F Creations is taking part in the inaugural
vFringe - the virtual Fringe being hosted by the National Arts Festival in
2020. This year, due to the worldwide pandemic, the NAF took the courageous
decision to host the entire festival online and enter a brave new world.
This year, F Creations will be participating in the vFringe with three productions: 2019 Standard Bank Ovation Award recipient Your Perfect Life, 2018's debut Jam Every Other Day, and brand-new one-woman show So You Want to be a Trophy Wife?.
After beginning preparations to travel to the festival in Makhanda last year already, the company was hit with the news that the physical festival was cancelled and would be taking place online. This decision was made in March this year, giving artists little time to really change track. Thankfully, F Creations had been accepted as part of The Edge team (a curated space that hosts some of the top shows at the festival each year), and they were able to all work together to bring their productions into the digital realm.
Virtual festival goers will be able to stream the recorded productions via the NAF's vFringe platform from anywhere in the world. It'll be like Netflix for theatre for the run of the festival dates - June 25 to July 5, 2020. Audience members can gain access to each F Creations production for the ticket price of R50.
The festival may look a little different this year, but the company is proud to be a part of it and to be presenting some favourites once again. Jam Every Other Day debuted at the festival in 2018, and is a one-woman show based on the memoir of South African author Emmaleen Kriel. The story follows the lives of Kriel and her brood of children, geese, ponies and dogs from their home in 1960s rural Constantia to their next home in the forests of Knysna. Life certainly had its hardships for the family, but on the whole, it genuinely was just as idyllic as it seemed - if a little unconventional.
The company's second returning production is a 2019 Standard Bank Ovation Award recipient - Your Perfect Life. The story for this one is loosely autobiographical, inspired by the lives of the writers and performers: Erika Marais and Faeron Wheeler. It's an honest look at how life can take unexpected turns and how women especially are judged by society and our peers for the choices we make based on those curveballs. Audiences at last year's National Arts Festival in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) called the piece "thought provoking" and "wonderfully funny".
And finally, the company is bringing a brand-new piece to the vFringe - So You Want to be a Trophy Wife?. This production is written and performed by Sue Diepeveen, and directed by Wynne Bredenkamp. This fearless team is exploring the notion of what happens to a woman when she reaches her "sell-by date". The play follows the highs and lows of reaching middle age and pokes fun at how society ignores women in this particular category. Audiences are invited to laugh along with the character Marie as she looks at the unbelievable expectations that society places on women, and how ridiculous the fairer sex can be in the pursuit of what we think is happiness.
To find out more about how to gain access
to these productions and the rest of the virtual National Arts Festival, please
follow F Creations on social media.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fcreationsct/
Website: https://fcreations.online/
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