Latest news with #Afros
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
A new play asks: What would you do if your ex became an anti-apartheid revolutionary?
In Melbourne Theatre Company's base in Southbank, the cast are gathering for a run-through of Destiny, a new play written by and starring Kirsty Marillier. Destiny is set in the outskirts of a regional South African town, hundreds of kilometres from the politics of Pretoria. Della, played by Marillier, works in the local shop and takes care of her brother and father. The actors are on a mock-up set, but reference photos pinned to the wall give a flavour: earthy tones, sparse towns clinging to African hillsides, and some killer 1970s fashions: flared pants, Afros and polyester shirts. Behind the living room set, a wide-open sky. Then Della's ex-boyfriend Ezra (Barry Conrad) shows up. He's back from university, bringing a Cape Town twang and big-city ideas about equality and revolution. Ezra's been 'consciontised'. The word is spoken in hushed tones. It's dangerous. He tells Della's younger brother that living under nationalist rule is like being sour milk in a bottle. 'We need to smash the bottle.' 'I've been describing the play as 'What would you do if the guy who shattered your heart into pieces was also trying to recruit your brother into the revolution?'' laughs Marillier. The play has a stacked cast. Marillier and Conrad are joined by Patrick Williams as Della's father Cliff, and Gaz Dutlow as her tearaway teenage brother. Director Zindzi Okenyo recently headed up Sydney Theatre Company's production of Sweat, and also directed Marillier's debut play, Orange Thrower, at Griffin Theatre Company in 2022. It's not clear exactly where Destiny takes place, but we can speculate it's somewhere around KwaZulu-Natal, where Marillier was born. Her parents went to segregated schools, and she was born into the tail end of the apartheid regime. As a child, she often overheard conversations about the country's segregated past. 'The amount of times I was like, 'What happened?'' says Marillier. ''What was life like back then?' But they're reluctant to go back there. It was a painful time.' But she persisted. She wanted to write something set in another time. The result is Destiny. After long discussions with her father, she zeroed in on 1976, just before the Soweto Uprising. Della and her family are sheltered from the political turmoil the country will soon face.
The Age
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
A new play asks: What would you do if your ex became an anti-apartheid revolutionary?
In Melbourne Theatre Company's base in Southbank, the cast are gathering for a run-through of Destiny, a new play written by and starring Kirsty Marillier. Destiny is set in the outskirts of a regional South African town, hundreds of kilometres from the politics of Pretoria. Della, played by Marillier, works in the local shop and takes care of her brother and father. The actors are on a mock-up set, but reference photos pinned to the wall give a flavour: earthy tones, sparse towns clinging to African hillsides, and some killer 1970s fashions: flared pants, Afros and polyester shirts. Behind the living room set, a wide-open sky. Then Della's ex-boyfriend Ezra (Barry Conrad) shows up. He's back from university, bringing a Cape Town twang and big-city ideas about equality and revolution. Ezra's been 'consciontised'. The word is spoken in hushed tones. It's dangerous. He tells Della's younger brother that living under nationalist rule is like being sour milk in a bottle. 'We need to smash the bottle.' 'I've been describing the play as 'What would you do if the guy who shattered your heart into pieces was also trying to recruit your brother into the revolution?'' laughs Marillier. The play has a stacked cast. Marillier and Conrad are joined by Patrick Williams as Della's father Cliff, and Gaz Dutlow as her tearaway teenage brother. Director Zindzi Okenyo recently headed up Sydney Theatre Company's production of Sweat, and also directed Marillier's debut play, Orange Thrower, at Griffin Theatre Company in 2022. It's not clear exactly where Destiny takes place, but we can speculate it's somewhere around KwaZulu-Natal, where Marillier was born. Her parents went to segregated schools, and she was born into the tail end of the apartheid regime. As a child, she often overheard conversations about the country's segregated past. 'The amount of times I was like, 'What happened?'' says Marillier. ''What was life like back then?' But they're reluctant to go back there. It was a painful time.' But she persisted. She wanted to write something set in another time. The result is Destiny. After long discussions with her father, she zeroed in on 1976, just before the Soweto Uprising. Della and her family are sheltered from the political turmoil the country will soon face.
The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Nile Rodgers brought funk and soul to the Barrowlands
Edinburgh might have had the guitars and the attitude and the Gallagher brothers on Tuesday night, but Glasgow had the funk. And the soul. And disco and pop and even a dash of jazz and hip-hop. All of it combined in one man. On a sweltering evening in the Barrowland Ballroom Nile Rodgers reminded us that effectively he is the living embodiment of pop music. Backed by a group of stellar musicians and two remarkable vocalists - Audrey Martells and Naomi Rodgers, both dressed in silver and Afros (purple in Martells's case), and looking like they've both just stepped out of a George Clinton fever dream - Rodgers telescoped 50 years of music into just under two hours of continuous sonic pleasure. Read More: Starting with a quartet of Chic classics - Freak Out, Everybody Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) and I Want Your Love; all of them sounding fresh and vivid and shockingly contemporary - what followed was a trip through Rodgers's back catalogue, taking in songs from Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Beyonce and Daft Punk. All songs graced by Rodgers' writing, performing and producing skills and all of them as familiar as the back of your hand. Beyonce's Cuff It - a top 10 hit and a Grammy winner - was as close this evening gets to a deep cut. Duran Duran's Notorious even got a run-out. But so good were the performances and the vocals that you never felt the absence of the original singers. This was an act of reclamation. In all, it felt like the best kind of history lesson. Since he and his friend, the late Bernard Edwards, co-founded Chic in the late 1970s, Rodgers has been a remarkably consistent and successful music-maker and tonight that back story was laid out for us. There's an astonishing scene in Ryan Coogler's recent film Sinners in which the entire history of black music, past, present and future, is conjured up in a 1920s Mississippi juke joint. At times watching Rodgers at the Barrowland I was sure I was watching an extended version of that sequence. At the same time, this was a reminder that great music never goes out of date. This was a tightly organised and choreographed performance - some songs were cut short just to squeeze more than 20 songs into the set - with every transition nailed down and on the money. And yet it never felt calculated, confined, or by the numbers. 'We're sweating our asses off,' Rodgers admitted as the temperature peaked. You might be inclined to wonder why. Rodgers has survived cancer twice and suffered in the past from a terrible fear of flying. He is - as every second of this gig reminds us - hugely successful. He doesn't need to do this anymore. But as he duckwalked across the stage or dueted with bass player Jerry Barnes it was abundantly clear that he still loves it. And that love is reciprocated from a raucous, joyous Glasgow audience. Everyone of us lost in music. This was a breathless night. A giddy, exhilarating performance and a reminder that the primary purpose of music is to make you dance. So, I did.
