Cultsha Kennis

The image of the ‘non-whites only’ bench in Queen Victoria Street Cape Town, a reminder of Apartheid South Africa, comes to mind when looking at the on-set photographs of Nwabisa Plaatjie ’s Florence & Wine in the Wilderness , a production consisting of two combined plays, which closed at the Baxter Theatre recently. Originally written by American playwright Alice Childress , each play uniquely highlights the various socio-political, cultural, communal and intimately personal narratives that takes place within a 1940’s African American setting. Alice Childress is acknowledged as " the only  African-American  woman to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades ”. The urgency of the voices of her stories are most certainly felt through the characters in both plays, particular in Tomorrow Marie, the lead female protagonist in Wine in the Wilderness .  Cultsha Kennis with Nwabisa Plaatjie Review of Florence Florence opened with an elde...

The Battered Housewives Club, written and directed by Zubayr Charles, is a school drama production that was staged on Friday 20 September at Goodhope Seminary Girls High School in Hope Street, Gardens Cape Town. Produced as an acapella jukebox musical, the show cleverly makes use of popular contemporary radio tracks to help tell the story of each of the victims, each who rendered a performance of the song during the storytelling.      Sally reveals her story in the second act  Starring an all-female high school cast , the show took us on a journey of five victims of gender-based violence who share their experiences at a support group, called The Battered Housewives Club. Fatima (Micaela Barnett; Grade 11), a quiet housewife with a black eye (she says “I am so clumsy”) who is known for her cooking, reveals that she accidently stabs her husband Ayoeb during a power struggle while making mince breedie in the kitchen, and what the consequences ...