Reviews from the artSMart team at the 2015 National Arts
Festival in Grahamstown)
Hilarious but thought-provoking piece. (Review by Khinali Bagwandeen)
The student
programme performances of this year’s National Arts Festival were all
particularly strong and political in nature. The University of
KwaZulu-Natal Durban (UKZN) put on a hilarious but thought-provoking piece
called Ashes to Ashes.
The show was directed and written by post-graduate student
Camilla Rogers and consisted of a diverse cast of seven people. The central character
was a young girl named Hope who was used as a metaphor for the hope and mother of
our nation. The story uses the act of a robbery to ridicule the well-known
political figures and law enforcers.
The characters are comical portrayals of the real life
individuals and range from Zoo (Jacob Zuma) to Mrs Gupta (The Guptas) posing as
a crooked policewoman. Funnily enough, there is even a character named Raj
(Rajbansi) who was brought back from heaven to be a party to the robbery.
The performance ended on such a strong note, with the cast
stripping off their characters and powerfully repeating the words “rise South
Africa rise”. The show was genuinely entertaining and brought what we already know
about our political system right in front of our eyes.
The UKZN Drama and Performance Studies department definitely
outdid themselves. – Khinali Bagwandeen
For more information
on the National Arts Festival click on the banner advert at the top of this
page or visit www.nationalartsfestival.co.za
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