Directors Bursary backs Alan Parker's 'Detritus'

At the heart of Detritus is an imaginative and playful engagement with the intangibility of live performance. It is about watching and feeling and about the struggle to capture, keep, remember and ultimately share the intangible.

Alan Parker is a Cape Town-based teacher, choreographer and performer. "Having just moved to Cape Town at the beginning of the year, after spending many years with First Physical Theatre in Grahamstown, this opportunity is perfectly timed for me. It has provided a platform for me to make a new work, in a new city, in a new space, with new people. So I do not feel comfortable - everything is unfamiliar - and I believe that is the best space to make compelling theatre!" comments Parker, who is grateful for the opportunity which the bursary provides, to "really engage in a creative, open and non-restrictive process ".

Parker explains that for the last few years, he has been interested in the notion of the archive in relation to live performance. By its nature, performance is ephemeral, disappearing just as quickly as it appears. When the event is over, nothing of the actual performance remains, except for the detritus - in the form of costumes and props and the (often flawed) recollection of the experience in the memories of the audience.

Conscious that the terms 'choreographer', 'theatre-maker', 'performer' and 'director' are fluid and are not easily separated, Parker and his cast (Richard Antrobus, Indalo Stofile and Madele Vermaak) began their process based on their own personal experiences of watching theatre; to discover ways that the body, the voice and the remaining 'artefacts' can combine in interesting, moving, playful and effective ways.

Parker is also working with his partner and collaborator, Gavin Krastin, who is designing the production. "As a theatre designer and performance artist, Gavin really understands visual image and the power of the visual to stimulate experience, feeling and memory. In this way the detritus in the work has space and opportunity to 'come alive' and 'speak'," says Parker.

Detritus will be presented at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, corner of Milton and Wesley Streets in Observatory; previewing on the 12th, and showing 13 - 17 August; nightly at 20:00. Tickets cost R40 and can be bought online at www.theatrearts.co.za or via +27 (0)21 447 3683 or az.oc.bewm@nimdastra.

The Bursary is administered by the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, in partnership with the Baxter Theatre Centre and Distell; and with support from Business and Arts South Africa (BASA).
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