SHELTER

Mbongeni Mtshali presented new play at the Hexagon in Pietermaritzburg.

Recently seen at the Hexagon Theatre in Pietermaritzburg was Shelter, a production conceived, written, directed and choreographed by Masters Student Mbongeni Mtshali, whose choreography for the Hexagon’s recent Cabaret received particular praise. The play also includes text by playwright Louise Buchler.

It is set “in a time perhaps not too far from our own, in a place not too distant from here (wherever here is…)”. shelter explores ways of making meaning. While seeking on one level to make sense of a night that forever changes the lives of the three characters in the play, it is as much about the very process of telling, about the moments that fall between the cracks, between the words, beneath the silences.

While Emiliah mourns the loss of her child, Stefan wants more than anything to not become his father, a man who bears the ghosts of a war and a life half lived. And the last of a family of migrants, all Andine wants is a place that she can call home.

It begins at the elbow... a word escapes, and with that word, a gesture: of compassion, of love, of hate, of a place remembered.