I was fortunate to be on the invite list for the second Baxter Theatre “Taste, Tweet and Theatre” event so my partner and I went along. It was to be an evening of tasting Diemersfontein wine, nibbling on canapés, mingling and watching a theatre show, and it did not disappoint.
The event was held at the Golden Arrow Studio at the Baxter and everyone who was invited was made to fill in a form for a lucky prize. We signed our names, got ourselves a glass each and took a few of the smoked chicken and beef canapés before finding a quiet spot to watch the proceedings. The whole idea of the evening was to enjoy the company food and drink while tweeting about the Baxter Theatre and Diemersfontein using the trend “BaxterTTT”. We met a number of avid tweeters from the Twitter world, and connected online. It was quite fun because the organisers had a projection of the tweets trending the Baxter Theatre and Diemersfontein on a screen so we could all see who was saying what and who had met who.
Before long the Diemersfontein representative, Jonathan Duguid, gave a short and comical speech about the wine estate and the lucky draw commenced. A few lucky people won bottles of wine and warm tops (I wasn’t one of them) and then the real entertainment began. We were asked to take our seats so that the show could commence; we were being treated to Neo Muyanga’s Memory of how it feels.
The play is inspired by the Zulu tradition of lovers exchanging beads with secret messages encoded into them, according to Pan African Space Station. While the theme of love was definitely apparent the real power of the performance was delivered in the body movement of the three actors, Andile Vellem, Apollo Ntshoko and Chuma Sopotela. The movement and the chamber music performed by the seven piece live orchestra were brought together in an incredible story-telling experience.
The narrative gets a bit confusing at times because there is no clear line drawn between each of the three love stories but the abstract message of love and its complexities over-powers the play. The bodies of the actors react to, lead and embrace the sounds and notes of the piano, string quintet and singer in a way that evokes strong emotions and a mesmerising effect.
Afterwards I heard one or two members of the audience agreeing that the passion of the movement was the driving force behind the success of the performance.
Image via Stock.xchng.
Jade Scully is a copywriter excited about writing copy and stories, blogging about the world and editing. She currently and regularly publishes her stories on a number of blogs. Jade loves animals and hopes to begin writing copy for the animal rescue charity TEARS as her contribution to the cause.
