The
Durban University of Technology’s Department of Drama & Production Studies
in conjunction with the Grahamstown National Arts Festival is to present Sarcophagus by Popi Qwabe and Genbia
Hyla.
To be
performed at this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, it is directed
by Buhle Mazibuko with original music composed by Aphiwe Namba.
The tomb
lies still as stone,
for
cannibals eat flesh slowly.
Hushed
voices consume sarcophagus sounds
that
pulse as the living dead lie still and listen.
Words in
a vortex are always complex.
Torture
is when you gouge out the centre and remove the cough!
But
what’s left in the void?
Ask for
the hidden line of irony
that
falls between the spaces.
Bars of
physical prisons create perimeters.
Pauses
create the boundary between the living and the dead. Commemorative stones are
full of memories – bandaged in vulnerability. Insanity is merely a state of
mind. But whose truth carries more guilt?
Sarcophagus holds secrets carved in bone. It hides what
is hidden in the dark. It places a sombre lid on the unspoken and the things
dead in the past, with dire consequences. The past can never be undone. The
action here finds a mother devastated, a child dying, a man shot, a couple torn
apart, an alcoholic, an adulterer, a thief, a murder or two. Each individual has a Sarcophagus within or
under which the very funeral pyre of morality and conscience lie. These
Sarcophagi are the testaments to our cannibalistic nature, to our preference
for eating flesh.
There
will be performances of Sarcophagus in the Rehearsal Room at The Monument in
Grahamstown on July 4 at 21h30 and June 6 at 13h30.
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