THE LAST WEEK OF THE PARTY
A short blog, because there are not too many spaces to fill in this last week of a miraculous month. But there are some breaks and there are a few book and theatre events that I don't want to miss.
POETRY LAUNCH
The Book Lounge is hosting the launch on Wednesday of removing, the first collection of poems by Melissa Butler. I'd love to get there, after reading this review from Finuala Dowling: "The experience of reading the poems in removing is, wonderfully, one of a late-night conversation with a warm, imaginative, thoughtful, observant and compassionate friend. In pellucid language and deeply satisfying images of the real -- hadedas, shelves, coats, bowls, characters in Long Street, plastic bags, pigeons -- Melissa Butler manages to talk about the great questions of humanity (how we find meaning and how we know what we know) as lightly and easily as if she were tossing out a picnic blanket. The poems in removing are memorable for their playful and inventive use of form."
Melissa will be in conversation with Gus Ferguson.
The Book Lounge
Wednesday 7 17h30 for 18h00
BOOK LAUNCH: DENIS GOLDBERG'S MEMOIR
Another launch at the Book Lounge that's bound to draw a crowd is of a new memoir by Denis Goldberg, who will be there to discuss The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa.
"Nelson Mandela’s comrade in the struggle, Denis Goldberg, spent 22 years in an Apartheid South African political prison from 1963 to 1985. In this memoir, Denis, the perennial optimist, writes about the human side of the often painful road to freedom; about the joy of love and death, human dignity, political passion, comradeship, conflict between comrades…and a very long imprisonment."
The Book Lounge
Thursday 8 17h30 for 18h00
POET/PERFORMANCE ARTIST STACEYANN CHIN AT THE BAXTER
Jamaican-born poet/performance artist Staceyann Chin opens at the Baxter this week in her one-woman play Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires. I've had very mixed experiences with spoken word performances, from the great to the horrible, so I did my homework on this one, and found that this artist is highly acclaimed. The following notes come from a New York Times review of this play in 2005:
A part-black, part-Chinese lesbian immigrant from Jamaica, Staceyann Chin finds poetry in belonging everywhere and no place in particular.
"I was born with an otherness attached to me," said Ms. Chin.
Now, with "Border/Clash," she is using her spoken-word poetry to explore and play with the false distinctions, the contradictions, the fault lines that arise around complicated identities like hers.
Her tone is sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking.... The play includes vignettes of love poems to women and free-form howls at gay-bashing and other outrages. (But) "The 'oh, I'm a revolutionary' voice is not nuanced," she said. "I want a voice that is more informed by different kinds of things... "
The Baxter Theatre Studio
6 to 24 July 18h00 until 10 July thereafter 20h15
Written and performed by Staceyann Chin
Directed by Rob Urbinat
CEREMONIAL XHOSA SONGS AND DANCES
Showing for only three nights as part of Artscape’s Indigenous Arts Department this week is Ezethu, "a musical drama tracing the ceremonial songs and dances of the amaXhosa", featuring the Community Plough Back Movement Cultural Ensemble. At first glance this show with its sub-title of "Preserving African Heritage and Traditions" looks a bit too didactic to be entertaining, but I noticed in the small print that it is directed by Mandla Mbothwe which makes it a must-see on my list. Mandla always puts the traditional and the contemporary together in ways that are strange and beautiful, as in the recent ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela (the grave of the man is next to the road). This time it does look straight down the line traditional - the publicity says that the music in the play "can be traced back to the tribal experiences of rural South Africa. No musical instruments are used on stage and sounds emanate only from the performer’s bodies via clapping hands and stomping feet to the rhythms of the historical songs and dances."
Artscape Theatre
Thursday 8 to Saturday 10 20h15
