PRESS: UNRULY returns by popular demand for full-length season at The Baxter

Christine Skinner

---

Empatheatre, in collaboration with The Baxter, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Unruly Natures research project, presents a return, full-length season of UNRULY by popular demand.  

Photo by Odendaal Esterhuyse.

Starring theatre luminary Andrew Buckland, accompanied on stage by award- winning Jazz performer and composer Chantal Willie-Petersen on double bass, UNRULY will be performed for a limited season from 17 July from 2 August in The Baxter Studio.

Directed by esteemed theatre maker Neil Coppen, this immersive storytelling performance, based on extensive academic and creative research, explores the coexistence of urban baboons and humans in the fictional town of Skemer Baai, where tensions rise following the mysterious disappearance of a baboon matriarch.

UNRULY invites audiences to engage with the complexities of human-animal relationships, Cape Peninsula’s shared ecology, and the unpredictable forces of nature. Tensions run high as baboon politics divides a community seeking answers. UNRULY explores how we can understand the issue from multiple perspectives - painting in the process a rich picture of the Cape Peninsula’s complex history and shared ecology of mountain, ocean, urban and military environments, prone to wildfires, seas surges and messy human/animal relations.

UNRULY is co-written by Neil Coppen, Andrew Buckland and Dr. Dylan McGarry. Completing the stellar creative team, the production features a new original score by Braam DuToit, working in collaboration with Chantal Willie-Petersen. Lighting design is by Tina le Roux and set and costumes by McGarry.

Buckland offers audiences a dynamic performance brimming with humour, compassion and his trademark physical theatre mastery alongside Willie-Petersen’s evocative live music.

Press comments about the production include:

‘a riveting new production devised by the Empatheatre team. In addition to the obvious theme of the play, secondary threads of narrative are woven into the work's dense texture, such as promoting empathy between divided communities, man's destruction of nature, materialism and the liberation that comes from renunciation of all things superfluous to a fulfilling existence’ Beverley Brommert, Theatre Scene Cape Town

‘Maybe it is watching Buckland, as Rob, break down on the floor at the audience’s feet without the proscenium stage to shield him, or maybe it is the simple act of sitting neighbour-to-neighbour, away from the WhatsApp groups, but catharsis is palpable in the room.’ Isabel Olson, Mail & Guardian

The show has completed two sold out tours across the Cape Peninsula to wide acclaim last year, playing to baboon-visited neighbourhoods, as well as high schools, baboon rangers, municipal and conservation authorities, NGOs and civic groups.

It was nominated for three Fleur De Cap Theatre Awards including Best Theatre Production, Best Solo Performance (Andrew Buckland) and Best Sound/Music (Chantal Willie-Petersen).

Andrew Buckland in UNRULY. Photo by Retha Ferguson.

“With this topic more salient than ever, the return of UNRULY at The Baxter as a fully developed theatrical work is important timing,” says director Neil Coppen.

“We devised this piece following research into residents’ own lived experiences and challenges of coexisting with urban baboons on the Cape Peninsula. The feedback at our post-show discussions has been invaluable for interrogating the question, “How should we, as humans, act towards a nature that doesn’t always behave the way we expect it to?” The debate remains ongoing to explore solutions and understanding on both sides,” says Coppen.

Empatheatre has developed a unique methodology for staging theatre in the round, for it to be conducive for public dialogue, conflict transformation and building public tribunals. In the previous two tours, post-show dialogues were available for audiences to process the research that underpins the script, to ask questions and give testimony from their own encounters and contexts with Wildlife/human conflict. As such we would like to offer this experience to audiences coming to the show. Audiences can join the post show dialogue in selected limited performances on Saturday 19th, 14h30 and Saturday the 26th, 14h30 shows. The dialogues will be facilitated by co-author of “Unruly”, and co-founder of Empatheatre Dr. Dylan McGarry.

Dylan McGarry (Empatheatre co-founder, sociologist; Artist): “I have found this project fascinating, as it reveals how myth and reality shape our interactions with each other and with the natural world. Trying to understand human/baboons relationships living in urban environments, has taught me a lot about how we as humans, struggle in these same environments, and I can’t help but think these messy entanglements are teaching us how to listen and attend to each other in more playful and tender ways.”

UNRULY will be performed from 17 July to 2 August in The Baxter Studio. It carries an age restriction of 14. Tickets are R240pp and can be booked online through Webtickets.