Following its critical acclaim and sold-out performances on the main programme of the Grahamstown National Arts Festival earlier this year, Graham Weir’s double Fleur du Cap award-winning Dead Yellow Sands will be on the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio stage for a limited season until Saturday November 26, at 8.15pm, with Saturday matinees at 4pm.
Winner of the Fleur du Cap Best Performance in a One-Person Show and Best Lighting Design awards, the autobiographical one-hander is written and performed by Weir, with direction by Bo Petersen and lighting design by Darron Araujo from a lighting concept by Guy de Lancey.
This is not the first time that Petersen and Weir are working together. They have teamed up before in Weir’s self-penned works Tales from a Dark Corner, Letters from Patient Essop, and when Petersen directed Weir’s legendary acapella group Not The Midnight Mass.
Dead Yellow Sands is a return to minimalism: an actor lit with sophisticatedly simple lighting telling the stories he has lived. “With this work I really wanted to examine the essence of theatre,” says Weir about the staging of the play. “I wanted one of the characters to be lit so that he was like a floating head, another character (a blind man) to be lit so that the audience experienced the blindness he talked about, and so on.”
The sketches for the play were written over the last few months of 2014.
“When I completed them I wasn’t sure if they were even pieces that would work on the stage or not,” explains Weir.
“I thought that they might be something one would sit and read. I contacted Bo Petersen and after reading them, her response was positive and encouraging. She was excited about the theatrical potential of the work.”
Tickets cost R110. Book through Computicket. There is an age restriction of 12 years and parental guidance is advised.
