Nataniël is bringing a new show, Prophets & Painkillers – 6 Concerts of Temporary Hope, to Artscape next month.
This will be his first time at the venue in more than 12 years.
Why the long absence? Simply put, no one asked, says the singer and songwriter. “If you don’t ask me, you don’t get me,” said Nataniël in his trademark blunt-speak.
The show is still in the rehearsal stage, so he hasn’t finalised all the costumes yet. Actually, the costumes are the starting point of many of his productions. Once he has a particular costume in mind (and knows he can fit into it), Nataniël writes his songs and stories around what the look will be.
In any given year the sometime producer, show director and public speaker can do about 200 performances of four or five new productions and his band are always rehearsing, so they can start up to 50 new songs in a year.
At Artscape he will share the stage with pianist Charl du Plessis who is also the producer on many of his shows, including this one, bassist Werner Spies and Hugo Radyn on drums. Once he looked at what songs he hadn’t performed in Cape Town yet, he started putting together Prophets & Painkillers.
This particular production is so named because “it’s what people need at the moment.
“We’re surrounded by false prophets and we are all surrounded by some kind of pain, agony and insecurity. Nobody trusts anybody, nobody goes to church and we’re all on drugs. So, I want to give them hope. It’s what I try to do with every show,” said Nataniël.
Once he has a theme for a show, he can build on the structure and work on the narrative. He scripts his shows very tightly, with exacting lighting cues and very little wiggle room for improvisation.
And while he loves the costume changes, he will only change his outfit if it can be done in the amount of time it takes the band to play the intro to a particular song.
Still, it makes him jumpy to perform too many songs in the same outfit. Nataniël can do between four and eight costume changes in a show, he just hasn’t finalised this one yet. Still, he’ll probably bring more costumes than that with him, there are always the encores.
• Prophets & Painkillers – 6 Concerts of Temporary Hope, at Artscape Theatre, April 14 to 18, 8.15pm, 3pm, April 19. No under-15s. R100 to R250 Computicket.