Youth Month: Artscape Theatre celebrating with productions focused on Cape youth
|Published
Cape Town - With youth month upon us, Artscape Theatre Centre will be hosting a number of events for the month of June, celebrating Cape Town’s best young talents.
Artscape prides itself on its youth month programme and aims to give the youth the opportunity to experience the theatre world in different formats.
Simone Heradien, the senior manager of the Artscape Theatre’s marketing department, said they tried to help artists during the hard lockdown of 2020.
“Artscape kept its back operations open for artists to do their recordings which they could stream or alternatively, live stream directly from our stages in order to earn some sort of income.
“These productions were specifically chosen as some of them are staples of Youth Month productions. They weathered the Covid-storm and needs to be celebrated,” she said.
“Artscape celebrates the significant national holidays by means of festivals or specific events to honour those who have gone before us that saw South Africa transition to a democracy, where artistic freedom is enshrined in the Constitution.
“These productions showcase an array of art forms engaged in by the youth from hip hop to introspective stories,” Heradien said.
Some of the events planned for the month include the iconic Jazz Youth Festival Concert for young and aspiring Western Cape-based jazz musicians and instrumentalists; scholars and informal music students not older than 27 perform for a panel of jazz experts (June 17-18).
Cape Town’s Most Wanted, a showcase of Cape Town’s best hip hop performers and crews. Attendees will be able to witness an array of dancing genres from some of the most talented dancers in the city (June 9-11).
Vloeibare Moed, a show inspired by the death of Uyinene Mrwetyana, tackles issues such as gender-based violence. With the frightening statistics of gender-based violence in South Africa, production company Hartzenberg Films feels they need to continue the conversation of this social ill (June 8-18).
A cast of Lyle October (Sherwyn), Joshua Vraagom (Dean), Muranzo Thomas (Dillon) and Jaydon Williams (Randall) play the four friends in the production.
Artscape youth programme focuses on how South Africa’s youth fought for their education and social rights decades ago and how the youth of today can pay tribute to the past and take centre stage of their own futures.
Using the arts, Artscape strives to achieve transformation and growth in the performing arts, using social cohesion, skills development and transformation of cultures and communities, to help previously disadvantaged communities transform society.
matthew.petersen@inl.co.za