A Q&A with Sue Diepeveen

Sue Diepeveen is an actor, theatre practitioner and the owner of The Drama Factory in Somerset West. Her new show, So You Want To Be A Trophy Wife? is available to stream as part of this year’s virtual National Arts Festival. As the owner of The Drama Factory, Sue is heavily involved in mentoring programmes for young actors and is committed to ensuring a safe and affordable space for new work to see the light of day. In the midst of the national lockdown, Sue has spent the last few months creating her show while also dealing with the unfortunate impact of the global pandemic on her theatre. 

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A Q&A with Chantal Stanfield

In December 2017, we sat down with actress, singer and playwright Chantal Stanfield to chat about her one-woman show, From Koe’siestes To Kneidlach, which was about to debut at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town following a successful run at Theatre On The Square in Johannesburg. Fast forward to 2020 and a global pandemic that has left theatres around the world dark. In response to this, Chantal has released a pre-recorded version of the show that audience members can stream to their homes, in the hopes of raising funds for the two theatres that From Koe’siestes To Kneidlach called home.

Click here to read our conversation with Chantal from 2017.

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A Conversation with Theresa Ryan – van Graan

Theresa Ryan – van Graan is a film producer. She heads up Penzance Films in conjunction with Oliver Hermanus and spent seven years as Head of Productions at Moonlighting Films. During this time, she was SA Production Executive on Season 4 of Homeland and actively involved in the servicing and pre-production of the films Invictus, Safe House, The Giver and Mad Max: Fury Road, amongst others. In addition to working with Oliver Hermanus on his previous film The Endless River, she is the co-producer of his latest film Moffie, which arrives in local cinemas on March 13th 2020.

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A Conversation with Antoinette Louw

Antoinette Louw is a multiple award-winning stage and screen actress and writer. She has appeared in leading roles on South Africa’s most popular TV series including 7de Laan and Binnelanders. Her theatre credits include Women of Troy, The Women who Cooked her Husband which she produced and directed, Rudely Stamped, Engele Soner Vlerke, Die Trommel, Die Vagina Monoloë, Afspraak, Dis ek, Anna and ‘night Mother which she also adapted into its Afrikaans translation Nag ma. In 2014 she won a SAFTA award for her role in Deon Meyer’s Die Laaste Tango as well as a nomination for Best Actress in the Afrikaans short film Totsiens, Pa. Antoinette also starred in the Afrikaans feature film ‘n Man Soos My Pa. Her recent film credits include the multi-award-winning films Axis Mundi, Sew the winter to my skin, An Act of Defiance and Nul is nie niks nie. She is currently appearing on screens as Sara in the film adaptation of the beloved Afrikaans folktale Die verhaal van Racheltjie de BeerContinue reading

Guest Post: The Chronicles of an Independent Theatre-Maker

In 2018 during our interview with theatre-maker Dara Beth, we spoke about the return engagement of her play, Nasty Womxn. Now, 18 months later, Nasty Womxn is back for its third return engagement, this time featuring a new cast, a reworked script and coinciding with Dara’s latest theatrical offering, The Chronicles of Athena, Babes. Tasked with staging two independently produced works which almost run concurrently, we ask Dara to share her thoughts around this creative process.   Continue reading

A Conversation with Olivia Fischer

Olivia Fischer is an award-winning playwright, director and producer. After graduating with her degree in theatre and performance, specialising in theatre-making from the University of Cape Town, Olivia premiered Still at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, CA. Still was awarded five Hollywood Fringe awards including Tvolution’s Best International Show and the Conversation Creation award. In 2018, Olivia opened a production company called LIV Studios, a company that aims to develop female-identifying playwrights and theatre-makers. Olivia is a published writer: her autobiographical monologue Coming For You was recently published in the Market Laboratory’s anthology Between the Pillar and the Post: an anthology of South African monologues and scenes. Her other theatre credits include writing and directing an adaptation of Sindiwe Magona’s The Cruel King Lives! called Thandiwe: The Loved One and directed Duncan MacMillan’s Lungs. Her main focus as she continues to grow as a theatre-maker is telling stories of womxn: their resilience, their strength but above all, their undeniable capacity to love.

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A Conversation with Janni Younge

Janni Younge is a director and producer of multimedia, theatrical and visual performance works, with an emphasis on puppetry arts. Janni’s work has been performed widely internationally and she has gone on to be awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre, several Fleur du Cap awards for puppet design and the Nagroda award for direction. A former director of Handspring Puppet Company for four years, she currently runs Janni Younge Productions and concurrently directs UNIMA SA. Janni’s works include the creation and direction of Ouroboros which toured extensively in South Africa, Europe and India, The Firebird which toured in the USA and Take Flight, currently touring Europe. With Handspring, Janni also directed revivals of William Kentridge’s Woyzeck on the Highveld and Ubu and the Truth Commission and worked with Handspring on War Horse and on the Bristol Old Vic’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. She also created and directed puppetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Tempest.

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A Conversation with Barbara Mathers

Barbara Mathers is an arts administrator, performing arts producer and events coordinator. Since 1998 she has managed Third World Bunfight, producing most of their productions and tours locally and internationally. She has produced events including the Performing Arts Network of South Africa competition of One Act Plays, the Festival of White Light on the Spier Estate from 2009 to 2011 and Talking Heads for Infecting the City Festival. She managed The Spier Arts Festivals for 2008 including the Poetry Exchange on the Spier Estate and the Performing Arts & Music Festivals presented in inner city venues of Cape Town. We sat down to chat about her involvement in Third World Bunfight as well as their latest production, Samson, which is heading to US Woordfees 2019.

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A Conversation with Gina Shmukler

Gina Shmukler has been in the entertainment industry since she was six years old. In her career, her theatre work as an actress, director and producer, has garnered ten theatre nominations and four awards across different genres ranging from Mamma Mia and Chess, to Master Class and Silk Ties. In 2013, after completing her Master’s Degree in Drama at the University of Witwatersrand, Gina was the proud recipient of the Dr Sibongile Khumalo Creative Research Award. Her select directorial credits include; The Line, Lost in the Stars, Songs for a New World, The Market Theatre’s Brer Rabbit, Beautiful Creatures, Love: A Musical Revue, The Last Five Years and The Whole Megillah. Having taken a performance hiatus, Gina returned to the stage in 2017 in Mike van Graan’s Helen of Troyeville. At the end of 2018, she returned to her musical theatre roots by stepping into Aunty Merle the Musical, which makes its way to Joburg Theatre following three sold-out engagements in Cape Town.

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A Conversation with Cintaine Schutte

Cintaine Schutte is an actress and producer. She has performed in more than 30 professional theatre productions and has toured to all the national art’s festivals and major theatre’s in South Africa. In 2015 she received a Kanna Award for her performances in Moeder Moed and Die Seemeeu and in 2016, she was awarded a Fleur Du Cap Theatre Award for her performance as Masha in Die Seemeeu. In 2017, she was awarded the Woordtrofees Award for her performance in Reza de Wet’s Drif. She is well-known for her Television work, including Die Kasteel, PHIL 101 and Fynskrif. She has appeared in numerous local films such as Knysna, Sonskyn Beperk and most recently, the film adaptation of Christiaan Olwagen’s Die Seemeeu which will arrive in theatres in 2019. Cape Town audiences can catch Cintaine in Half Leeg, directed by Tara Notcutt which will run at the Alexander Bar in November.  Continue reading