PLAYS

 

 

"Die, the Beloved Country" (2008)

"Set in South Africa today, a family has made the
decision to leave their country forever.  To add to their concerns, a young American student is coming to stay with them as a house guest... 

But Fate has other plans for all of them, as they come face to face with the unrelenting ferocity of modern South Africa, in all of its contradictions, bitterness, and violence.”
 

"The Rockets Red Glare" (2008)

The Play takes place in a US military nuclear missile silo, on the day of NORAD war games. Two soldiers are on duty - and as one begins to behave strangely, escalating tensions and games within games, begins...
And during the process, the truth about the 'War on Terror', of 911, and modern America, begin to take shape.

 America is about to have a really bad day.

 

 "For the Love of an Infinite Number of Monkeys" (2008)

The play takes place in a Theatre Department at a regular American university. It starts off apparently as a standard Farce.
However, as the characters themselves begin to first interrupt, and then derail the unfolding story, we discover that what we're seeing is something much darker, sadder, and more complex than a simple comedy...

A play about Theatre, Arts Education, and Death.

 

 

 

 

 

"The War of Error"

8-10 Hander. 100 min run time.

The story is set in an alternative 'Fairyland' - where torture is routine, the Kings Men are terrorizing the population,  there's a curfew in place, fears over being labeled ‘unpatriotic’ and being put on the ‘no-pie’ lists - rumors spreading rapidly of an invasion by the neighboring Troll nation, and the growing likelihood of a 'War of Error'.  Revolution is in the air…

The Queen of Fairyland messes up a magic spell, causing a cheerfully vile Demon to be summoned from Hell, to claim her soul. The Queen sends her daughter, the Princess, on an overland journey to escape from the Demon –  chaperoned by an unwilling civil rights lawyer.

And now the story really starts...

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"Heart Like a Stomach"

Four hander, 2m2f. 75min run time.  

WINNER: Amstel Playwright of the Year Award, 1992. South Africa.

"Payback is a bitch. Two women decide to each pick up a man for the night. This being South Africa, their choices have lethal consequences. What starts as a mixture of recipe book instructions, and sexual comedy of manners, becomes something far darker. A ferocious dissection of ethnicity, prejudice,  and theatre itself."

 
(poster not available)

'Dogs of the Blue Gods'

Four hander. 4m 45min run time.

WINNER:  The 'Tonight-AA Life Vita Award For Comedy' . South Africa.

WINNER Pick of the Fringe award, Grahamstown Arts Festival. SA.   

WINNER: First Place in the 1999 Wisconsin State AACTFest. USA.

"The story takes place in a police dog training facility. The characters are dogs (played by actors padding around on all fours). We discover the quiet group dynamics of a group of very jaundiced and somewhat depressed dogs, beginning to wonder what their purpose is in life. Rex is a new arrival in the facility - a domestic street dog - with very alien idea's to the more militarized thinking of the pack. His arrival brings out the long simmering and unacknowledged tensions in the kennel."

 

'Blitzbreeker and the Chicken from Hell'

Two hander. 2m. 65min run time.

Nomination: Amstel Playwright of the Year award finalist

WINNER: Pick of the Fringe award, Grahamstown Arts Festival, South Africa.

"A boring accountant is trapped in his apartment for the weekend with a cheerfully deranged ex soldier, and a killer chicken - and rapidly the boring accountant's life is turned upside down, and inside out.

 It's what the Odd Couple might have been - if they'd had LSD, weapons, and a never ending supply of door to door salesmen, to deal with."

 

'The Sugar Plum Fairy'

Two hander. 2m. 45min run time.

WINNER: Pick of the Fringe award, Grahamstown Arts Festival, South Africa.

"Two Elevators in a building that might be about to be demolished. One Elevator is 'religious' - the other is not.  The religious Elevator, believes that their task of moving up and down in a dark elevator shaft, fulfils a function and purpose known only to the unseen God, who exists at the top of the elevator shaft. The God that the atheist Elevator refers to as 'the Sugar Plum Fairy'. The play is a swift, heart-breaking look at the nature of belief and spirituality. "

 

''Sleeping Chickens'

Four hander. 3m1f. 65min run time.

"The ultimate tribute to Old Time Radio. The play itself is a radio serial, which is recreated live in a 'studio', before the audience - including the many, many sound effects. The serial itself, is about the search for just one creative person, in a future society - interspersed with bizarre adverts which flesh out this future world. Actors perform with scripts in hand. Rapidly escalating chaos is usually what happens, in performance."

 
 

Solo Pieces (monologues)

'Charles Manson'

55min run time.

Nomination: The 'Amstel Playwright of the Year' Award.

"What happens when you put an infamous counterculture icon, on stage - as an extremely self-aware character in a play. He lies, manipulates, and does his best to sell himself and his motives, to the audience. Manson tells the gradual unfolding story of his life, his Family, and the Tate-La Bianca killings. Maybe."

'The Accidental Antichrist'

55min run time.

Nomination: FNB-Vita National Theatre Awards South Africa - Playwright of the Year.

WINNER: Special FNB-Vita Award for Most Outstanding New Production.

"The story of a strange Adam - and his Eve. An urban-gothic-fairytale, detailing how an eccentric vampire rescues a young prostitute and falls in love with her, setting off an apocalyptic chain of events. Now they must struggle to survive in the face of malevolent cops, a psychotic pimp, and the unstoppable spreading plague of vampirism, which marks the end of Humankind forever."

'Bring me Gandhi'

35min run time.

"A landmark play about torture, sadism, and the nature of Governments. The piece caused some scandal in South Africa, received critical acclaim, and was used by the then Apartheid regime, to close down a 'Black' newspaper (whose review agreed with the plays unswerving pro-violence message).  Written in the 1980's, as a response to the widespread genres of Protest Theatre, it's a step into the dark reality of South Africa, and repression of Apartheid, that few plays ever tried to approach head-on.
 

'Putting the Fun Back Into School Shootings'

40min runtime. Winner, UK AcidTheatre's 'Freedom of Speech Play Competition'

"A teacher waits in his empty classroom, ahead of a mass slaughter of his class, when school begins. And he’s not alone. These aren’t the rantings of a crazed psychopath. These are the carefully reasoned arguments and justifications for the imminent violence, from the point of view, of one of the foot soldiers of a nationwide movement, about to enact a coup in modern America, and change the face of politics forever. The killing fields have arrived on American soil.