kagablog

Dear Catherine,
To you and to the Afrikaaps team, my heartiest congratulations on all the awards, praise, acknowledgment, etc. that have been coming your way. All of you deserve it richly and I am glad that I played even a small part in it from the margin.
Best wishes for the future.
Neville

As you will see from the project description – there are still a lot of loose ends pertaining to the composition of the band…. i have put my thoughts on the slots still needing to be filled at the end of this document … but first a few thoughts about what’s cooking in my brain as far as the musical component of the show goes……

I had a kind of audio-vision under this full moon in the Karoo in April about the opening sequence – or a sequence – of the performance…

I imagined a cinematic soundscape – tracing the history of the cape…
simply said – from the time the land was only occupied by the Khoisan people to the arrival of the europeans – first da Gama, then the Dutch – then the slave populations imported from Malaysia, indonesia and from other parts of the east and africa…

The basis of the soundscape – a trance rhythm – a khoi prayer connecting to the moon … building in layers – and adding samples of the arrival of different influences… an audio experience – a sacred quality that brings the audience into a certain space / state … and arrives in a awesome islamic call to prayer… performed live… (possibly) in combination with a predikant preaching in High Dutch – i had an idea of a feeling of being transported into a trance and flying through time… this was re-enforced by the image below….

At the KKNK – we saw a very old woman singing traditional songs – it was incredibly moving to watch as someone had to help her turn around and face the audience… the sound was awful – although i could imagine that if this were performed, effected and mixed – it could be incredibly powerful and emotive/spiritual – a living embodiment of ancient to the future – much like the resurgence of the khoi connection in Afrikaans hip hop.

Out of a kind of digital static ancient truths transpose themselves into a contemporary form…..
I imagine this ensemble of poets/vocalists, musicians and VJ – being versatile and operating as a flexible unit to aurally and visually paint each scene of the performance. These scenes will ultimately all be woven together to take the audience on a journey. I want the production to be be visually breathtaking and the sound and music are an integral element of creating the total experience.

The VJ component is important – and is inextricably linked to the audio component of the show… the visuals will be at their most powerful when they are considered and composed in the total of what is happening on stage… so for now i imagine that many of the soundscape pieces will form the basis of soundtracks of the cinematic images you will see on screen …. thus in a way the screen will sometimes be an extra member of the band… for example:

I imagine the scale of the screen to be quite large ( about 6 X 4 m) The screen will sometimes function as a classic theatre backdrop to the performance on stage. I imagine a time-lapse animation-like sequence of a monumental piece of graffiti art emerging from a blank wall to finished art work – an explosion of colour in the form of a written statement – that massive illuminated art work then becomes a backdrop for a particular poem or song… it will be interesting to explore what makes up the base track for such a scene – is maybe as simple as looping a rhythm of a spray can being shaken and then giving 3 short sprays which forms the basis of a track….? so that that video image is sometimes completely integrated in the musical composition???

I would like to sometimes play with using musical devices visually….I remember you showed me a program at your studio that recorded a tune being played live on guitar – and then translated the tune for keyboards and played it back on a keyboard which appears on the desktop or with the notes also written as a musical score – something like a digital translator/transposer could be a nice tool to work with… that you see and hear notes being played on the screen….

I mentioned to you before how much i loved the vocoder used by Laurie Anderson – As this is so much a performance about language and the spoken word i would love to play with effecting the voice live…. playing with the playback possibilities…

The sound design as we discussed before is also very important – and i am still very much thinking a long the lines of low and high tech combined – which again connects to the Ancient to the Future idea…. I can imagine really over the top hollywood style hip-hoppy sequences juxtaposed with small, intimate acoustic scenes, with the power of the spoken word in it’s purest form.

An example of one of the more epic scenes which would require full-on orchestration would be The Rock Face Scene….
An iconic monumental image of the Cape Town landmark recast in new stone faces. An animated sequence where the faces of the ensemble appear out of the rock-face of table mountain in an earth moving spectacular animation…..rocks falling, crashing and cracking to reveal the faces of the voices….the storytellers……CGI – epic stylee! – An earth shattering/changing experience – for which i imagine one of Kyle’s epic compositions building to a climax!

Kyle has a distinctly Cape South African jazz style – a quality that is very emotive and charged… he plays insanely with goema and kaapse klopse… and also performs a kind of spoken word poetry on some of his pieces – he even sings on one track on his CD – Die maan skyn so helder… which i love – it’s very delicate and sophisticated

Jitsvinger – is really fabulous – his cd is very much produced hip hop style with collaborations with various people – i love the way he can tell story on a beat – punctuated with samples which make his story telling all the more vivid and humorous – and snappy and smart! When you get the CD from Kaganof particularly check out ballade vannie epigoon

Blaqpearl – is more of an R&B/ hip hop girl – for me she’s at her best when she is doing it in Afrikaans – i’m not particularly fond of the american type thang she sometimes has going on… but she has a nice voice – and is great spirit and presence….

I would like the ensemble to be 6 or 7 people in total – so far with the VJ (Dylan Valley as part of the on stage ensemble) there are still 3 places to be filled

The video component of the show is a VERY important medium to tell the story. I would like to use the screen like a VJ. Like the DJ’s turntables, the screen is played like an instrument in the total composition of the piece. The VJ is an integral part of the ensemble, the screen an additional instrument and commentator in the piece.

The piece is a history lesson told by an ensemble of storytellers. Their stories are not told in a linear or chronological order, but in a non-narrative carefully structured meta movement that does not string history along into a series, but as an all encompassing lived expression. As a VJ one can use the devices such as loop, rewind, fast forward to jump around in time and place – one can underscore, interject, transition and pause to punctuate the telling of the meta story.

The screen as a monumental canvas
I imagine the scale of the screen to be quite large ( about 6 X 4 m) The screen will sometimes function as a classic theatre backdrop to the performance on stage. For example, I imagine a time-lapse animation-like sequence of a monumental piece of graffiti art emerging from a blank wall to finished art work – an explosion of colour in the form of a written statement – that massive illuminated art work then becomes a backdrop for a particular poem or song…

I see the poster image for the show with the faces of the cast: Jitsvinger, Blaq Pearl, Kyle Shepherd and yourself carved into Table Mountain ala Mount Rushmore … An iconic monumental image of the Cape Town landmark recast in new stone faces. I imagine this idea could also be an animated sequence where the faces of the ensemble appear out of the rock-face of table mountain in an earth moving spectacular animation…..rocks falling, crashing and cracking to reveal the faces of the voices….the storytellers……CGI – epic stylee! ( we could commission something specialised like this to a professional animation company*)

The Screen as a Storyteller:

“ Hiphop and graffitti find their origins in ancient traditions of oral storytelling and rock art – showing cultural practice merge over centuries from ancient to contemporary”
this is a good example of history as an all encompassing lived expression – i get very excited about the possibilities of how one can give form to this story cinematically and visually in combination with the live action on stage.

The role of the screen will not merely be as a background to the action on stage. The screen is a platform from which to tell stories in a variety of different ways. The possibilities to give form to the video is infinite – so through the creative process, as the script is devised and written, a storyboard will also emerge where the role of the screen is conceptually considered, and given a task or form for each scene ….which will be serve theatrically, visually and meaningfully, this could be in the form of a film sequence, or an animated sequence, or a direct interaction with what is going on on stage.

I have also toyed with the idea of using live camera feed like microphones – i have a tiny sony HD handycam slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes, which could be handled by a performer like a microphone – to gives us the possibility of a huge close-up of the actor on the big screen – which we are usually not privy to in the context of a theatre performance… this provides for an intimacy and scale play between live and projected performer which i think can be very powerful…

I want to use a text generator which reacts on the spoken word. So that words appear on the screen as spoken… You could pre-program the text – but it is crucial that the words appear exactly as they are said in time to gain the maximum effect. I have to research this and see what’s available and maybe work with a programmer to create a special application to use as a device in the performance with voice recognition text activation, so that poems can appear in text forms as they are said.

When I met Warrick Sony he showed me a program that recorded a tune being played live on guitar – and then translated the tune for keyboards and played it back on a keyboard which appears on the desktop with the notes also written as a musical score – so you put something live in the program and it transposes it to another instrument and /or form which you see on the screen …. so you could again play with the spoken word and make music from it – live in the moment….. something like a digital translator/transposer could be a nice tool to work with…

I think graphic TEXT is important as a visual element of the piece. i keep imagining a textual sequence of the Koran evolving from Arabic into phonetic written Afrikaans into contemporary digital text – not that we necessarily have to read the text word for word – but that we see visually the translation and formation of language and words transform over time…

The Screen as a Dancer:
The dancer on a screen has a special place when the medium of video and the subject filmed fuse into a new dance in itself – this is what i love so much about Aryan’s video: a sun dance ecstacy – where in the filming of the dancer, the exposure of the camera creates a play of light and movement to become a heightened dance where traces of movements ordinarily not seen are visible through the medium – we can literally see the path the body takes through space by the manipulation of speed and light – a physical, visual language coinciding / colliding with the spoken word. It creates a strange space where one can simultaneously watch and experience the dance while digesting a poem. it creates a kind of trance-like concentration…. this is an extremely difficult balance to strike when combining video with live performance – as neither should ever be in competition with one another – but be in a constant balancing act and relationship to one another…

The possibility to work with the b-boys and local dance groups in oudtshoorn may be a brilliant opportunity to include their presence as an element on the screen…. as well as seeing them perform live.

It must be beautiful
Attached are some images of one of my favorite artists of all time , Laurie Anderson – a original pioneer of multi-media performance since the 70‘s – she is a master at combining projected images with live performance. My vision for this show is that it should be visually beautiful and awe inspiring – it should be a real aural and visual feast….

The screen is also an important set element and we have to consider how we want to use the projection – as a back projection which we can play with the silhouettes and shadows of the live performers – on what surface to project so that the screen is dynamic, magical and surprising – does it appear and disappear ? so here a little taste of what i love about Laurie…..

In March/April of 2009 I undertook a research trip to Cape Town in lieu of a Poetry Performance Project that THE GLASSHOUSE is planning to premiere in South Africa in 2010. The original idea behind the project involved setting up a collaboration between poetry performers, musicians, filmmakers and dancers to produce a contemporary opera of spoken word.

This seed was planted in Johannesburg back in 2006, when I spent 3 months in South Africa presenting The Shooting Gallery at the Market Theatre and the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. I came into contact with a thriving and dynamic poetry scene in Johannesburg, hardly surprising as performed poetry is undoubtedly one of South Africa’s most popular contemporary art forms.

Clearly the talent and content abounds in South Africa but what struck me was that poetry performances mostly take place in informal venues, with a single spotlight and microphone in the corner. I saw the enormous potential to set up a collaborative project to synthesise various disciplines with top poets, musicians and visuals to create a well crafted total theatrical performance for a formal stage.

The poetry scene has it’s stars like Mak Manaka, Lebo Mashile and Malika Ndlovu – and it was my intention to collaborate on the project with artists of this caliber. The working title being – A Life and Well. The aim of production to transport the audience on a non-narrative journey through the meta and micro preoccupations of four prolific South African poets.

I loved the idea of working with poets – as their personal statements would provide for the content of the piece. My role as a director, would involved structuring and editing the piece from their material, framing and presenting it on a worthy scale. Taking the utmost care to craft the piece into a visual and aural feast.

CAPE TOWN

After submerging myself in the local theatre and performance offerings of Cape Town during the month of March (Infecting the City Festival, The New Space Theatre, The Baxter Theatre and some open mic sessions in various Long Street Bars) I was introduced to a phenomenon of a cultural consciousness sweeping through the Afrikaans Hip Hop scene in Cape Town, which I experienced as profound, urgent and of rare local authenticity.

The progeny of groups like Prophets of the City (POC) – Ready D and Brasse van die Kaap, have crossed over into a domain of reciting poetry, raps and rhymes exclusively in Afrikaans. Unlike their predecessors in the late 80‘s and 90‘s who threw in a lot american asides for good measure, young artists like Jitsvinger (Quintin Goliath) and Blaq Pearl (Janine van Rooy) put their message out into the world unashamedly 100% in their mother tongue – Afrikaans.

Their messages and stories are potent and loaded, informed by the harsh crime and drug ridden reality of life on the cape flats. Many young artists in this scene are using hip hop as a tool to bring change and positive identity consciousness to their communities. Much like the black consciousness movement of the 60’s and 70’s, they are looking back to their historical origins. Celebrating their indigenous ancestral Khoisan and Hottentot roots, and deep connection to the land. Ownership and celebration of the language is key to instilling pride and authentic expression of what is means to be an Afrikaner in post apartheid South Africa – a consciousness ripe for the making, a territory of dynamic tensions, stereotypes and preconceived ideas inherited from recent history.

After meeting and talking with some artists and filmmakers from this community, it became abundantly clear to me to shift the focus of the planned poetry project towards creating an Afrikaans production, and collaborating with an all star cast of local talent from Cape Town, still maintaining the original idea of presenting a top quality multi-disciplinary stage production.

THE VISION
* The production will be a series of non-narrative history lessons & lessons in life, the voices of 4 Afrikaans poets, presented in a hip and contemporary style on an operatic scale.
* A collaboration between poetry performers, musicians, filmmakers and dancers to create a polished audio-visual theatrical performance combining spoken word, music, video and dance.
* The technical orchestration of the production is a crucial and important element – as projections, text generators and sound will be employed as important tools and instruments to tell the story.
* Although hip-hop will feature as a genré and mode of storytelling, it will not dominate the overall musical style of the production, but will be combined with other musical styles including jazz, Kaapse Klopse and traditional sounds transposed to digital soundscapes.

THE STORY
The birth of the white Afrikaner nationalist movement was marked by the establishment of Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) in 1875. This was some 200 odd years after the language had been evolving as a bridging language amongst the European, mainly Dutch settlers, the imported Malay and Malagasi slave population and the local indigenous Khoi and Hottentot populations. At the start there was some resistance to the establishment of GRA from both English and Dutch speaking settlers, the latter taking particular offence to the abandonment of High Dutch as an official language as they considered Afrikaans to be a ‘hotnotstaal‘ – a ‘pidgin language’ reserved for communicating with the slaves and the lower classes.

There is a side to the Afrikaans language, the creole birth and coloured connection that has been overlooked in our collective South African consciousness. While the Dutch heritage cannot ever be denied in Afrikaans, it must be acknowledged that it was also shaped and molded by the influences of the Khoi and Malay slaves.
An immense amount of research exists by scholars like Vernie February and Achmet Dawids on the specific contributions of early inhabitants of the cape to the development of what we generally don’t know as Afrikaans. Important facts, such as the first Afrikaans school ever established was at a madrassa at 37 Dorpstraat in 1806, and that the first books ever written in Afrikaans were transcriptions of the Koran, one of the best examples is Uiteensetting van die Godsdiens, by a Kurdish imam, Abu Bakr Effendi in 1869.

The role of indigenous cultures and the malay slave population in forging the Afrikaans language has generally been excluded from our history books. The Apartheid era not only historically excluded brown Afrikaners, but also left the language with the stigma of being used as a tool of oppression by the former white minority regime. This has compounded the identity of brown Afrikaans speakers who to some degree are historically dispossessed from their own language.

THE STORY NOW
It is the young poetic voices and Hip-hoppers who are fueled by celebrating and reclaiming their indigenous cultural heritage, defining and re-defining what being Brown and Afrikaans is all about in the 21st century. These young artists are narrating the history of their people from a contemporary vantage point, in their own distinctive modes of expression like hip-hop and graffitti – which connect and find their origins in ancient oral traditions of storytelling and rock art – as if compressed in time, one can see cultural practice merge over centuries from ancient to contemporary.

It’s not all about history either, but also about the everyday struggles of urban reality: drugs, crime, violence and poverty. To evolve, transcend and imagine a future uplifted society, identity is crucial. For healing the fractured identity of a people, language is essential and these artists use Afrikaans as a tool, as a way to publicly reclaim it back from its national reputation as the language of systemic oppression, to the language of the people, of all who speak it, and played a role in creating it.

Artists, like Jitsvinger whose genuine social responsibility and integrity, provide positive role models to reflect and comment on problematic issues in his community like drug abuse, is done in a wise and witty way with words. The stereotypes of tik crazed, toothless wine soaked, comical coon carnivalesque cape coloureds is transcended to present new alternatives of pride and evolutionary aspiration to become anything you want. His message implies knowing who you are, and loving yourself will set you free. “Hier skud ek die nipples van Afrika / Met Afrikaanse lyrics op die maksimum / Hie’s vir jou aanlokkend! / Staan op en wapper soos / My rhyme storm as ek die Kaapse Dokter personify”. (Jitsvinger, Kaapse Dokter)

THE PROCESS

1. An intensive workshop period of approximately 2-3 weeks will take place in the last quater 2009. In the months leading up to the workshop, myself and dramaturg, Aryan Kaganof, will continue a dialogue with the artists involved, exchanging material relating to the themes that will be explored in the piece: The origins of Afrikaans, Media and Identity.

The creative team will then all come together in a central location, where we can for a dedicated period workshop and create new material in a pressure cooker laboratory type situation. We will use the opportunity to write new material and develop the script, allow the musicians to get to know each other, and develop the musical score for the piece, as well as the visual design for the piece. This process will culminate in a script and story board for the piece.

2. In the months thereafter a production process will take place where the technical, visual and musical arrangements are created and made workable for the rehearsal process. As the visual (video) and musical components of the show are very important, this time will be dedicated to creating video sequences, text, animation and so on – while the additional musical to the live performance can be produced and recorded.

3. A 5-6 week rehearsal process will precede the premiere, where the entire show will be put together and rehearsed and polished.

*After attending the last KKNK in April, and seeing some of the program on the !Garob verhoog en kuierplek, I was struck by abundance of local talent in Oudtshoorn, particularly on the dance front. From b-boy breakdancing to the more traditional forms and riel dancing, I was immediately inspired to collaborate with local groups for the dance component of the show if we were to premiere at KKNK.

If this were to be the case, I would then also conduct the workshop period and the rehearsal period in Oudtshoorn – so that we can closely develop links and work with people from the local community.

I am extremely proud and excited that Afrikaaps has been nominated for 3 Kanna awards at this years KKNK. For the company of Afrikaaps this is the first time most of them are making an appearance on a theatre stage, that is not to say they are not seasoned performers, but that they have all cut their performance teeth outside of the traditional theatre in other other performance areas, mainly as musicians, rappers and in the hiphop scene. This acknowledgement and recognition is testimony to the fact that there is an abundance of seriously talented young South African artists out there, who given the support and the opportunity to perform on mainstream professional stages will arise and deliver high quality, socially engaging and important work. I am honored to have had the opportunity to be a part of this wonderful artistic process and work with all of the stars who make up ‘die argitekbekke’ – Jitsvinger, Kyle Shepherd, Blaq Pearl, Bliksemstraal, Emile Jansen, Moenier Adams, Shane Cooper and Dylan Valley – as well as our genius dramaturgical advisor and resident alchemist Aryan Kaganof who has been a key partner in the whole undertaking of this work. Afrikaaps is a dream team, with contributions made by several people to support and nurture the vision for this show – a big thank you to all of them!

Aryan Kaganof’s Introduction to Noisewomb from Netfilmmakers on Vimeo.

jitsvinger (quentin goliath) rehearsing afrikaaps at the baxter theatre. photo by aryan kaganof

Yazeed Kamaldien

Most coloureds who live in Cape Town don’t speak Afrikaans, they speak Afrikaaps – a unique rhythmic twang of the tongue that knows no boundaries.

This blending of Afrikaans with English – and a host of fusion words – will be ­explored in Afrikaaps, a stage production featuring a stellar cast of young Cape Town-based musicians including Jitsvinger, Kyle Shepherd, Blaq Pearl and Emile Jansen.

The common ground they share is being coloured, a ­racial classification created during apartheid.

Post- ­apartheid coloureds have ­embraced this word and made it their own, and coloured artists are engaging in national debate on the Afrikaans language.

Afrikaaps is about presenting the historical contributions the coloured community made to Afrikaans.

Afrikaaps is also a word-play on geography – relating to the dialect spoken in Cape Town and particularly by the coloured population.

Holland-based Catherine Henegan, the show’s South African director, says she wanted to use music to tell the story of the Java slaves and Khoi-San people and their descendants’ part in forming Afrikaans.

Through the coloured story of language she also aims to ­“deconstruct the white Afrikaans identity”. “Afrikaans is a Creole language that evolved in the first years of colonialism.

By 1875 it had already existed for 200 years and there was an establishment of white Dutch ­descendants who wanted to take this language to establish themselves as the white ‘volk’ in South Africa,” says Henegan.

this article first appeared on citypress.co.za

bliksemstraal (charl vd westhuizen) in afrikaaps. photo by aryan kaganof

Straight from its world premiere at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK) in Oudtshoorn, the cutting-edge hiphopera Afrikaaps is coming to the Baxter Theatre. It will be playing from 7 to 23 April at 20:00 nightly.

Director, Catherine Henegan, has assembled a formidable ensemble of young guns and an equally impressive creative team to help trace the origins of Afrikaans all the way back to the 1600s and follow its evolution through to the present day.

The line-up features hip-hop poet, performer and musician, Jitsvinger; composer, pianist and jazz prodigy, Kyle Shepherd; singer and poet, Blaq Pearl; hip-hop artist and activist, Emile Jansen; bassist and musician, Shane Cooper; singer, actor and dancer, Moenier Adams; rapper and break-dancer, Bliksemstraal; and poet and storyteller, Jethro Louw of the Khoi Khonnexion.

Set in a dynamic digital landscape, the ensemble, Die Argitekbekke, represents an eclectic fusion of musical genres. In true hip-hop mode this musical theatre piece employs glitches; scratches; beats; and rhymes to traverse time, while also referencing the multiplicity of traditional Cape styles like Ghoema and Kaapse Klopse.

South African-born Henegan once again teams up with film maker; director; poet; novelist; musician; and blogger, Aryan Kaganof, who takes on the role of dramaturg for this production. The two last worked together in South Africa on The Shooting Gallery, which was presented at The Market Theatre and at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown. Documentary film maker, Dylan Valley, is responsible for the video and for documenting the process with lighting by top international lighting designer, Jantje Geldof.

Afrikaaps is an international collaboration between the Baxter Theatre Centre and The Glasshouse Theatre Collective in Amsterdam, in association with ABSA KKNK, with additional support from the Performing Arts Fund of Netherlands; City of Amsterdam; and Theatre Institute of the Netherlands.

Henegan is Co-founder of The Glasshouse, a multi-disciplinary theatre collective based in Amsterdam. She made her debut as a director in South Africa in 2006 with the controversial media performance of The Shooting Gallery about a war photographer with a moral dilemma.

“With this collaboration I am excited to be bringing together artists from different disciplines made up of musicians; performers; and film makers for this theatrical event,” says Henegan.

This theatre production is part of a bigger movement of efforts to reclaim the Afrikaans language for all who speak it. There is a side to the language – the Creole birth of the language – that has been overlooked in South Africa’s collective consciousness. The role of indigenous cultures and the slave population in forging the language has generally been excluded from the history books. The Afrikaans hip-hop movement in the Cape, through voices like Jitsvinger; Blaq Pearl; and Emile Jansen, is fueled by celebrating and reclaiming indigenous cultural heritage, and defining and re-defining who the Afrikaners of the 21st century are.

The makers of Afrikaaps set out on a mission of investigation and redefinition combining storytelling; poetry; music; and video to trace the evolution and roots of Afrikaans. As Dylan Valley, who is making the video component of the production, has pointed out, “We need to recognise Afrikaans as part of the heritage of all South Africans, and not only of one particular racial group. Together we can make Afrikaans a language of liberation! ”

Afrikaaps runs at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival from 1 to 4 April and then transfers to the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town for a short season from 7 to 23 April at 20:00 nightly. Booking is through Computicket on 083 915 8000; online at www.computicket.co.za; or at any Shoprite Checkers outlet countrywide.

this article first appeared on mediaupdate.co.za

Born and raised in Johannesburg, Catherine Henegan’s work revolves around performance and video. After graduating from Wits School of Drama, Catherine spent the latter half of the 1990’s working as a designer and theatre maker on several projects at the Market Theatre and Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg. Many of those projects were collaborations with Lara Foot as a stage designer, their last collaboration together was in 1999 with the acclaimed production of ‘Ways of Dying’, based on the novel by Zakes Mda.

In 2001 she graduated from DasArts (The Amsterdam School for Advanced Research in Theatre Studies) in 2001 and has been based in the Amsterdam since 2000. In 2003 she founded THE GLASSHOUSE with writer and director Kees Roorda. They met at DasArts and were inspired to continue working together in an inter-disciplinary manner creating theatre, performance and installations both in and outside the walls of the traditional theatre space. Their most recent production ‘Waterkou’, a digital play, was critically acclaimed by the Dutch press and played to full houses through out the Netherlands.

As a video artist and scenographer she has created works for music concerts, visual art exhibitions and and theatre productions. Including ‘The Offering’ a collaboration with Ritsaert ten Cate of Mickery Theatre fame and the founder of the DasArts school.

2005 and 2006 also saw Henegan make her debut as a director with a media performance entitled ‘The Shooting Gallery’. The piece featured Aryan Kaganof in the lead role and sound design by James Webb. The piece was performed on the Grahamstown National Festival of the Arts and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 2006 . The Dutch version of the piece was the opening performance of Utrecht Festival AD Werf in 2005 and went on to tour the Netherlands in 2005.

Catherine is also currently working on her first documentary film ‘Uncle Louis and the Copperbelt Cowboys’. The documentary traces a personal journey to uncover the life and times of her uncle who spent half a century making films in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

At the Friday following (4 March), internationally acclaimed South African film-maker, artist and writer, Aryan Kaganof, gave a stimulating lecture on the genealogy of the “digital underground” illustrated with screenings of influential short films including ANTINOOS by Dionysos Andronis – Greece (1991); SUBSTITUTION No.4 by Kiki Picasso – France (2002); and POEMS THAT SHOOT by Catherine Henegan – South Africa (2004).

Kaganof concluded his presentation by showing his award winning documentary WESTERN 4.33. The documentary investigates the German concentration camps in Namibia where the indigenous Herero population were massacred in the early part of the 20th Century. Soundtrack includes music by Lamonte Young, John Cage, Friedrich Nietzsche, Macy Gray, Jesus Rodriguez and South Africa’s own extreme noise terror outfit, Virgins.

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