Info, Credits

for National Arts Festival:

Performer, choreography, text, design
Acty Tang

Music
Francois le Roux

Stage Manager
Lisa Cagnacci

Photography
Toast Coetzer

With thanks to Carroll Jacobs of the NAMES Project, Cape Town; Warren Parker, Beyond Awareness Campaign; Jo Hazelhurst of NAMES Project South Africa.

Thanks to Rhodes University Drama Department: its resources and its people; to Andrew Buckland and Rob Murray (Rob's production Through Blue is at the Gymnasium throughout the Festival).

Thanks to Calum Stevenson, MD, and Gary Gordon, Artistic Director, of First Physical Theatre Company, for generously imparting their wisdom and experience.

for the First Physical Theatre Company:

Choreographer, text, video, performer
Acty Tang

Director
Gary Gordon

Music
Francois le Roux

Stage Manager
Mike Wiblin

Design
Gary Gordon, Acty Tang, Mike Wiblin

Venue Manager: The Box
Jacques de Kock

Useful Info

Acty Tang is a full-time theatre artist working in Grahamstown, under the name Robin's Nest Theatre. and the empty space of his shadow premiered at the Festival 2000. It was re-worked with help from Gary Gordon, under the auspices of the First Physical Theatre Company.

It is called a "danceplay" to reflect the stylistic and ideological influences on the artist, from the immediate influences of First Physical Theatre Company and Andrew Buckland, to the disparate ideas and aesthetics of tanztheater, physical theatre, US community artist Tim Miller, butoh, Jerzy Grotowski, Martha Graham, Antonin Artaud. Their influences include: the use of physicality to communicate to audiences, on a level akin to psychic affection; the belief in bringing the personal reality on to stage; an awareness of both form and content of not just a theatre production, but a holistic experience, affecting dramaturgical choices, theatre architecture, and so on; and a sense of ritual.

The Aids Memorial Quilt provides a starting point for this danceplay. The Quilt is a powerful work of art and post-modern performance, a public display of personal lives, a political demonstration of voices from the fringes of society.

The particular panel that inspired the danceplay is puzzling and striking in its minimalism, and its subversion and over-submission to the idea of remembering the lost one through naming.

In the re-worked version, the Quilt fell away from the story: the characters make no mention of it. Instead, the empty space of the person in memoriam is visually shown, using cloth material, and video.

The story also stripped away explicit mentions of the political and social debate surrounding HIV/Aids, and foregrounded the personal experience of loss. The personal is, however, intensely political, and by hiding the activist messages in the danceplay behind subtle suggestions their full force hit home harder, as the personal passions were given more space to move the audience.