the island

our next production that is scheduled to be performed in march 2009 is athol fugard's the island.

the island is a play written by athol fugard, john kani and winston ntshona. set in the midst of the apartheid, this deft play is inspired by a true story and is set in a prison cell on South Africa's infamous Robben Island - the same place where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for seventeen years.

the crux of the story is predicated on the friendship between two cellmates who are serving a life sentence. they spend their days at futile physical labour. however they spend their nights rehearsing for a perfromance of Sophocles' Antigone - a play that has been perenially dubbed as the greatest political play ever. One man takes the part of Antigone, which causes a lot of laughter between the two cellmates, and the other plays Creon. However, beneath the allegory, there is a blinding truth. The performance of Antigone draws direct parallels between Antingone's situation and black men imprisoned for political crimes against the state.

sochop produced a workshop performance of this talismanic work in 2007 and have decided to produce the play in its entirity. the performance intends to blend a stimulating mix of the televisual and the corporeal to bring the gripping narrative to life.

for more information contact us at: info@sochoptheatre.com