ANTHOLOGY: CLEAN BREAK Comes to Alexander Upstairs

A pair of shipwrecked pirate perverts. A psychologist with a suspicious client. A drama student with a seance candle. An estranged son circling the widowed step-mother. All that from four writers, two actors, and one director... Anthology is back.

Alexander Bar's very literally named showcase of new writing returns after a two year absence with four fresh stories to tell. This time round writers Jemma Kahn, Louis Viljoen, Dara Beth, and Jon Keevy played with the theme: Clean Break, to each produce a 10 to 20 minute play for actors Nicholas Pauling and Maggie Gericke.

Nicholas Pauling has appeared in A Steady Rain, The Pervert Laura, Blue/Orange, Champ, The Fontiersmen, Epstein, Twelfth Night, and Shakespeare in Love. He toured the UK with The Tempest and Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Canada with Waiting for the Barbarians, and the United States with a production of The 39 Steps. Nicholas won the 2007 Fleur Du Cap Award for Best Actor for his role as Mozart in Amadeus. His television credits include Black Sails, Dominion, You Me and the Apocalypse, Bluestone 42, Book of Negroes and most recently the HBO series Warrior. His film credits include Black Butterflies, Doomsday, Death Race 2, Challenger and was recently seen in The Dark Tower with Matthew McConaughey.

Maggie Gericke is a performer based in Cape town, she was most recently seen in Peter Schafer's Equus directer by Fred Abramse at Theatre on the Bay and Montecasino in Joburg. She's a graduate of the University of Cape Town's performance programme and has taken parts in independent plays, short films and television adverts. She is looking forward to playing characters closer to her age. She also takes pretty nice photos, writes and illustrates. Her social media game is neglected at best, which is commendable.

Louis Viljoen is a Cape Town based playwright and director. He has written and produced numerous plays including, The Bile Boys, The Frontiersmen, The Verbalists, Champ, Porno 88, The Kingmakers, The Pervert Laura, Oh Baby, I'm A Wild One, The Emissary, The Eulogists, The Demon Bride, and The Hucksters. He is also the writer of Rob van Vuuren's internationally acclaimed one-man show, Dangled, which was invited to the 2017 Brighton Fringe Festival. Viljoen has won Fleur Du Cap Theatre awards (Best New South African Script) for Champ (2013) and The Kingmakers (2015). He was the recipient of the Rosalie van Der Gucht Best New Director award for his plays, The Kingmakers and The Pervert Laura.

Jemma Kahn has captivated audiences from Alexander Bar to Edinburgh to Amsterdam with her unique visual style and aesthetic, drawing on diverse inspirations from the 12th century Japanese art form 'kamishibai' to modern pop movements to the kind of books you could pick up from a thrift shop for R5. Her unique plays include The Epicene Butcher and other stories for consenting adults, In Bocca Al Luppo, The Borrow Pit, and Cellist with Rabies. In 2018 she was the National Arts Festival's Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre an honor she jokes about occasionally.

Dara Beth is first and foremost an angry, Jewish feminist. Secondly, they are one half of the cabaret duo Plumsong with mom and fellow performer, Sharyn Seidel. Dara completed UCT's Theatre and Performance programme in 2018, receiving the class medal for theatre-making, the Ruth Peffer's Prize and distinctions in Drama). Since graduating, Dara has written several plays, their most recent production being Nasty Womxn which has had three sold-out runs at the Alexander Bar. Dara is a part of The Furies, a womxn-centric artistic co-op with whose help they will be staging their new production, "The Chronicles of Athena, Babes".

Jon Keevy has trouble remembering what sort of bio he should be writing - a writer? A designer? A director? A producer? Like many people hustling in the Cape Town theatre industry he has to be more than one of these at any given time. He somehow graduated form UCT with a Masters in Theatre-making and trimmed his teeth working for directors like Lara Bye, Geoff Hyland, and the late Peter Krummeck. His own plays have taken him to festivals around the world and been published in international theatre journals. They include Under the Stars Above the Tree, A Girl called Owl, Get Kraken!, Every Beautiful Thing, Dirty Words, Single Minded, and The Underground Library. He can found daily at Alexander Bar's Upstairs Theatre where he manages one of the smallest but busiest stages in Cape Town.

Book securely online with a credit card for any show at Alexander Upstairs by visiting shows.alexanderbar.co.za or reserve your ticket without paying (but miss out on the discount). The direct booking page for this particular show is alexanderbar.co.za/show/Anthology_Clean_Break. You can also purchase tickets in person at the bar anytime during our regular opening hours: Mondays to Fridays 6pm and Saturdays 4pm.

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