The Rhodes University Young Directors’ Season ’10 will be taking place from Wednesday 18 to Saturday 21 August at the Box and Main Theatres. The productions will include:
The Baltimore Waltz: In 1989, in Baltimore, Maryland a young woman, Anna, is diagnosed with a terminal illness and given mere months to live. Faced with mortality and trying to cope with grief and despair, she and her brother Carl embark on a trip around Europe to rediscover and reinvent themselves. As things become increasingly more surreal, we soon realise that all is not as it seems.
The director, Debbie Robertson, completed her BA degree in 2009 at Rhodes University with Psychology and a distinction in Drama. She is currently completing her Honours degree in Drama, specialising in Directing, Writing, Acting, and Dramatic Literature. She has performed in short excerpts of Sam Shepard’s Red Cross and Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners at the Rhodes Drama Department.
Debbie chose to direct The Baltimore Waltz for many reasons, but especially because she believes that the bond of unconditional love between family is the strongest and most unbreakable kind there is. Debbie is also on the Working Group of the Gender Action Project at Rhodes and has been since August 2008. She hopes to begin her Master’s in Directing at Rhodes next year.
Yellowman: Set in South Carolina, Yellowman follows Alma and Eugene as they relive their lives. They take the audience through their journey of love, hate and rejection. It is a love story about two innocent individuals that lose all sense of themselves as the world of racism and abuse sweep them up. Yellowman is a truly riveting story, one which a South African audience will strongly relate to.
Having graduated from the University of Cape Town with majors in Philosophy and Drama, the director, Jaletta de Jager, is currently enrolled in the Honours course at Rhodes, pursuing her interest in performance and interrogating her perceptions and practice within the field of Directing. During her final year at UCT de Jager co-founded the theatre company 'Barebulb Productions' with lighting designer and stage practitioner, Jade Bowers.
De Jager chose Yellowman by Dael Orlander Smith as her final directing piece - a two-hander that encourages multiple role-play and attuned physicality for the actor; and inventive imaginings from the audience.
Despite Yellowman being located in the geographic and cerebral landscape of America; it speaks to a number of issues currently prevalent in South Africa. Amongst these are racism and intra-racial clashes, substance abuse and domestic violence. This will be De Jager's debut as a director at the Rhodes Theatre.
Hard Candy: Strangers should never talk to little girls. A 32-year-old man takes home a 14-year-old girl he meets on the Internet. One of them is being groomed; the other is a predator. Which is which? Hard Candy is a psychotic thriller presented in the form of a revenge drama with surprising consequences.
The director, Madele Vermaak, completed her BA degree in 2009 with Journalism and a distinction in Drama. In the same year she performed a leading role in the award winning production of Die Bannelinge, directed by Heike Gehring and written by Bauke Snyman. The piece won awards at the KKNK festival in Oudtshoorn, and went on to perform at Volksblad Festival in Bloemfontein and Aardklop Festival in Potchefstroom.
She is currently completing her Honours degree at Rhodes University in Drama, specialising in Directing, Acting, Contemporary Performance and Physical Theatre. This year she performed in Morountodun, directed by Andrew Buckland. She was the musical director and musical performer in the recent National Arts Festival Student Production of Rubber, directed by Robert Haxton.
She plans to do a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at UCT next year, while continuing to pursue a career in Music and Drama.
Girl, Interrupted: "Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me, amplified." Girl, Interrupted is the tumultuous coming of age story of a young woman who is admitted into a mental health facility after a suicide attempt. Question with her, her flaws, human nature, the craziness of the world around her and stand among the sociopaths, anorexics and pathological liars that help her figure it all out.
Dana Bosch, the director, is an Eastern Cape local from Uitenhage who has always been interested in the dramatic arts; being the instigator of her high school drama club at the age of 15. She graduated with her BA degree in English and Drama from Rhodes University in 2009 and is currently studying her Honours degree in Drama specialising in Directing, Writing and Contemporary Performance.
In 2008 she performed in Short Skirts and High Heels at the National Arts Festival and this year wrote and directed Do You Come Here Often? on the Fringe programme. Dana was also assistant director to Andrew Buckland for Morountodun at the beginning of this year.
Dana has chosen to direct a stage adaptation of the film Girl, Interrupted written by James Mangold based on the autobiographical memoir written by Susanna Kaysen because of a keen and very personal affiliation with the subject matter of psychological health, having been diagnosed in 2007 with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Photographer: Ruth Nusbaum.