A shimmering ode to aging without getting old. John Cartwright's poetry and choreography is part Butoh-inspired, part broken thermometer, part free dance and part nails on a blackboard.
Featuring Jeremy de Tolly's SABC recordings of his Piano Nocturnes and Professor John Cartwright's original poetry and choreography - with design and direction by Penelope Youngleson.
Jeremy de Tolly is a composer, singer, guitarist, pianist and producer, based at We Love Jam Studios in Cape Town, South Africa.
Jeremy is a classically and flamenco trained guitarist, a trained vocalist, and a road hardened composer and programmer. He currently sings and writes songs for Original Swimming Party, composes music for advertising, games, dance and theatre in between. He also became a pianist by chance, and recorded Piano Nocturnes Volume One in 2011. Volume Two will be written in 2015. He has also been the lead singer of South African alternative rock band The Dirty Skirts from 2004 to 2011.
John Cartwright was born in Muizenberg 1938. Tertiary education at UCT, Oxford and Toronto (PhD in Medieval Studies). Lectured in English at Stellenbosch, Toronto and UCT. Since 1998 a consultant in public safety and community policing.
Drawn into the theatre by Fred Engelen in Stellenbosch in the mid-sixties: King Berenger in Ionesco’s Exit the King, Sergius in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Captain Jack Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals; in university theatre in Toronto from 1969 to 1975: Agamemnon in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus in Brecht’s adaptation of Shakespeare, Jesus in Denis Potter’s Son of Man, the title role in John Milton’s masque, Comus. Returned to the theatre in 2005 in Brett Bailey’s Orpheus (Spier, Amsterdam, Vienna, Hannover) and (also Bailey) First Witch in Verdi’s Macbeth; old white guy in Jay Pather’s Body of Evidence (Dance Umbrella, Jo’burg; Grahamstown, Durban, Den Haag, Market Theatre). Wrote and performed solo show Into the River at TAAG (Observatory) 2013, re-staged 2014.
Penelope Youngleson is a theatre maker, designer, writer, composer, stylist, and educator working in Cape Town, South Africa. She is also a drama, visual arts and music teacher at the Battswood Arts Centre in Grassy Park. She holds a MA in Theatre Making from UCT and is currently in the process of becoming a PhD candidate through Wits.
Plays she has written and co-written, directed and, or, designed have won international and local acclaim, including the Best International Production at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, Runner Up Award for Best International production at Amsterdam Fringe, panel selection for the Afrovibes Festival in the Netherlands, two Standard Bank Ovation awards, 2 Silver Standard Bank Ovation awards – and a Fleur du Cap award in her own capacity. Her particular interest is creating new South African plays and has written 6 scripts in the last 3 years – all original stories, all about and for and in praise of people from this country.
Audience Responses
I loved the performance. I thought the music, movement and poetry worked very well together. The lighting added well to the effect. I was challenged by the work to look at aging afresh.
Thank you for a wonderful performance.
Breath spanned the spectrum of true artistry. Internal dialogue so prevalent of aging people was audible, the body's limitations became the parameters for finely sculpted poetry and emotions, truth became beauty, the actual powers of conviction riveting through my body as spectator. The duo performer and director had elements of a slow and intimate tango as experienced at this event. The subtle and also dramatic lighting design augmented the fact that elderhood, as much as it is a singular state of being, also has myriad and complex rooms of ecstacy and confession. This was a simply beautiful event and I am lucky to have been present. The Alexander Bar is a place with open hands, for artists, those who look for inspiration deeply South African, conversationists in the heart of Cape Town and quite frankly, a place for a break from the intensity of our selves in our country.
Moving and inspiring!
Very moving and pertinent
