(Clinton
Marius)
A workshop on writing plays for young
audiences will take place at Stable Theatre in KZN this coming weekend as part of ASSITEJ SA's
UNESCO funded Theatre4Youth project.
ASSITEJ SA has been funded by UNESCO to
mentor theatre companies in developing work for young audiences across the
country. This also involves workshops for the mentees, which are open to the
general membership of ASSITEJ and to interested parties. ASSITEJ SA recently
held a very successful Mask and Mime workshop led by KZN Theatre4Youth mentor,
and well-known theatre practitioner, Gisele Turner, at Stable Theatre at the
end of May.
Local award-winning playwright and
performer, Clinton Marius, will conduct this workshop. He has numerous plays,
books, and films to his credit, including Vergissmeinnicht,
Guru, and Thank You Very Much.
His first foray into writing for children, The Fantastical Flea Circus, scooped all
awards in the Children's Category in the 2011 Mercury Durban Theatre Awards,
for Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Children's Production.
The Durban University of Technology
Department of Drama Studies and Production selected him in 2012 as the featured
writer in their second annual Children's Theatre Festival. The festival
premiered four new works, The Calf With
No Name, Going...Going..., Share, Our Stories, collectively known as The
Courtyard Quartet. The Calf With No Name
has been selected for inclusion in a South African textbook for Grade 7 English
as second language.
His stage comedy, Ilobolo, won the vote for Audience Favourite at the regional finals
of the 2008 PANSA Festival of New Writing, and he also directed The Sepia Seamstress for the 2009 Musho
Festival. In 2012 he served as a regional and national judge in the NLDTF/PANSA
Festival of Reading New Writing, and as a judge in the Writers’ Guild of South
Africa’s inaugural Muse Awards 2014.
Clinton Marius created and wrote the smash
hit radio comedy series, Lollipop Lane,
which was broadcast twice daily on LotusFM, for four years from 2008-2012. The
soapie broke numerous broadcasting records during its run. He also wrote the
historical drama series, All That
Glitters, and the series of supernatural stories, The Other Side, for the station.
Clinton has appeared in three South African
movies, and is set to publish his next book, The Divine Knitter. He serves on the council of the Writers’ Guild
of South Africa, and is also co-owner of Copy Dog, a publicity company
specializing in the Arts.
These workshops, covering different aspects
of both artistic and administrative aspects of theatre for young audiences are
regular events with ASSITEJ SA's Theatre4Youth programme, which is supported by
the UNESCO’s International Fund for Cultural Diversity and the UNESCO 2005
Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural
Expressions.
The project contributes to ASSITEJ SA's
goal to ensure that every South African child is able to see theatre in their
own environment on a regular basis. The programme is designed to enhance
learners’ and teachers’ awareness of cultural diversity, by increasing
accessibility of all schools across the country, including rural, peri-urban
and currently marginalised schools, to a vast and systematically organised
database of productions and workshops.
The upcoming workshop in Writing for
Children's Theatre presented by Clinton Marius will take place on June 21 2014
from 09h30 to 12h30 (with registration starting from 09h00). It is free for all
members of ASSITEJ SA, while non-members will pay R100 for the workshop.
The workshop will be held at the Stable
Theatre, in Room 4, 114 Johannes Nkosi Street, Warwick Triangle, Durban. Those
attending should come equipped with a pen and notebook.
For more information on this workshop or on
other aspects of ASSITEJ SA work in KZN, contact Pauline Dalais on theatre4youthkzn@assitej.org.za/
paulined@renweb.co.za or on either
031 825 4133 / 078 351 8718.
Posts
