David Fick - Page 10

Certain parts of Jason Robert Brown's score for SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD have been translated for a new South African production of the show which is currently being performed at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. The intention is to explore possibilities for a greater connection for both the performers and the audience with the text of the show and the themes it communicates.

WHISTLE STOP, Ameera Patel's play about a brief encounter between a man and a woman in a park, is being revived at the National Arts Festival by Dark Laugh Theatre Company and Hijinks Theatre this year. Having won a Standard Bank Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival in 2014, the play is an absurd take on the meet-cute trope that is a staple of romantic comedies.

Piecing together a new mythology is an audacious undertaking, and yet it is an act that is at the very heart of theatre-making: the building of a new world, with its own origins and order, that only becomes fully realised when an audience believes in it. THE FIREBIRD attempts just that, telling a post-apartheid South African story against the backdrop of a created mythology.

Variety is the spice of life on the National Lottery Fringe, with anything and everything on offer for audiences. In this third and final National Arts Festival preview column, I'll be looking at three diverse productions that I managed to see on various platforms before this year's festival, which should offer something for everyone, whether you're looking for stand-up comedy, family fare or magical illusions.

In this second of three special columns previewing the National Arts Festival on BroadwayWorld, I'll be taking a look at three productions that I previously reviewed, all of which are back in Grahamstown on the National Lottery Fringe, having switched things up in one way or another since their original incarnations.

With audiences at the National Lottery Fringe at the National Arts Festival being spoiled for choice, BroadwayWorld South Africa previews some of the theatre highlights to be seen on stage at #NAF2016 in the first of three special columns.

In the months since its premiere at the National Arts Festival last year, Greg Homann and Ralph Lawson's A VOICE I CANNOT SILENCE has played seasons in Johannesburg and Durban, garnered critical acclaim and won three Naledi Theatre Awards. Finally making its bow in the Mother City at the Fugard Theatre, the play lives up to its reputation.

All eyes are on New York as the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League prepare to present the Tony Awards at the seventieth ceremony of its kind. On the morning of the awards, BroadwayWorld South Africa asked six local theatre professionals what the Tony Awards means to them and who they were hoping would bring home the bacon.

An independently produced fringe theatre piece, VACANCY prompts two BroadwayWorld South Africa reviews in one article.

Even if A COCK AND BULL STORY ultimately pulls its punches, the two performances around which Marthinus Basson builds his production are stellar, most likely some of the best work South African audiences will see on stage this year.

Mongiwekhaya's I SEE YOU / NGIYAKUBONA / EK SIEN JOU / NDIYAKUBONA places the issue of reconciliation within and between black communities within the wider context of South Africa's fractured rainbow nation - an image that was perhaps more idealistic than true.

Penny Youngleson's new play accomplishes its enlightenment through a domestic scenario without ever becoming didactic or patronising; that it does so by using a powerful, unique and pliable central metaphor makes SILLAGE all the more remarkable.

Cape Town City Ballet is nothing if not ambitious. SHADES OF LOVE sees the company's featured artists dancing superbly, but the production never coheres into a fully-realised evening of ballet.

Rob van Vuuren's LIFE is a side-splitting observation of the way we live today. Van Vuuren is uproariously funny, landing the many laughs that he sets up with his particularly distinctive flair. But watch out if you're seated in the first few rows...

YOU SUCK (AND OTHER INESCAPABLE TRUTHS) is hilariously biting comedy from playwright-performer Klara van Wyk, keeping the audiences in stitches of laughter from start to finish as she delves into the depths what it means to be a school pupil in our turbulent times.

In FROM THE HEART, the focus on and celebration of June Carter Cash as an individual is long past due, a welcome realignment of her story from her own perspective rather than as a supporting player in the narrative of her husband, the man in black, Johnny Cash.

The director of ASSITEJ SA, Yvette Hardie, responds to the BroadwayWorld South Africa article, 'On the Meaningful Recognition of Theatre for Young Audiences at South African Theatre Awards Ceremonies'.

How meaningful is the recognition of Theatre for Young Audiences at major South African theatre awards ceremonies such as the Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards and the Naledi Theatre Awards>

The 51st Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards were presented at the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town on Sunday night in a ceremony that highlighted the theme of 'new beginnings'. With the main event taking place in the newly refurbished Baxter Theatre, this year's winners all received a newly designed medallion. The evening also aimed to present to the audience of theatre-makers, performers, designers, critics and patrons a fusion of cultures.

Words are perhaps inadequate repositories to record the visceral emotional experience of watching I TURNED AWAY AND SHE WAS GONE. It has to be seen. You have to live through it. And when you have, you too will see how I TURNED AWAY AND SHE WAS GONE continues to live in you, just as it has in me.