Victoria Williams: 0058

This morning in The Bell Jar I misread ‘How could he marry her?’ as ‘How would he marry her?’ This is a more interesting question.

Review of Shaggy by Shika Budhoo

A comedy and social commentary piece that runs like a pair of freshly laddered stockings…once you’re in it, there’s no going back!

Shaggy is a monologue play on the Fringe of the National Arts Festival. With six parts with two performers alternating pieces, it’s a comedy piece that runs like a pair of freshly laddered stockings. Once you’re in it, there’s no going back. The six pieces are completely different in tone, plot and subject matter with interesting but strange characters that interact with their stories in repeated heightened moments. If a linking theme through the monologues is present, I think it would be different for each audience member, depending on what appealed and stood out to individuals. For me the theme is trying times, because the characters presented are all individuals with trying situations.

The piece is directed by Roshnee Guptar and the script, which is by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay, requires high attention from audiences in order to follow the threads that carry through the individual pieces from beginning to end. The monologues are written with suggestive text which opens the mind’s imagination and the eyes of those who always see below the surface. The two performers fill the stage with large performances - necessary, I think, for a script such as this. The scripts operate differently from monologue to monologue with a variety of oddball characters who reveal hilarious truths about humanity and the systems that operate within it.

At Shaggy you will come into contact with the following oddball personalities and cranky situations:: Part one: a female marketing officer of a baked bean factory, holds a meeting with her staff about her new marketing strategy; her presentation becomes a confusion of analogies for a reluctant staff that leave the bubbly marketing officer despondent and hurt. Part two: a peculiar inventor with strange boundaries and a strange sense of humour pitches an invention (his only one - for now!) to a chairperson of a big firm. Part three: an SABC female representative declares the problems with the programming budgets for the year and in this sequence she suggests some eccentric proposals to increase programming at zero cost.

Part four: Pete, an old man living alone in his home for 18 years, tells the stories of the frustrations of performers in the arts of juggling and especially Balloon Art. Part five: Sally, a Cambodian orphan, now living in South Africa wins the Small Business Person of the Year Award and explains her journey at the award ceremony. Part Six: I call it the ‘Military Dance’ monologue (for obvious reasons when you watch the show) it touched on the proposition of out-of-work actors to pursue careers in the army to bring future prospects of fame, after a war experience.

The show is an all-round success in presentation and script. A funny and entertaining piece of theatre, that is well performed and constantly keeps the cogs of the mind turning and churning. I love the South Africanisms and unique perspectives explored. Performers Zanne Solomon and Tristan Jacobs did an amazing job of changing between characters and precisely portraying the quirks and peculiarities of the characters in the rich script. The words sometimes complex in construction flowed out their mouths smoothly with high effect. Shaggy is running at the Drill Hall during festival 2010. – Shika Budhoo

So Why Compromise by Gary Cummiskey

Shaggy on CueTv

Shaggy, written by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay showcases six monologues starring Rhodes University drama graduates, Tristan Jacobs and Zanne Solomon. The well crafted monologues poke fun at contemporary South African issues and characters. Directed by Rhodes University graduate, Roshnee Guptar, Shaggy promises to entertain. In this insert we spend some time with the cast as they prepare for the opening night. Producers: Kyla Herrmannsen and Pumelela Nqelenga.

Shaggy

Victoria Williams: 0057

This is not the beginning of a limerick: I once knew a man named Horace. Seriously, I did. His charms were similar to those of a milkmaid’s, by which I mean there was something fleeting and saintly about him which you couldn’t quite put your finger on. And also they depended significantly on whether you liked what you were looking at. He was that kind of guy. He was terribly jumpy too – sometimes literally, hurling himself about like a dying fish. You didn’t really feel safe from any angle, since he could go from one spot to another defying all the natural laws of gravity and physics.

The last time I saw him before he disappeared he was playing cards, and the night he disappeared he was playing cards too. (I’ve still got his deck as a matter of fact). He fled the room – I wasn’t there, but for some inscrutable reason I’m pretty certain he’d have been screaming as he did it. What happened next we can’t be sure – if there’s one thing Horace has taught us, it’s that anything is possible.

Eyewitnesses report seeing him take a running jump into an open sewer, becoming half man, half sea-goat in mid-air – maybe disappearing into the shadows below, or maybe quietly exploding like fireworks and dispersing into the sky. Now condemned to circle subterranea for evermore, or perhaps enshrined in the constellation of Capricorn. It’s possible that neither theory is any less correct than the other, although I have my favourite. There is still, after all, a sea-goat in the sky, perhaps Horace having taken the place of the old one, but there is altogether too much joyful singing coming from the sewers for one to ignore.

Indian Punk Rock Anthems

"Gods Save The Queen"
"Live Fast Reincarnate Young"
"(White Naan) In Hammersmith Palais"
"Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Weren't Arranged to Fall In Love With)"
"Srimadaddankithirumalavaraahavenkatathaa is a Punk Rocker"

First published on McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Visit it HERE.

Drawing 9 by Gary Cummiskey

Shaggy

SHAGGY

Strikes like a mint scented sledgehammer.

Written by Anton Krueger & Pravasan Pillay
Directed by Roshnee Guptar
Assistant Director - Nicolene Badenhorst

Featuring Zanne Solomon & Tristan Jacobs

Stage Womanager: Amy Wilson
Make-up & Costume: Michelle du Plessis
Poster & Flyer Design: Jenny Kellerman Pillay
All photos by Krista Arriëns

DRILL HALL
20 June 21:00
21 June 11:00
22 June 22:30
23 June 13:00
25 June 13:30
26 June 20:00
27 June 12:00

Tickets: R50 Students: R42 Friends: R42
1st Performance: R40 Duration: 55mins Ages: PG (L)

Victoria Williams: 0056

God they are all here at my bedside again and everyone is saying what a happy reunion it will be when he gets here. I have curled and contorted so tightly into a ball of rage (and limbs) that I may well have imploded by then. Everyone wants me to get better, and everyone just wants me to be happy. Is there no end to their demands??

"I Want To Be Both Myself And" by Anton Krueger

i want to be both myself and

someone looking after me;

but it’s complex being both...

it’s like the song goes –

“my sweet tooth sez i wanna

but my wisdom tooth says no.”

Drawing 8 by Gary Cummiskey

Shaggy

SHAGGY

Strikes like a mint scented sledgehammer.

Written by Anton Krueger & Pravasan Pillay
Directed by Roshnee Guptar
Assistant Director - Nicolene Badenhorst

Featuring Zanne Solomon & Tristan Jacobs

Stage Womanager: Amy Wilson
Make-up & Costume: Michelle du Plessis
Poster & Flyer Design: Jenny Kellerman Pillay
All photos by Krista Arriëns

DRILL HALL
20 June 21:00
21 June 11:00
22 June 22:30
23 June 13:00
25 June 13:30
26 June 20:00
27 June 12:00

Tickets: R50 Students: R42 Friends: R42
1st Performance: R40 Duration: 55mins Ages: PG (L)

Victoria Williams: 0055

I like the way I seem to look in his spectacles.

Drawing 7 by Gary Cummiskey

Shaggy

Shaggy

Don't miss the funniest show at this year's Grahamstown National Arts Festival.

Six shaggy stories with Zanne Solomon and Tristan Jacobs.

Written by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay

Directed by Roshnee Guptar

See it live in Grahamstown, 20-27 June 2010 - check poster for details.

Victoria Williams: 0054

Dear Readers – yes all of you.

Here are the beginnings of some poems. Why don’t you finish them for me, then we can try and win the Nobel Prize for Literature. How about it?

1. The powder of a dry winter.
2. My buttocks are a beautiful Technicolor sight.
3. Give yourself a name.
4. Oh.
5. I can’t think with all this money.
6. Hey loveless.