LITMIR.BIZ

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, shortly after the millennium. Patricia and Richard Wiley, an elderly white couple, are packing up to leave the farm they’ve sold to developers. Their preparations are interrupted by the arrival of a young man – ‘Look Smart’ – who used to be one of the black workers on their estate until he disappeared fifteen years ago. The day before Look Smart left, something terrible happened on the Wileys’ farm. But everyone has a different memory of the dreadful event and their own role in it. As the different accounts of their shared past are unravelled, they are all forced to confront their own versions of the truth – with shocking ramifications for their lives today. Dream of the Dog is a richly textured and complex story of South Africa’s emerging democracy, and its continued negotiation with its past in order to find a workable identity for its future. Critically acclaimed in South Africa, this new play takes an unflinching look at the twin mantras of the post-Mandela age – reconciliation and forgiveness – as it asks whether black and white can ever live together peacefully.

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Thirty miles outside Johannesburg, a group of school friends decide to spend the night in a network of underground caves. The area is known as the Cradle of Humankind. The oldest pre‐human remains have been found there, including a four million year‐old ape‐man called Little Foot. As the friends go deeper underground, forces are unleashed between them and around them.Part reality, part nightmare, South African playwright Craig Higginson's dark and poetic play takes us on an unforgettable journey into our unconscious ancestral memory.

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Mowgli was still a toddler when he was lost in the jungle – his parentsfleeing the tiger, Shere Khan. There, Mowgli was brought up bywolves, and educated by the bear Baloo and the panther Bagheera.He was happy while growing up and learning the ways of the jungle –and his name was soon known amongst all the animals. But Mowgli’sgrowing fame provoked resentment and envy, and his life was soonthreatened from all sides…First published in the late 1890s, Rudyard Kipling’s two Jungle Books have enchanted generations of children and adults. Often describedas an allegory for the society and politics of the time, The JungleBook has now been adapted by critically-acclaimed South Africanplaywright, Craig Higginson. The play asks: Who is your family?Those who look the same as you or those who love and nurtureyou? Here, the tales become a powerful examination of an emergingdemocracy, and the forces that threaten it.Based on a version by the celebrated director Tim Supple, thisadaptation was first staged at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre in2008. This powerful and magical version of a much-loved classic isas resonant now as it was when it first appeared – both within SouthAfrica and beyond its borders.

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South African writer Craig Higginson’s powerful new play is a dark, witty and sexually-charged psychological drama told through the eyes of a beautiful English teacher and her French-Congolese pupil. A ‘state of the nation’ exploration of the tensions between the first and third worlds the play explores issues around language, power, identity, sex, past trauma, class, exile and refugees. An exciting new co-production from the internationally-renowned Market Theatre from South Africa and two of the UK’s most prestigious theatre companies.'This gripping two-hander is a highlight of the Traverse programme. Higginson packs a lot in under the seemingly innocuous guise of a young English woman giving language lessons to a French-Congolese student in contemporary Paris'– Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard 'Higginson is clearly gifted. He not only filters pressing concerns about race, prejudice and power through a highly charged two-hander, but he wraps it all up in a witty discourse about language itself.'– Daily Telegraph 'It is unusual and fascinating to see a play investigate the extent to which words can shape our thoughts and feelings as much as vice versa.'– Financial Times

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Craig Higginson’s first three plays for adult audiences – collected here in one volume for the first time – represent one of the strongest debuts in the history of South African theatre. Although each can be seen as a variation on the theme of the post-apartheid state of the nation play, they are also engaged with realities in Zimbabwe, the Congo and contemporary Europe. Higginson’s experience of growing up in wartorn Zimbabwe and apartheid South Africa have given him a deep-rooted and potent angle from which to dramatize a dialogue between Europe and Africa, the so-called First World and the Third. As British director Jeremy Herrin has noted in his Foreword: ‘The pairing of delicate psychology and considered plot allow the plays to move beyond the realism of their settings into a bespoke theatrical landscape, a place where the contradictions and messiness of contemporary life hold themselves up for inspection.’

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