ALAN PARKER | Detritus
Detritus was performed in August of 2013. In 2016 Alan reworked it into a solo performance which he performed as part of the Cape Town Fringe. He was awarded the Silver medal. Detritus in this form has gone on to perform to acclaim at various festivals over the years.
Presented in partnership with Distell and The Baxter Theatre, supported by BASA
Directed and Choreographed by Alan Parker
Performed by Richard Antrobus, Indalo Stofile and Madele Vermaak
Designed by Gavin Krastin
Mentored by Jori Snell
Photos by Dex Goodman
The idea for Detritus was inspired by Alan Parker's work with the First Physical Theatre Company at Rhodes University where part of his job was archiving their body of work that stretched back twenty years.
In the process of creating Detritus Alan worked with 3 performers and their recollection of performances - Nicola Elliott’s Fragile (a 2012 winner of the ETDB), Tebogo Munyai’s Right Inside and French performance artist Phia Menard’s Afternoon of a Foehn. Through visual image, movement, spoken text, music and design the performers attempted to explain, recreate and recapture their own sensation of watching these performances for the audience in the present.
At the heart of “Detritus” is an imaginative and playful engagement with the intangibility of live performance. By its nature, performance is ephemeral, disappearing just as quickly as it appears. When the event is over nothing of the actual performance remains, except for the detritus - in the form of costumes and props and the (often flawed) recollection of the experience in the memories of the audience. How do we grapple with memory?
