Vermaak | Entertainment > Teater | Theatre > Kennisgewings | Notices > Nadia Davids brings Cissie home to the Baxter Theatre Nadia Davids brings Cissie home to the Baxter Theatre

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Baxter, July 9 to 26 - 2008-06-17
Award-winning South African playwright, director and scholar, Nadia Davids’ latest play, Cissie, comes home to the Baxter Theatre Centre for its Cape Town debut for two weeks only, from July 9 to 26, following its world premier at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

Cissie explores the life and memory of the Cape Town activist Cissie Gool from the early days of her girlhood at the beginning of the 20th century to her death in 1963, just before the onset of the District Six removals. Small vignettes create the backdrop for brief and imagined glimpses into her private world; from the dynamic social and political home of her childhood, to the heady years of her acclaimed public speeches and marriage, to her difficulty in trying to live a free life under the traumatic shadow of colonialism and apartheid.

30-year-old Nadia not only wrote the tribute to this South African icon, she also directs a dynamic cast of nine actors who move effortlessly between characters and eras to evoke a work that spans from 1910 to today.

Heaed up by Rehane Abrahams (who plays the part of both storyteller and Cissie), Quanita Adams, Vaneshran Arumugam, Charlton George, Thembi Mtshali-Jones, Chan Marti, Bo Petersen, Andre Samuels, and Andre Weideman complement the ensemble.

Craig Leo will design the sets and costumes, while the award-winning Patrick Curtis will design the lighting and Warrick Sony is responsible for sound design.

While the work trains its focus towards the particularities of Cissie’s life, it also uses Cissie’s story as a creative prism though which to talk about District Six, examining some of the larger questions about the fault-lines of history, memory and the attempt to tell stories through and about loss.

The play is a creative response to months of intense historical research and uses monologue, poetry, shadow, music and movement to evoke its different times, places and characters.

Davids was born in 1977, the same year that some of the last houses in District Six were demolished and so her understanding and knowledge of the area has only ever been through story and memory. She explains: “This play takes those twin concepts of memory and performance and offers the audience a different kind of remembrance, tribute and archive to a place and to a woman who called that place home.”

In 2003-2004 she received great audience and media acclaim when her production At Her Feet played in the Baxter Sanlam Studio. The play has been a schools and university set-work since 2004.

Her work, which is intimately concerned and connected with re-imagining the aesthetic and political possibilities of the post-apartheid South African landscape, has been produced, published and studied in Africa, Europe and North America. Between 2003 and 2004 she wrote a weekly column for The Argus, and today continues to publish opinion pieces in a variety of international magazines and newspapers.

The UK Guardian described her as "One of South Africa's most talented up-and-coming writers. Nadia's writing is lyrical, energetic and witty and her storytelling is deft and deep."

Over the past three years she has divided her time between Cape Town and New York City, while completing her PhD in Theatre at the University of Cape Town--her thesis, about District Six, performance and memory has helped inform and shape the writing of Cissie. She has received two A.W.Mellon Fellowships for her research and has been made a visiting scholar at U.C.Berkeley in 2001 and New York University between 2004 and 2006. She has also lectured both at UCT and NYU.

Cissie runs at the Baxter Theatre from July 9 to 26 and booking is through Computicket on 083 915 8000 or the Baxter Theatre Centre on 021 680 3989. For discounted block, corporate or school bookings, charities or fundraisers call Sandiswa on 021 680 3991 or Sharon on 021 680 3962.

For interviews and photographs, the media can contact Vicky Stark on 082-786-4240 or email: [email protected].

Photos by Andrew Brown.