Macbeth as you've never seen it
11 January 2007
Dynamic theatre troupe Third World Bunfight combines with the Cape Town Opera to bring Verdi's Macbeth to life in a uniquely post-modern African way.
Last seen in Pretoria in 2002, the critically acclaimed adaptation of the famous opera by director Brett Bailey and composer Pieter Louis van Dijk returns to the Spier Estate outside Cape Town in March.
This is not the Macbeth that European audiences have come to expect. Bailey and Van Dijk have adapted and interpreted Verdi's opera of ambition, corruption and withcraft into the idiom of contemporary and mythological Africa.
Against a backdrop of super-power politics, occult practices and Chinese imports, an African general and his European wife murder their king, unleashing atrocities on the crumbling African state they seize.
Performed by an all-black cast of around 50, the opera has been trimmed down to a fast-paced 90 minutes and includes African instrumentation and video projection.
"This is not just another night at the opera," The Star wrote in 2002. "It's a seance - where high Western art meets a pan-African ethos, tongue firmly in post-colonial cheek."
Since 1998, Cape Town Opera has mounted over 100 productions of a wide variety of operas and musicals across South Africa. From standard operatic works such as Carmen and The Magic Flute to newly commissioned works, the company showcases the country's top talent through the lyric art form.
Post-modern African ritual theatre
Third World Bunfight, formed out of mainly untrained black performers from local townships and rural areas, has been making provocative, celebratory works since its birth in the Eastern Cape in 1996.
The company fuses traditional performance forms with a pop sensibility to create post-modern African ritual theatre pieces, forging a truly African theatre from South Africa's vast wealth of cultural heritage.
Productions such as Ipi Zombi?, iMumbo Jumbo, Big Dada and The Prophet have won numerous awards, including FNB Vita best costume design and best new script for Big Dada (2002), and FNB Vita best costume, set and new script for iMumbo Jumbo (1997).
The 2005 tour production of Big Dada was nominated for three 2006 Naledi Theatre Awards, including best musical.
The company is resident on the Spier Estate outside Cape Town, where it trains young adult performers, provides a programme of entertainment at Moyo, and continues in its artistic endeavours.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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