Joburg Theatre Schools Setworks Festival underway

The first ever Joburg Theatre Schools Setworks Festival will take place at Joburg Theatre in Braamfontein with two exciting productions, Sophiatown and Itsoseng.

Makhoala Ndebele, artistic director for Joburg City Theatres, said the audience will be treated to a back-to-back theatre experience to kick start their weekend – the first show starts at 6pm and the second one at 8pm.

 “School learners stand to benefit a great deal as both stories are on the current high school’s setworks curriculum . The shows are also open to the general  public,  with a special double-bill price for Saturdays at R200, as we believe that both Sophiatown and Itsoseng are important to South African’s experience as a whole,” said Ndebele

Sophiatown is presented by Joburg City Theatres in partnership with The South African State Theatre. It has been revived with a fresh and young cast to resonate with today’s audiences and includes the timeless ‘Kofifi’ style of music, which made the original production so famous. The play tells the extraordinary original story of journalists who set up a house together and advertise for an additional housemate to live with them. Despite the apartheid legislation of those days, they get permission for a white Jewish woman to move in when she turns up with a suitcase on their doorstep.

Another gripping story about a radical time in South Africa’s more recent past is Itsoseng, which will run concurrently with Sophiatown and is about a man whose hope of a new life is crushed with the realities of a corrupt system. This intense one-man play covers a period in South Africa spanning from the early 1990s to 2008. It looks at the township of Itsoseng which formed part of the Bophuthatswana homeland, set up by the apartheid government to segregate South Africans and led by the tyrannical Lucas Mangope. The show gives audiences a first-hand account of life in a South African township, and the endless cycle of ‘going to funerals and taverns’ as the main character, Mawilla, describes.

Through the authorship and direction of Omphile Molusi and a remarkable performance by Thapelo Sebogodi, audiences will be left on the edge of their seats in this gripping portrayal of a township lost.