Medea

Direction: Mark Fleishman & Jennie Reznek
Choreography: Alfred Hinkel
Design: Craig Leo
Musical arrangement: René Avenant

FNB Vita Award: Best Production of a New South African Work, 1996

• Cape Town: October 1994
• Grahamstown: July 1995
• Johannesburg: 1996

A story of two cultures, which are incomprehensible to each other. A story of a woman, who takes on the trappings of her lover’s world and, in the process, loses her own history and sense of self. The story of ambition and the price one pays for it.

Set against the sparse backdrop of a beach, three actors and a chorus of dancers weave song, narrative, dance, and the multiple tongues of Tamil, Tsotsitaal, Kaapse taal, Zulu, Latin, English, Afrikaans and Xhosa into a new dramatic language.

It seizes Greek tragedy by the throat, fragments it, culturally cross-fertilises it, then reinvents it without losing any of its original power … gripping theatrical performance with no artistic safety net.
Cue, Sunday, July 16, 1995.