Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The "Outside Eye"

Well its been jolly hard to sit vas in Jozburg, while the cast and Jen are 'doing the festival'. Although I have to say I have done my fair share of them, and I wouldn't have missed the arrival of my brandnewbaby niece for the world.

It all seems to be holding together, though news from Jen is scarce. I know what its like - you're constantly having to fend off people in silly hats, people trying to sell you silly hats or trying to get you to go and watch their show, old mates trying to get you to drink at 9 in the morning, and streetkids with never-ending renditions of shosholoza. If its not that, its working that damn village green and trying to recruit audiences. Hard work, all in the bitter cold. Do I sound like I wish I was there? Course I do! Every year if I'm not in Grahamstown for the first ten days of July, it feels all wrong.

So here's the review we got on the festival website. Its good to get some outside validation for stuff what we were trying to do. For the record, Paydirt is rooted in a character's journey - a simple quest narrative - but what we going for was to let the 'story' of Joburg's origins coexist with her story, and see how these mirror each other. Like Indra's web, perhaps. Little bits of the parts reflected in each other. Or something. He's quite right though, the play will definitely evolve. There's lots we still want to do with it. It'll be interesting to see what Joburg dwellers make of it.

1 comment:

  1. I'm gutted to say thay I missed the opportunity to see it...mind you, it was a really thin opportunity that only presents itself rarely in between the stage managing/marketeering/costume washing/mask and prop maintenance/performer baby-sitting/driving/drinks that have to be taken because of all the above/and so on that characterise those heady 1st 10 days in july...sorry, guys...

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Paydirt by Tamara Guhrs and Paydirt cast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License.