Three Plays to Showcase UCT Drama's Third and Fourth Year Actors

The University of Cape Town's Drama Department will showcase its third and fourth year acting students in a series of three productions this month. The line-up includes Geoffrey Hyland's staging of Michel Marc Bouchard's THE LILIES, OR THE REVIVAL OF A ROMANTIC DRAMA; a Mandla Mbothwe-directed production, IYAZIKA, which has been created by its cast; and South African theatre-maker Clare Stopford's BANDS OF WOMEN, which will be directed by Stopford herself.

A passionate and engrossing masterpiece, THE LILIES, OR THE REVIVAL OF A ROMANTIC DRAMA employs the simple and singular elements of live theatre to tell a romantic and moving story of love, lies and innocence lost. Almost forty years after being falsely imprisoned, a man summons a bishop for a confession that involves the events of their shared past. What unfolds is a story of love, revenge and enlightenment that is re-enacted by the man's fellow inmates, taking the audience back to the French-Canadian countryside of 1912 where three adolescent boys are involved in a love triangle, and leads up to the moment that changed both of their lives forever. What might too hastily be summed up as a story of young gay men struggling to find fulfilment in their homophobic, rural home town is in fact something much more complex. THE LILIES, OR THE REVIVAL OF A ROMANTIC DRAMA runs in the Playroom from 22-24 June at 20:00.

IYAZIKA is UCT Drama's centennial commemoration of the sinking of the SS Mendi. The production features choreography by Owen Manamela-Mogane, musical direction by Nolufefè Mtshabe and dramaturgy by Warona Seane. An exploration of intergenerational memory, trauma and loss based on individual and collective wounds, the produciton is an attempt to focus on those left behind when lives of the men on the SS Mendi were lost when the ship sank on 21 February 1917. The ship was en route to France, taking the men to fight in World War I. This hybrid aesthetic production collects the disjointed pieces of the factual record and use imaginations and dreams creatively to nurture the gaps in that record to try and make sense of the inaccuracies. This is a theatre of monuments, of museums, of archives, of wounds and of healing. Through songs, physical metaphors, sound, dance and seemingly inconsistent heightened texts, the performers find their own storytelling journey. IYAZIKA runs in the Arena Theatre from 22-24 June at 19:00

BANDS OF WOMEN is a futurist, feminist, comic-book fantasy. Set in a dystopian future plagued by incessant global war, contemporary fears have materialised in the desertification of the south, while the north floods with rising seas. Groups of male militia roam and fight for territory, while women band together for protection and safety in defunct basements and underground garages. When Magda arrives dressed in an old wedding dress with a broken steering wheel in her hands, an odyssey is born. Having found the parts to repair her bakkie, a band of women decides to leave the city with her in search of Willows Speak, a family farm which is irrigated by the Red River and flanked by six willow trees. The journey is one of self-discovery for each of the fourteen women: a rite of passage for some, a tragedy for one, and for others a 'coming into being' and into power, as women and womxn. BANDS OF WOMEN runs in the P4 Studio from 22-24 June at 19:30.

Bookings for THE LILIES, OR THE REVIVAL OF A ROMANTIC DRAMA, IYAZIKA and BANDS OF WOMEN are online through the UCT Drama website, with tickets also available at the door. Tickets cost R70, with a R50 concession price for students and pensioners. UCT Drama's Hiddingh Campus is situated at 37 Orange Street in Gardens, Cape Town. A cash bar and free, secure parking will be available. The campus is accessible to wheelchairs.

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