The Satyr of Springbok Heights
What an impressive premier of a local movie. The Labia was buzzing last night with friends, media and even the stars of this little movie, who had arrived for the first official screening.
The Satyr of Springbok Heights is produced, directed and written by Robert Silke, who had all sorts of help from everybody involved on lots of levels, and so it’s this collaborative effort that makes the film work.
It’s all about this block of flats across the way from the Company Gardens in the middle of town, its history, design, and the people who lived, and live there, including a Satyr!
The movie is a mocumentary in the style of Confetti and I love the genre. There are two streams to the film; ‘real’ interviews with people who play themselves, talking about the block, Springbok Heights, and actors playing the people who live there. The ‘real’ people are architecture professor Fabio Todeschini, John Caviggia who knows everything about every style and period of everything, being a drama expert, and Sunday Times columnist Lin Sampson, who, slumped and virtually immobile in her chair, is hilarious and totally weird. Oh, and there are two excellent and very real cameos from two delightful street people, one very friendly and one not so very.
Some of the actors are Godfrey Johnson, who plays Wouter Malan, Victoria Caballaire who plays Hilda Steyn, Nicholas Spagnoletti who plays poor Nathan Golding and Nicole Franco who plays one part of a ‘lebanese’ couple. This is where the movie gets a little uneven. While the characters are huge and hilarious, the performance style is a little too big for the fake documentary style. Most successful is Nicholas Spagnoletti who underplays poor Nathan Golding perfectly. The others are terribly funny, but not very ‘real’, and even though I loved huge Hilda Steyn, I would have preferred slightly more ‘naturalistic’ performances.
That, and the funny way Lin Sampson referred to everybody in the past tense, were my two sticking points. Otherwise, I think the whole thing was quite fabulous. I loved Sean Michau’s music. I loved Nigel Murphy’s off screen interviews. I loved John Caviggia because he is so entertaining, and I mostly loved the fact that with no budget at all, Robert and his friends and connections made a full length feature and bladdy well put it on. Bravo to all involved!
TheatreSports wins big time
So I must confess to the smallest (I lie) of hangovers this morning, but I did do a lot of celebrating last night at the Fleur du Cap awards. The ceremony was the usual glamorous affair at Artscape, with pre-show music and drinks, a full on show during the awards, brilliantly hosted by Nik Rabinowitz and Thoko Ntshinga and a few lekker performances by The La Rosa Spanish Dance Company, Laurika Rauch and Dizu Plaatjies, in particular. The theme of this year’s function was ‘green’ with a green carpet and green inspired invites. A nice touch. I went to the thing with my sister-in-law who was proudly nominated in the category "best performer in a musical" for her performance in Chess, and I was much more disappointed than she was that she didn’t win. I saw the show three times and she totally blew me away. I have to confess though that it was my night! And I didn’t see it coming at all! First up, I was so totally touched that John Caviggia mentioned me in his long and winding thank you speech, acknowledging the work I did in The Merchant of Venice. That was pretty cool. But, blow me away when they announced a brand new category, Innovation in Theatre and I was called up to accept the award, for TheatreSports. This newly created award is to honour theatre that does not fit in to the other more traditional categories; and I think it was fabulous of Distell to make the new award and then to give it to me! I loved it! But that’s not all. Because of the extremely successful campaign of getting friends and fans to vote for TheatreSports, we also won the People’s Choice Award, for which I am most proud. You see, this one is about all the people who love what we do voting for us. And there are a lot of people who love what we do; and who went ahead and voted. It’s been a long, successful road for me and TheatreSports, my theatre baby, of over fifteen years of performance in Cape Town. And it’s really special to be honoured like this. I was so touched (literally hugged and squeezed) by well wishers afterwards, as I ploughed my way steadily through the Pongratz(ulations), and more than one person spoke to me about meganshead, which was also very cool. I am amped for the work I’ll be doing this year! Thank you Distell. Thank you TheatreSports players, present and past, and thank you our fabulous, loyal audiences.
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