Free tickets to Spier Summer Arts Festival

A festival of cutting edge South African theatre is on offer at the Spier Summer Arts Festival in March. Spanner and AARS! both ran at the Aardklop Festival to great acclaim, and were produced by Vleis, Rys and Aartappels, a new production company founded by Marthinus Basson, Saartjie Botha and Jaco Bouwer.

Spanner is a comic theatre piece about men, their tools and their toys, written from a woman’s perspective. The title of the play comes from its setting — a garage where four white Afrikaner males, led by a broke and jobless Boet Marais, are bemoaning their struggle in today’s changed world, along with a plan that will make Boet rich.

Boet has lost his job because he is white and male. He has a child to support and payments on a car. He’s not bitter, he’s not angry, he does not write letters to the newspapers. Boet is a jack of all trades and he has a plan that will end all motor hijackings and make him, Boet Marais, a very rich man. His friends are going to help him — Shaun, his boarder and an apprentice electrician will be responsible for the wiring; Niel, an old friend, has a head for business; and Boet himself has the patent.

Barrie Hough rates Saartjie Botha as the most important voice in Afrikaans theatre since Deon Opperman and Reza De Wet. The cast includes Basson as himself, Gaerin Hauptfleish as Boet, Neels van Jaarsveld as Niel and Albert Snyman as Sean, with Francois Blom as Tubby. Be warned though — this is definitely adult theatre!

Spanner runs on the 27th and 28th of February and the 1st and 2nd of March.

AARS! is a poetic response to Euripides’ classic cycle of sacrifice, blood and revenge and is not for the fainthearted! Whereas the 3 500 year old classic was created to instruct the populace as to how the cycle of blood could be broken and tempered by the democratic process, AARS! looks at late 20th century “Democratic Man" with the of knowledge that he has failed in most of his processes and that structures often are only there to support the most heinous behaviour and provide it with legitimacy. Cutting the cast down to four (Agamemnon, Klyteamnestra, Orestes and Elektra), the play takes a concentrated look at the politics of Mother/ Father, Masculine/Feminine, Brother/Sister and Lover/Killer within the narrow confines of the family structure.

Written by two of Belgium’s most cutting-edge playwrights, Peter Verhelst and Luk Perceval, it is directed in Afrikaans by Marthinus Basson. The cast is superb, with Dawid Minnaar, Antoinette Kellerman, Jaco Bouwer and Rolanda Marais starring, and music composed by James Webb.

AARS! runs 7-9 March.

Tickets are priced from R25.00 upwards and can be booked by contacting the Spier Box Office on (021) 809-1165.


Spier will be giving away 10 pairs of tickets to each of the two shows. The first 10 respondents will each receive 2 tickets to the show of their choice. Send an e-mail to Desiree at desiree@hwb.co.za stating clearly which show you would like to see, also quoting the reference ‘LitNet/Spier’

boontoe / to the top

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