A new work from magician and theatre maker Jesse Brooks, Paper Moon is a show about illusions.
Directed by Megan Choritz, it comprises playful mysteries that consider what happens when our own centre and sense of truth are eclipsed, and how a path out of that darkness might look.
The work takes its name from the popular phrase, referring to something that lingers at the interstice of fact and facsimile; that feels at moments real, and at others illusory. Our illusions can be precious and persistent, can heal and enable; hurt and hinder. In Paper Moon, audiences are gently invited to experience how things that seem so real can be artificial… and how artifice can sometimes give way to something real. The show attempts to evoke small wonders; and offer them as shimmering motes of gold with which, perhaps, to fill the many cracks and breaks in heart and mind – on the way to one’s becoming.
Paper Moon continues Jesse Brooks’ interest in contemporary magic, circus and performance that opens up space for resonances of wonder.
Jesse Brooks is a magician, designer and theatre maker from Cape Town. A graduate of Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town, he has worked in national and international creative consultation for film, television and live performance, and has trained extensively in experiential design and immersive theatre methodologies (even running away with the circus for a while). Through his creative studio and artistic practice, Know Wonder, Jesse weaves together the threads of transformative experience design, theatre and scenography to create surreal works that evoke enchantment. He is interested in illusion, circus arts and exploring ways to rekindle experiences of magic in the everyday.
Megan Choritz is a South African born playwright, actor, writer, director, and improviser.
Megan graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1986 and worked as an actor before starting her own improvisation troupe in Cape Town. She has written and co-written numerous plays and musicals, performed and directed theatre, and she improvises and teaches improv. She also writes short stories, and poems and children’s stories. Her plays The Tent, Drive with Me and Clouds Like Waves garnered high praise.
Her debut novel Lost Property was published by MF Books in June 2023, longlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Fiction Award, and her children’s book The Big Bird Battle, published by Penguin Struik, received critical acclaim.
In the last two years her focus has shifted to the genocide in Palestine. Her activism has seen her create work like Shakespeare to Gaza. She is a proud anti-Zionist Jew, and as a member of South African Jews For a Free Palestine, she is at the forefront of the struggle for a free Palestine from the river to the sea.