Next month, The Taming of the Shrew team which is made of DUT Drama and Production Studies students will leave for Germany on 11 April 2018. The production was invited to perform at a festival in Germany, which is visually dynamic and filled with acapella singing, drums, gumboot, and many more surprises.
The play is directed by Professor Debbie Lutge and has three founders and organisers: Professor Hanns Dietrich Schmidt, Professor Brian Michaels and Ms Susanne Skipiol, who selected the play.

The vision and conceptual design were conceived by Professor Lutge, who also directed the award-winning production of Much Ado About Nothing that received a substantial standing ovation in Germany in 2016. The Taming of the Shrew boasting a cast of 12 students will be featured at the Folkwang Shakespeare Festival which occurs every two years.

In terms of the play and its context, she added that the context marries multiple cultural stimuli and represents a modern South Africa within the African continent inscribed in merged intra-cultural influences that negotiate unique social environments with circumstances driven by progress, economics and global interaction.

“Modernisation counters reductionist values and in South Africa, the youth begins to embrace commonly shared issues on social platforms, the shifts or changes incurred by socio-political flux and the individual redefinition of self within socio-cultural parameters. Therefore while our direct visual cues derive from costumes and set and are an indigenous African contemporary mix, our dance is centred in industrialised rhythms of gumboot, pantsula, and township jive and the original music composed by members of the cast marries traditional rhythms with contemporary elements, interspersed with drums, horn, and acapella singing,” she said.

She said DUT’s journey to Folkwang Shakespeare Festival in 2016 signalled the beginning of a deep and poignantly touching transition for DUT’s Department of Drama and Production Studies. “The preparation for the international Folkwang Shakespeare Festival always has as primary considerations: funding for airfares and the costs of transporting the set; the production must speak of who we are as a nation. Each visit we become more conscious of the large debt our journey owes to our German partners who facilitate mounting the play, cover accommodation plus airport transfers, with Ms Susanne Skipiol each year going above and beyond to assist us in making our dreams a reality and this year she managed to secure our much-needed airfares through DAAD (Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienster) who have contributed significantly to our flights,” said Prof Lutge. She also added that the trip to the Folkwang Shakespeare Festival 2018 was facilitated by funding from DAAD.

In 2016 Lutge was the first director from Africa to be invited to stage a Shakespeare at the festival and DUT is deeply honoured that she has been invited back. The show is receiving nightly ovations and well worth seeing. For the last two nights, (16 to 17 March 2018), audiences may enjoy the show as a ‘pay what you can’ production. This allows for school bookings as well as door sales. So pop along to this wonderfully intimate theatre for this spectacular comedy geared for South African contemporary audiences. It promises to be a night to remember.

Pictured: DUT student cast of The Taming of the Shrew, all set for their trip to Germany.

Waheeda Peters