An award-winning performance for Ubom!

Ubom!’s recent award at the OUT THE BOX Festival of Puppetry and Visual Performance in Cape Town gave the team members well-deserved recognition for their ongoing efforts. Ubom! is a non-profit organisation run by Janet Buckland, a part-time lecturer at Rhodes and is supported and sponsored by Rhodes University among others.

The drama company recently returned from the festival where they had an extremely successful run of their production The Adventures of a Little Nobody. Ilana Cilliers, who won the Best Manipulator Award, shared the Ubom! success in recognition of the entire company’s hard work in presenting a winning production.

Linked with the OUT THE BOX festival, the highly regarded Handspring Puppet Company has launched puppetry awards, and Ubom! was nominated in three categories: Best Design, Best Manipulator and Best Production.

Yvette Hardie, curator of the OUT THE BOX Family Festival, writes of The Adventures of a Little Nobody, “…the quality and energy of their performances, the poignancy and importance of the message, and the inventiveness and sheer theatricality of the piece won over its audiences, and moved and inspired all who saw it.

“We were particularly thrilled to have a production from the Family Festival nominated in three categories in the newly established Handspring Puppet Awards; and it should be noted that it was the only African production to be nominated in the category of Best Production for Puppetry.”

Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Company is a non-profit company that aims to develop, grow, and maintain a thriving arts environment in the Eastern Cape.They work to develop audiences, community groups and professionals in the area, creating performances that are dynamic, relevant, accessible, taboo-breaking and of the highest theatrical calibre.

The Adventures of a Little Nobody will be performed at the National Arts Festival between 20 June - 4 July.