Nortasuna (Identity)

The Drama for Life (DFL) SA Season is back on home turf this year. The Season brings to its audiences the thought provoking theme of Forgotten Futures.

Nortasuna (Identity) - Directed by Lidija Marelic and designed by Julian L. Kruger
(South African Theatre Season 2016: Forgotten Futures)

After a successful 2015 Season at the State Theatre in Pretoria the South African Theatre Season is back at The Wits Theatre (Braamfontein) for 2016. Running from the 6^th to the 9^th of April 2016 the Season brings to its audiences the thought provoking theme of Forgotten Futures.

The Season takes the form of live theatre performances, films showings, live music and performance poetry by some of South Africa's emerging young voices within the arts. Nortasuna is an important part of the Season.

South Africa is home to a wealth of peoples, cultures and creeds. This diversity makes us a complex society which is compounded by our painful past characterised by segregation and histories negated, distorted, ignored and lost. So who are we and how do we define ourselves in this morass? Are we merely the sum total of our race, ethnicity, genetic makeup and culture? Or is there another tale to be told, the beginning and endings located in different places, the middle spanning the atypical, the imaginary?

Using the workshop process, a tool of creative working that has shaped South African theatre, the cast of Nortasuna has been taken on a journey of devising a new South African folktale…

In a forgotten realm beneath the roots of an ancient tree, a village of fantastical creatures are forced to come to grips with the impending death of their world. Each is torn between protecting the organic home which has sheltered them for millennia, and the natural impulses which set them apart.

As the social order shuffles and reshuffles, as each seeks to do what is “right”, we begin to get glimpses of not only our own struggles, but also into the core of what is killing our nation slowly: fear.

Lidija received an Honours degree in Dramatic Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand, with a research project centred on semiotics in directing for theatre. She has performed at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, on several occasions including in a one-woman show which she wrote, performed and directed – this experience taught her that she should NOT direct herself.

Lidija was awarded the Percy Tucker Award for Best Director in 2011 and in 2014, she performed in the Afrovibes Festival, touring in the Netherlands and London. Her most recent project is Cheers to Sarajevo, co-written and directed by Lidija Marelic.

Julian L. Kruger worked with Lidija for the first time on her fourth-year directing final as the lighting operator and subsequently played the lead.

He was set designer on Cheers to Sarajevo and AFDA’s Second Year Festival in which Julian was involved in converting two venues into pop-up theatres for the events above.

In his ‘spare time’, Julian acts and directs. 

PARKING: Free parking is available in Senate House; the entrance is on Jorissen Street, Braamfontein

SEASON:Wednesday 6 April – Saturday 9 April 2016
Wed 06:04:2016 @ 19h00
Thu 07:04:2016 @ 19h00
Fri 08:04:2016 @ 13h15
Sat 09:04:2016 @ 18h00

RUNNING TIME: Sixty minutes no interval.

COST: ONLINE at www.webtickets.co.za                     
Full price                                                 R45.00                            
Discount for students and pensioners         R30.00                                           

DOOR
Full price                                                 R50.00
Discount for students and pensioners         R40.00    

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