Karoo Moose at Baxter Theatre Centre, Golden Arrow Studio

Since its world premiere in 2007, Lara Foot’s Karoo Moose returns to the Baxter stage with the original cast, having scooped 15 major South African theatre awards, and having received high praised by the local press and some of England’s most revered and feared theatre critics when it was performed at the Tricycle in London.

Performed in English with isiXhosa, the story takes place in a remote and impoverished village in the Karoo, where the inhabitants are struggling to survive. A young girl called Thozama ends up killing a moose. But what is the moose doing there, and how did it get there? Writer and director Lara tackles the disintegration of the family unit and the violation of innocence endured by so many South African children. The play cleverly and creatively combines African story-telling and magical realism. Lara explains, “The themes of the story for me were bound up in the idea that the children in the village needed some kind of magical event to free them from abuse, neglect and poverty. Something magical was needed to break the cycle of violence.”