creative
director of Lingua Franca Spoken Word Movement. He holds a performing Arts
Certificate from New Africa Theatre Academy. In 2014 he was named best poet in
Africa by Badilisha Poetry. He teaches poetry at The Cypher, an organisation of
young poets. From 2012 to 2016 Lwanda studied physical theatre and acting at
Magnet Theatre under Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek. He performed in plays
like The Heart of Redness, an
adaptation by Mark Fleishman of Zakes Mda’s famous novel, and Running with Gold Fish by Brink Scholtz.
He was one of the Africa Theatre graduates who created and performed in Finally it Rains in the Desert with
Clare Stopford in 2011. He co-directed Izityhilelo
Zobuze, which was staged at Artscape for two consecutive years. His own
theatre work as writer and director includes Achilles Heel, Sins of Others
and Death, the Redeemer. He won the
Best Director and Most Promising Production Awards for Death, the Redeemer. He has been trained in entrepreneurship at
Artscape as part of the Incubator programme. He has travelled internationally
with War Horse of the Handspring
Puppets.
This
playscript was published with the generous support of the Arts & Culture
Trust in association with Nedbank Arts Affinity.
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Price R 140.00
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript Series No. 44
Tswalo
by
Billy
Langa
in
collaboration with
Mahlatsi Mokgonyana
Selling Points
§ The play is No. 3 in The Time Sequence of playscripts.
§ Young playwrights project into a South African future that
not everyone will want to know about!
§ This play is a meditation on time throughout existence.
§ The play has had several highly successful seasons at various
theatre venues in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as at the 2017 National
Arts Festival in Grahamstown. It has also toured to Germany.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and
university libraries.
What the
play is about
Tswalo is series of poems that explore time, history, memory,
existence – all inside the framework of intense concentrated physical
performance. The mythic and mystical exist side by side with sharply observed
reality.
The Playwright & Director
Billy Langa is a
performer, writer, director and educator; and a Naledi Theatre Award winner for
Best Production for Young Audiences for Just
Antigone. As a performer he was seen
in, among others: Little Foot; Thirst; Ubuntu-Spirit (UK & SA); Contacting
the World 2010, Manchester; Passages
directed By Robert Haxton (NAF); PoetOtype;
Egoli; and Ankobia. In addition, he has been seen in Sex and Me by Clara Vaughan and directed by Craig Morris; and Short Stories Alive directed by Neil
Coppen, produced by ShakeXperience. Billy was one of the twelve writers who
were chosen by the Royal Court Theatre for the staged readings of the New Plays from South Africa: After 20 Years
of Democracy. Directing: Just
Antigone; Sophiatown; Everyman; Finding Melo and The Good
Person of Szechwan.
Mahlatsi Mokgonyana
is a director, actor and facilitator: recipient of the TAAC emerging theatre
director’s bursary; Naledi Theatre Award winner for Best Production for Young
Audiences, supported by Assitej SA, for Just
Antigone, and BroadwayworldZA Nominee for best revival of a play, for his
direction of Athol Fugard’s My Children!
My Africa!; The Good Person of Szechwan;
The Hungry Earth; I See You, an, in addition, he collaborated with
Christian Bloem from Holland and created SHH!,
a play for young audiences; and went on to direct two new plays for teens, Complexion and Finding Melo. As a performer he was seen in: Egoli; Sex and Me; DET Boys’ High; and Ketekang: the musical.
This
playscript was published with the generous support of the Arts & Culture
Trust
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This title is no longer available from Junkets Publisher.
See theatreduo@yahoo.com
Paperback perfect bound / saddle stitched
Young Adults & Adults
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
BaxterJunkets Series 07
Boy Ntulikazi
by
Thobani
Nzuza
Selling Points
§ The play is the 2017 Winner of the Zabalaza Theatre
Festival, held at the Baxter Theatre
Centre.
§ This is the first winner to come from KwaZulu-Natal.
§ This is the sixth playscript published in the
BaxterJunkets series, in collaboration with the Baxter Theatre Centre.
§ The play has had a successful season at the Golden Arrow
Studio at the Baxter Theatre Centre.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and
university libraries.
What the
play is about
Boy Ntulikazi is an account of a young man trying to trace his
parentage and ancestry. Brought up on a farm, he has grown up with the idea
that the white farmer Baas Pieter is his father. He embarks on a quest to find
out his true parentage – with some disconcerting discoveries along the way. It
is, unhappily, a very South African story.
The Playwright
Thobani Nzuza was born in
uMlazi Township in KwaZulu-Natal, He began his journey in the arts (2010) in a
community arts centre (under Buhle ‘Bo’ Mlazi, dancer, singer and actor),
before he enrolled at Durban University of Technology, Drama and Production
Studies 2013. Besides numerous DUT productions, Nzuza has participated in a
number of professional productions. He has also pushed himself on other fronts
– writing plays, performing at K-CAP, directing and becoming involved in film.
His first professional production, Silencing
the Hurricanes by Themi Venturas, was performed in Bangkok in 2014. He also
wrote and directed Shintsha Guluva for
Isigcawu Festival in 2014 and received Best Director Award. In 2015 he
performed in one of Menzi Mkhwane’s plays, Secret
Valley of the Great Kings, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in
the Durban Mercury Theatre Awards. In the same year he also collaborated with
Kagisho Tshimakwane in writing his first one-man show, Boy Ntulikazi, which he performed, receiving Best Actor Award at
the Isigcawu Festival in 2015. In 2016 Thobani Nzuza was one of the students
who represented Africa in the Shakespeare Festival in Germany (Folkwang
Universität der Künste), in Much Ado
about Nothing, directed by Debbie Lutge.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Playscript Series No. 45
NewFoundLand
by
Neil
Coppen
Selling Points
§ The play is No. 4 in The Time Sequence of playscripts.
§ Young playwrights project into a South African future that
not everyone will want to know about!
§ The play has had a successful season in Johannesburg.
§ It was presented as BuiteLand
at the KKNK in 2017 and at Woordfees in 2018.
§ It won Best Supporting Actor for Kopano Maroga at both
festivals; and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Elize Cawood at the
KKNK.
§ It belongs in all public libraries, and in high school and
university libraries.
What the
play is about
The
lives of two young men – a white anaesthetist and a black dance student
currently undergoing training to become a sangoma (ukuthwasa) – collide in a number of ways which blend and merge
reality, dream, memory … Time becomes pliable, elastic, unpredictable. The
structure of the play is appropriately fragmentary, and warrants careful
attention by the reader.
The Playwright & Director
Neil
Coppen works as an actor, writer, director and designer in
Durban. His numerous theatrical collaborations include works with visual artists,
writers, community groups, filmmakers, authors, animators, choreographers and
musicians.
His plays
include Suicidal Pigeons, Two …, The Beginning of the End (co-written and
performed with Clare Mortimer), Tin Bucket Drum and Tree Boy – and, most successfully,
Abnormal Loads.
He was
included in the 2011 Mail & Guardian
list of 200 Young South Africans and has won several awards for his work,
including the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre in 2011.
Neil is
currently directing Tsotsi the musical.
This
playscript was published with the generous support of the Arts & Culture
Trust
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