The Sun, the Moon and the Knife

Conception, adaptation & direction: Mark Fleishman
Choreography: Alfred Hinkel
Design: Michael Mitchell
Music direction: Heather Mac
Lighting: Paul Abrahams
Performers: Dawn Langdown and Jazzart dancers

• Cape Town, November 1995

The 1995 production of The Sun, the Moon and the Knife was based on Return of the Moon: versions of the /Xam poems by Stephen Watson, translated from the Bleek and Lloyd collection. Professor John Parkington of the Archeology Department at the University of Cape Town said: “One of the most challenging aspects of archeology is to construct a past from what has survived onto the present, using analogies and models from the present but without simply reading the present back into the past, or, as some have said, merely presenting the past.”

In this sense, The Sun, the Moon and the Knife is the archeology of the /Xam in performance form; an archeology that also attempts to speak to our reality in the present.

“So, Medea wasn’t a flash in the creative pan, it was a significant beginning, a marriage of concept and process that is enriching our crossover theatre repertory… The Sun, the Moon and the Knife is a vividly articulate theatre piece, which will be as effective in a community library as it will on a fancy stage.” Adrienne Sichel, The Star Tonight