Carin Bester is a performance artist, actress, set designer and art director who has been working in the film, television and theatre industry for the past 10 years. In 2015, Carin performed her first performance art piece Verlies. She was drawn to performance art because of its immediacy and honesty. She views it as a medium in which she can express herself freely as she interrogates issues of social importance effectively. In 2017, she did My Body My Life, a performance installation which took the statistics of gender-based violence in South Africa directly to the viewer. Since then she has done various other pieces about gender-based violence in South Africa. Currently, she is experimenting with documentation of performance elements to create print and video art. A piece called Dress of Remembrance, which was worn on August 1st 2018 as part of the #TheTotalshutdown March against gender-based violence to Parliament, has been included in an exhibition at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum. Cape Town audiences recently saw Carin’s set design featured in Figure of 8 Dance Collective’s Wag/Waiting which debuted at the Baxter Theatre. She will be performing a new piece Till Death Do Us Part this August as part of the Vavasati International Women’s Festival at The State Theatre in Pretoria.
Tag: Artist
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.
A Conversation with Lucie de Moyencourt
Lucie de Moyencourt is an artist best known for her many exhibitions of suburbs in and around Cape Town. As a former architect, Lucie loves drawing the city, observing people going about their daily lives. Lucie has spent many years backstage, watching her mother perform as a dancer in various productions and is thrilled to be back in the wings to draw over 60 projections for the play Happy New Year (A Play With Songs) at The Fugard Theatre. The play coincides with a solo exhibition at the Voorkamer Gallery at Chandler House, of 300 Cape Town sketches painted over the summer of 2018/2019. Both the play and the exhibition celebrate Cape Town and the people who live and pass through it.
A Conversation with Puleng Lange-Stewart
Puleng Lange-Stewart is a writer, playwright, filmmaker, director, designer and illustrator. In 2016, she was one of three shortlisted writers in the national PEN student writing competition. Her writing has appeared in the 2017 African Literature curriculum at UCT. Her first independent short film, written and directed with Jannous Aukema, Until the Silence Comes, was selected for the 2017 Cape Town International Film Festival and was nominated for an audience award at the Shnit International Short Film Festival. Her primary focus is in interdisciplinary performance and multimedia integration. As a queer, feminist, artist and mother of colour, she hopes to find ways to explore and question the practices and hierarchies that continue to erode human dignity and self-determinacy for so many within the context of South Africa and Africa as a whole. Her work is deeply embedded in a decolonial framework which hopes to elevate and recentre African bodies and voices as a response to its violent historical negation. During the 2018 Open Book Festival, Puleng will appear on a panel entitled Moving Pictures and Borders. Continue reading
A Conversation with Quanita Adams
Quanita Adams is an award-winning stage and screeen actress, vocalist and director. A four-time Fleur du Cap Theatre Award winner, she has taken on notable theatre roles including Valley Song, Boesman and Lena, Nadia Davids’ Cissie and At Her Feet, also penned by Nadia Davids, which was met with critical acclaim and has gone on to tour extensively over the last 15 years. We sat down to chat about her career and her latest film, Susters, which is now playing in select cinemas. Continue reading
A Conversation with Julia Anastasopoulos
Julia Anastasopoulos is an artist, illustrator, designer and actress. In 2014, she launched her “bite-sized do-it-yourself” web series, Suzelle DIY, which instantly took South Africa by storm. During the course of her career, Julia’s work has spanned several artistic mediums including a successful career as a stage actress, theatrical set and costume designer and illustrator. Her work has been exhibited locally and abroad and has included a series of large illustrated print murals for the City of Cape Town Micity Bus stations. She is a twice-published author and is also the creative director of Sketchbook Studios, which she co-founded with her husband Ari Kruger. But it’s Julia’s latest project, Tali’s Wedding Diary, that has everyone buzzing. We sat down with her at Sketchbook Studios to chat all about creating these iconic characters.
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A Conversation with Edith Plaatjies
Vocalist and actress, Edith Plaatjies is no stranger to the musical theatre stage. In the past five years she has dazzled audiences in productions such as Orpheus in Africa, District Six: Kanala and Blood Brothers, but it is her latest role that has everyone buzzing. As King Kong prepares to make its return to Cape Town, Edith is stepping into the iconic role of ‘Joyce.’ A role which launched its originator, Miriam Makeba, into international stardom. Continue reading
A Conversation with Kelly Sayer
Kelly Sayer is a passionate audio engineer, songwriter, and recent Berklee College of Music graduate. Originally from Cape Town, she is currently based in Los Angeles where she is employed as head engineer for platinum-selling record producer Alex Da Kid, making her part of the 5% of female engineers active in the music industry today. Continue reading
A Conversation with Nicole Fortuin
Nicole Fortuin is the true definition of an artist. As an accomplished actress, dancer, photographer and director, Nicole has managed to take the film, theatre and television industry by storm since graduating from UCT only three years ago. Impressive credits aside, Nicole has made it a priority to use her platform as a young creative to bring awareness to the causes that she believes in. We sat down to talk about her success, staying grounded and navigating the world of social media.
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A Conversation with Khanyisile Mbongwa
Khanyisile Mbongwa is an artist and co-curator of Infecting the City, a multi-disciplinary public arts festival that takes place in the heart of Cape Town. As an artist, Khanyisile’s work has taken her all over the world and won her numerous awards. Currently, she is a Mellon Scholar at The Institute for Creative Arts at UCT. Continue reading