The Emissary
The Emissary is a dark study of a friendship rooted in a lie. Written
and directed by Louis Viljoen (The Pervert Laura, The Kingmakers) and
starring award winning actors Emily Child and Andrew Laubscher. While
waiting for her long-term boyfriend to return from an extended stay
overseas, Delia agrees to meet Douglas, her boyfriend’s best friend, in
order to discuss the tensions that have been brewing between them since
the beginning of their relationship. But one of them is hiding something
terrible and this is the night when old wounds resurface and secrets
are unearthed. What follows is an unnerving examination of two troubled
people who think they know each other, but have no idea what awful
things can lurk in the soul.
Louis Viljoen is a Cape Town based playwright and director. He has
written and produced numerous plays including, The Bile Boys, The
Frontiersmen, The Verbalists, Champ, Porno 88, The Kingmakers and The
Pervert Laura. He is one of the creators (along with playwrights
Nicholas Spagnoletti and Jon Keevy) of the successful short-play
initiative “Anthology” which has had three successful seasons at The
Alexander Bar’s Upstairs Theatre. Viljoen has won Fleur Du Cap Theatre
awards (Best New South African Script) for Champ (2013) and The
Kingmakers (2015). He was the recipient of the Rosalie van Der Gucht
Best New Director award for his plays, The Kingmakers and The Pervert
Laura. Viljoen is currently the Writer In Residence for The Fugard
Theatre.
Emily Child
Emily
graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2007 with a Theatre and
Performance Degree, specializing in Acting. Since then she has worked
independently and as a proud member of acclaimed Cape Town based theatre
troupe – The Mechanicals. Her work has garnered her numerous awards and
nominations including the 2015 Fleur Du Cap for Best Actress for the
role of “Laura” in Louis Viljoen’s The Pervert Laura last staged at the
The Fugard Theatre. Other theatre projects include Lear, written by
William Shakespeare and directed by Guy De Lancey, Champ, written by
Louis Viljoen and directed by Greg Karvellas, which travelled to the
Edinburgh Festival in 2013, as well as LA based Zombie Joe’s Underground
Theatre and The Mechanicals’ co-production Urban Death, directed by
Jana Wimer. Emily’s one -woman show, based on Dorothy Parker’s short
stories, A Certain Lady was directed by Greg Karvellas and performed
around Cape Town in 2014. Emily was recently seen at The Baxter Studio
Theatre, Grahamstown and Hilton Festivals in Born in the RSA, directed
by Thoko Ntshinga as well as Mike Bartlett’s Contractions, at The
Alexander Bar’s Upstairs Theatre, directed by Greg Karvellas in February
2016. On camera, Emily’s projects include the SAFTA winning series
pilot, Armed Response, BBC’s youth series Young Leonardo as well as the
feature films Shirley Adams, directed by Oliver Hermanus and Beyond the
River, directed by Craig Freimond, to be released in early 2017.
Andrew Laubscher
Andrew
Laubscher is a Cape Town-based film and theatre actor. Some theatre
highlights include Mirror Mirror directed by Geoffrey Hyland and written
by Mike van Graan; As You Like It directed by Geoffrey Hyland; Cosi
directed by Scott Sparrow; Antony and Cleopatra directed by Marthinus
Basson; A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Guy de Lancey; Lovborg\'s
Women directed by Chris Weare (Fleur Du Cap nomination for Best
Supporting Actor); Mafeking Road directed by Tara Notcutt; A Comedy Of
Errors directed by Matthew Wild; and Balbesit directed by Jaco Bouwer.
In 2014, Andrew won the Fleur de Cap Award for Best Supporting Actor in a
Musical for his performance as Riff-Raff in The Rocky Horror Show.
Andrew\'s most recent work include Anthology: Anti-Matter directed by
Louis Viljoen and the South African feature film Modder en Bloed.