Women’s Month is staged at the POPArt Theatre in downtown Joburg, celebrating female playwrights, directors, producers, creators and performers. The programme is packed with a diversity of themes tackled in four award winning shows.
“Each year, we seek out women who excel in live performance for our Women’s Month programme. As a female-owned business, we feel that it is important to use the month in which we celebrate Women’s Day to give a shout-out to our female collaborators who are making waves in the industry”, says POPArt artistic director, Hayleigh Evans.
The programme includes the premieres of shows and hits from this year’s National Arts Festival. Each show explores themes from family, sex and social norms to politics, in a variety of mediums.
POPArt will also be collaborating with performers, visual artists and sportswomen for an event at Constitution Hill. Pumped Up will take place on Saturday from noon to 4pm. Female boxers from Hillbrow Boxing Gym will fight in the ring, while dancers from Moving into Dance will respond with their own moves and mediums. Free.
Programme:
lNomzamo from Thursday to Sunday. Naledi Award Winner: Best Community Theatre Piece, 2014.
Performed by Tsholofelo Pouline Mmbi, Neliseka Maling and Thobeka Malinga. Written and directed by Gcebile Dlamini.
lPiet se Optelgoed from August 13 to 16: Winner Standard Bank Ovation Award, National Arts Festival 2014, Official Selection Amsterdam Fringe, 2015. Directed by Rob Murray, written by Liezl de Kock with De Kock and Lexi Meier.
It is a dark, brooding nightmare peppered with unexpected humour, heart-breaking vulnerability and poignant humanity, told in breathtaking visual style. Gleefully deranged and a fringe dweller, Piet is at once a myth and a horror story told to children when they misbehave. Like a twisted Pied Piper, her lullaby lures throw-away children from their beds to her kitchen; her hunger is insatiable. Piet se Optelgoed trawls the dark underbelly of society and the power and powerlessness of women in a warped comic broth of visual buffoonery.
lThenx Ladies present The Triple Mammas; August 19 to 23.
Starring Kitty Moepang, Tumy Motsoatsoe, MoMo Matsunyane (Naledi Award Nominee – Best Female Performance 2015), and Zethu Dlomo (Naledi Award Winner, Best Breakthrough Performance, 2015).
They use satire and parody to capture the nuances of everyday life in a comical way. Truth has never tasted so real. Do not be surprised when a much-loved struggle song has new words or your favourite word is pronounced differently; shifting paradigms is the main purpose of this group.
lWe Didn’t Come to Hell for the Croissants: Seven Deadly New Stories for Consenting Adults, from August 26 to 30:
Winner Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award, National Arts Festival 2015; performed by Jemma Kahn and Roberto Pombo. Directed by Lindiwe Matshikiza and written by Tertius Kapp, Rosa Lyster, Lebogang Mogashoa, Nicholas Spagnoletti, Louis Viljoen and Justin Oswald.
Kahn is back with a show worthy of her much-loved first introduction of kamishibai and now with perfect partner Pombo, she can get on with it, which she does with flair. It’s all the magical theatrical stuff you expect.
Kahn and her side-kick also return in the eagerly anticipated sequel to the international cult hit The Epicene Butcher with stories that seduce the sinless and astonish the immoral.
l See www.popart centre.co.za for more information.