Yesterday was a rollercoaster. I held auditions. I find it as hard holding them as doing them. I have to put out an enormous amount of energy to get people to be their best selves and to have a good time. That’s important to me. I was lucky yesterday. I allowed my instincts to speak loudly and I had no doubts about the two people I cast for a fantastic play I will be directing really soon. Now that the decision is made, and my offer has been accepted, I am allowing my imagination to soar. I am in the space of possibility and dreaming into the ideas, the vision, the meaning, the flow. And I am so terribly excited to be directing somebody else’s writing.
Last year I met an extraordinary young woman, Sara Shaarawi, at the WPIC (Women Playwrights International Conference) held in Cape Town. I was assigned to her as a director to work on a staged reading of an excerpt of her play Niqabi Ninja, and I got very excited. I knew I wanted to put the piece on, but timing and other stuff and life got in the way, until the Rhodes Reference List protests reminded me of how relevant and important this piece is. I wrote to Sara and told her I was ready to try and put it on, and she sent me the latest draft. It is radical.
So, on 18, 19, 20 July we will be doing a showcase of the play at The Alexander Bar. I will be inviting some VIPs of the theatre world (in Cape Town) because this piece must be seen, and appreciated, by as many young people as possible. And I am so, so excited. Save the dates, and come and have a look.
I must confess to having been equally intrigued and irritated by the title. Sillage. (Actually, not even spell check likes it, and tried to change it to Village.) I had no idea how to say it. Once I understood what the word meant – the degree to which a perfume’s fragrance lingers in the air when worn – I loved the idea of it, but I did find it pretentiously oblique. This can be dangerous for a title of a theatre piece. If people don’t understand it, they might not want to see it. It is pretty risky. But I am a hardened theatre goer. I put my big theatre pants on and off I went to the Alexander Bar to see this piece written and directed by Penny Youngelson and performed by Rebecca Makin-Taylor and Michelle Belknap.
I was shocked to see how long it has been since I wrote a blog post. Clearly, I have been busy with other things; other writing, rehearsing, doing. I miss the kind of stuff I let loose on meganshead, especially the kind of random stuff that just pops into my head and out into the blogosphere. This post is not that. It is a very specific, share the joy, self promotion (and promotion of others) type of post. It is about the incredibly short run of the latest instalment of Violet Online, opening tomorrow night at The Alexander Bar.
Sometimes a show comes along that makes me feel everything. Sometimes a show comes along that I see more than once and want to see again. This time it is Dani And the Lion, on at The Alexander Bar until the end of the week.