Award-winning production for Playhouse

WINNER of the Overall Excellent Award for Best Play at Fringe NYC 2013, the production, Ndebele Funeral, will be at the Playhouse Loft theatre from Thursday 16 July to Saturday 18 July at 7pm.

This widely acclaimed three-hander comes to The Playhouse stage straight from off-Broadway, New York, and The National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. Written by Zoey Martinson and directed by Awoye Timpo, it is performed by Jonathan David, Zoey Martinson and Yusef Miller. Ndebele Funeral is based on a short play by Ivan Suazo.

Set in Soweto, it asks what do you do, when your resources are few and your life a ticking clock. Build your own coffin and claim your dignity? Daweti, a college graduate living with HIV, exiles herself from her friends and family and uses government supplies to set about doing just that. Using music, dance and the sounds of Soweto, Ndebele Funeral asks do you have the right to choose your own death? How does religion and culture own your morality? Heart-breaking and hilarious, the play centres on the emotional resolve of Daweti, a college graduate whose controversial decision to end her life has moving repercussions for her devoted friend Thabo. As aspirations and disappointments surface inside Daweti’s tiny shack, the play explores issues of poverty, religion, distribution of wealth, politics and health care in modern South Africa.

Zoey Martinson wrote Ndebele Funeral after working as a humanitarian aid worker at a refugee camp in West Africa and then travelled to South Africa to interview people living in the informal settlements around Soweto.

Book tickets through Computicket.