Book launch: 'What Remains'

The ICA and Wits University Press invite the public to the launch of:

What Remains
A Play in One Act by Nadia Davids
with notes on the choreography by Jay Pather

6pm, Friday 7 February (Refreshments from 5.30pm) | UCT Hiddingh Hall

Readings & discussion by Nadia Davids & Jay Pather, chaired by Mark Gevisser
Performances by Shaun Oelf & Buhle Ngaba

Copies of What Remains will be on sale from Clarke’s Books.

RSVP: ica@uct.ac.za 
 

What Remains is destined to become a South African classic. Nadia Davids’s transformative play digs up bones and reaches for the sacred. It dramatises the timeless dance between memory and ‘progress’ in a way that is also a fierce critique of the present moment. Like the best drama, it is universal because Davids roots it so precisely in the experience of her time – post-apartheid South Africa – and place: her beloved Cape Town. – Mark Gevisser, author of Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir

What Remains excavates a tragic history, mining beauty, no less than poetry, from a slave burial ground. This heart-breaking dance on the page, cries out to be performed. With Pather’s choreographic notes, it promises to be a triumph. – Zoë Wicomb, Emeritus Professor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

“A beautiful masterpiece.” Cape Times

“5 Stars.” Die Burger

“What Remains is an impressive, disquieting and heart-breaking piece.” Weekend Special.

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On a still, cool day in the east of a city by the sea, three sounds only: a bulldozer’s engine, a forgotten song, a canon that tells the time. Behind the bulldozer, a sign: Luxury Mall Coming Soon. As the vehicle moves in to the clear ground, it strikes at something unexpected…

What Remains is a fusion of text, dance and movement to tell a story about the unexpected uncovering of a slave burial ground in Cape Town, the archaeological dig that follows and a city haunted by the memory of slavery. When the bones emerge from the ground, everyone in the city – slave descendants, archaeologists, citizens, property developers – is forced to reckon with a history sometimes remembered, sometimes forgotten. Loosely based on the events at Prestwich Place, What Remains is a path between memory and magic, the uncanny and the known, waking and dreaming. Four figures – The Archaeologist, The Healer, The Dancer and The Student – move between bones and books, archives and madness, paintings and protest, as they struggle to reconcile the past with the now.

What Remains is the winner of the five Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards in 2018, including Best New South African Play (Nadia Davids) and Best Director (Jay Pather).