Artscape's Heritage Festival Presents Theatre, Music, Dance and Poetry Sept. 24-30

Multicultural theatre, music, dance and poetry productions are set to engage audiences in a celebration of South Africa's rich heritage at the Artscape Theatre. With South Africa's annual Heritage Day taking place on 24 September, The Artscape Heritage Festival will present a series of productions until 30 September that reflect on South Africa's history, the struggle for freedom, the pros and cons of life in the "new" South Africa and the Rainbow Nation's rich cultural diversity.

Two double bills make up the festival's headliner shows: UNMUTE and THEY DIED SINGING (running on 24-25 September) and BIKO'S QUEST and RAINBOW SCARS (running 29-30 September). These two sets of shows are programmed as double bills, with 30 minutes of live entertainment taking place in the interval between the two productions. UNMUTE is based on Andile Vellem's experience as a deaf dancer.

Vellem has been dancing professionally for more than 13 years and was part of the Remix Dance Company for 6 of those years. UNMUTE represents Vellum's finding of his voice as a choreographer, using sign language as the source of the movement vocabulary. He has brought together performers with different dance backgrounds to find and explore what they would like to "unmute" - feelings, perceptions, social norms, expectations - and deconstruct what society perceives as dance. THEY DIED SINGING is a musical production based on Vuyisile Mini, who was a unionist, umkhontoWesizwe activist, singer, dancer and poet. The production is a series of events focusing on Mini's contribution to the emancipation of working class society in South Africa, highlighting his journey in the union movement and the detentions he suffered from during the South African apartheid regime to his last day of execution on the 6th November 1964, with his two comrades Zinakile Mkhaba and Wilson Khayinga.

BIKO's QUEST - which will tour to the Netherlands and the UK in October and November - explores the life and ideas of the young anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko who inspired many people and continues to do so. Biko's ideas and writings on Black Consciousness empowered people with a new sense of self-worth, self-motivation and an attitude of activism. The story is narrated and performed through song, dance, dialogue and multi-media, using the past to meet the present and to shape the future. The production seeks to take audiences on a journey of memory, discovery and action not only remembering Biko as a liberation icon who died but rather celebrating the life he lived, the giant in him, and the contribution he made where no one else dared to, given the conditions of the times.

Mike van Graan's RAINBOW SCARS features the combined talents of Kertrice Maitisa, Jennifer Steyn and Mbulelo Grootboom under the direction of multiple award-winning Lara Bye. The play employs the metaphor of an interracial family with a white mother and her adopted black daughter - and the estranged cousin of the daughter - to explore issues of identity, exclusion and privilege in the post-apartheid "rainbow nation".

Tickets for the UNMUTE and THEY DIED SINGING or BIKO'S QUEST and RAINBOW SCARS double bills at the Artscape Heritage Festival can be booked via Computicket on 086-915-8000 or via Artscape Dial-A-Seat on 021-421-7695. The ticket price per double bill is R100.00.

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