Akrasia
Absurd Romance
Director: Kristen FICHARDT | Writer: Kristen FICHARDT & Shannon HENDRY | Starring: Heinrich WENTZEL & Ancois BODENSTEIN | Stage Manager: Shannon HENDRY | Assistant Stage Manager: Sonja LOUW | Set designer: Kristen FICHARDT & Shannon HENDRY | Costume designer: Kristen FICHARDT | Lighting designer: Kristen FICHARDT | Sound designer: Kristen FICHARDT
Language
The Young Professionals series provides a platform for graduating students to share their graduating work with the wider public, whilst allowing the work to introduce them to the industry. For many, graduating work is the culmination of years of study and as such should be given the space and time to develop and grow into work that enables young professionals to begin working as artists and earning a living.
The Young Professionals, now in its fourth year, is presented as a series throughout the year creating opportunity for graduating students from different universities to work with each other.
AKRASIA
It’s the one-year anniversary of Reuben’s mother’s death. He hosts an art exhibition titled Rou Moeder. A tribute, or rather a final goodbye, with his mother right at the center of it all. Until she isn’t.
The exhibition gets twisted into an evening with a strange young woman, a vienna sausage, and a mother that isn’t ready to move on just yet. A heart that aches tends to dance with disaster: grief likes to be served raw, after all.
How far can we be pushed till we just cannot excuse behavior anymore? Especially when all parties involved are seemingly ‘okay’ with what is going on. When deep down, they know they shouldn’t be doing something, so why do they decide to still do it? Is it because, at the end of the day, we can relate to one another? Is it out of pure desperation? Or is it because they are all we know?
Reuben is straightforward, yet awkward and conflicted at times. His job description speaks for itself. There aren’t a lot of installation artists with a butchery on the side. He struggles to let go of things that are not meant for him anymore. He is a perfectionist; he overthinks and overcomplicates. Which is why he found it impossible to let go of his mother, who passed away a year ago from a heart condition. With a butchery nearby, the ‘logical’ decision seemed to be to turn her body into vienna sausages and to preserve her in a glass cube. He sees it fit to dedicate an art exhibition to his mother, now rawly displayed in a cube, titled Rou Moeder.
He waits, patiently, for people to storm into his studio and stare in awe at his three artworks. However, when no one shows up, the reality sinks in for him that he needs to move on. Until a young woman stumbles in, curious about his art but, more importantly, about him. Little do we know, Candice just came straight from the hospital, on her birthday, where she had just been told that her pacemaker isn’t working as the doctors would have hoped it would. Feeling rebellious and angry that her life flew by her without having been lived properly, she runs away from the hospital with an uncharged and faulty pacemaker on her way to a young man’s exhibition she has been in love with for two years. The only thing was that she’d never met him before. Only through conversations with his mother. More than a year ago.
The chair is titled Waar ek kon rus and is about the comfort and warmth of a mother when breastfeeding. At the back is Reuben’s butchery, marked with PVC butcher curtains.
Akrasia was originally created for the Première Theatre Festival in 2025 at Stellenbosch University. During Akrasia’s run at the Première Theatre Festival, the show garnered numerous awards and nominations. Apart from being nominated for best script, as well as best actor and actress in leading roles, Akrasia also took home the awards for best directing and best technical achievement for its set design. Akrasia performed at Kaapstad Toneelhuis in January 2026 and will also be performing at KKNK in March 2026.