After Isimangaliso

DUT Drama to stage exciting new democracy-themed multi-disciplinary work:
After Isimangaliso
(After the Miracle)
Courtyard Theatre, DUT: 2, 3, 4 May 2024
DUT second year Drama and Production students are staging a brand new especially created production which looks at the notion of democracy and hope, After Isimangaliso (After the Miracle), which comes to the DUT Courtyard Theatre from Thursday 2, Friday 3 and Saturday 4 May created, devised and directed collaboratively by Drama HoD, Dr Tanya van der Walt and Senior Lecturer, Dr Tamar Meskin working with dance lecturer Mduduzi Mtshali and singing specialist Zenneth Cibane.
The production looks at our country’s recent past – the hope as we transitioned into democracy, and our grave disappointments 30 years on. It explores South Africa today and considers the possibility of daring for a better future, particularly for South Africa’s youth. Typically, our country’s leaders have not taken the voices of the young people into account. The production challenges politicians and decision-makers to listen to the voices of future adults, and future leaders.
After Isimangaliso has been created by workshopping ideas with the cast to use their voices and ideas in a dramatic way presented through spoken word vignettes, poetry and creative writing; dance; movement, live original music; soundscapes; multi-media, song…. and humour. Excerpts inspired from seminal works by Antjie Krog and Athol Fugard have been incorporated into the script, as well as material sourced from the archives of the Denis Hurley Centre.
Meskin and van der Walt have previously collaborated on a range of productions in various genres, included: Frontlines, Metamorphoses, Adam’s Rib, Blood Wedding, The House of Bernarda Alba, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and most recently Abaminza: Dialogues with the Drowned about the SS Mendi.
The production is part of the Challenging Indifference series looking at our indifference to democracy and social justice, hosted by the Denis Hurley Centre, Diakonia Council of Churches and DUT Drama.
Challenging Indifference was the theme of the annual Good Friday Service this year, which is being further unpacked in The Bridge – the time from Good Friday on 29 March to our national elections on 29 May. Each week the Bridge provides on-line prayerful and reflective material to help people to get a theological perspective on some important topical issues. Materials will be prepared by groups of churches around Durban and so will form a kind of virtual pilgrimage.
DUT Drama was involved in the Good Friday Service and is further collaborating with the Denis Hurley Centre with some site-specific drama pieces and course work over the next few months. The students are also volunteering at the centre, to get first hand experience of some of the challenges faced by vulnerable members of society – homeless people, refugees, addicts and the poorest of the poor.
“We are challenging the indifference of arrogant political leaders, complacent religious leaders and lukewarm public, all of them too comfortable or too scared to respond to the injustice around them. It seems that challenges from 30 years ago, are just as relevant today – and even more so in the run up to an election that could be the most important for 30 years. Many are ambivalent about the universal right to vote that Archbishop Denis Hurley and others struggled for, for so long,” explains Dr Raymond Perrier of the Denis Hurley Centre.
Good to Know
DUT Courtyard Theatre: 51 Steve Biko Rd, Musgrave, Durban.
Off-road parking available.
Show times – Thursday 2, Friday 3, Saturday 4 May at 6pm
Tickets: R 50 pp and students R 20
Available through secretary Bawinile at 031 373 2194, email: BawinileM1@dut.ac.za
To sign up to The Bridge send your name via What’s App to 068 765 4107.

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