Auditions & Theatre News around South Africa

Auditions & Theatre News Around SA

Dance audition

DANCEunLimited is looking for unemployed, out-of-school dancers to make part of its new dance ensemble. Dancers must be proficient in versatile styles...competency in Gumboots, Pantsula and/or Kasi dance, and SA traditional dance styles stands one an good advantage.

For audition date, venue and other info please contact: 0614072989 / boxunlimited2@gmail.com OR inbox Facebook Page:DANCEunLimited

Audition takes place ONLY this week and for ONLY those who have booked

Magnet Theatre is having auditions for a new intake of trainees in 2014.  There are a limited number of bursaries available.

• Magnet Theatre runs a full-time physical theatre training programme offering classes in movement, play, imagination, physical theatre, voice, dance, singing, improvisation and play making.   The programme includes production work, community work and organised visits to the theatre to expose the trainees to mainstream and community performance. They are placed in work shadow in various aspects of the theatre industry.  The participants are encouraged to maintain their connection with their communities and with their respective drama groups. The programme has been designed by Jennie Reznek and Mandla Mbothwe and the classes are taught by highly experienced theatre practitioners and teachers.
• The Trainee programme is aimed at prospective actors and performers who for one reason or another struggle to be absorbed into the training at University.
• It is full time intensive training, Monday to Friday from 9h00- 16h30.
• It is a 2 year programme starting in February 2014 and running until November 2015.
• Auditions for will be held between 7 and 11 December 2013  with call backs on Thursday 12th  December at the Magnet Theatre (Unit 1,  Old Match Factory, Corner of Lower Main Road and St Michaels, Observatory.)  Each person will be given a 10 minute slot to present their prepared piece and work with the directors. Each person who wants to audition must please contact the Magnet Theatre office to make an appointment.  All auditionees to please arrive HALF AN HOUR BEFORE THEIR AUDITION TIME to do the paper work.
• Please wear comfortable clothes you can move in comfortably.

• Please prepare a two minute audition piece – anything you feel confident about.
• Please write a short letter (400 words) of motivation as to why you want to become part of the Magnet Theatre training programme.
• Please bring:    a copy of your matric results or most recent school report, a copy of your identity document, the name and contact details of one person Magnet can contact as a reference.
• A call back audition will be held on 12 December from 09h00 onwards.  Those who are called back will be informed by end of day on 11 December.  So please make sure you are available.

Please call Anelisa or Margie on 021 448 3436 or e-mail assistant@magnettheatre.co.za to book a place at the auditions.

Applications for Dance Umbrella 2014 open

The main Dance Umbrella 2014 will run at various venues in Johannesburg from March 6-16, 2014.

Dance Umbrella, the internationally distinguished contemporary dance festival celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2013.

Dance Umbrella 2014 will remain a platform for new contemporary choreography and dance and will be structured as follows:

The Main programme: which will comprise only commissioned work from South African choreographers, invited international works and selected works from the Dance Forum residency programme. Choreographers can apply to be commissioned and must contact Dance Forum at 011 492 2033. People who want to apply for a commission fee can download the application onwww.danceforumsouthafrica.co.za.

The Fringe programme: Dance Umbrella is re-introducing the Fringe Programme which is open to work that runs up to 30 minutes. The programmes for the Fringe will be curated and once the programme is finalised, no additional entries will be accepted.

Stepping Stones: Only youth, community groups and choreographers who do not work regularly will be featured on this programme. The running time may not exceed ten (10) minutes.

General application forms can be obtained by calling Lindiwe at 011 492 2033.

Please note the following:
Once the Stepping Stones programme is full, no other entries will be accepted. There is also no guarantee that all entries will be programmed so it is advised that you apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

The selection and sequence of the programmes will be done at the discretion of the organisers, the artistic director and consultants and their decision is final.

The venues for the Dance Umbrella and all technical facilities within the budget, the theatre, publicity, posters and programmes are provided free, at no cost to the participating choreographers, dance companies or groups.

For further information, please call 011 492 2033.

A Call For New Plays

Junkets Publisher is a small independent South African publisher, founded in 2005 by Robin Malan. In 2009 it was the winner of the Arts & Culture Trust Excellence Award for Literature. It specialises in publishing The Playscript Series, new Southern African plays; as well as The Collected Series, anthologies of new Southern African plays. 

We announce a new project:

African Folktales Onstage! plays for pre-teens compiled by Fatima Dike, André Lemmer, Robin Malan & Omphile Molusi.

Junkets Publisher is looking for short stage adaptations of African folktales to include in a collection of plays for the upper Grades of the primary school and the lower Grades of the high school, especially for performance or for rehearsed class presentation. 

Guidelines for Contributors

1. Submit by email to info.junkets@iafrica.com as a Word Doc, not as a pdf.
2. Use only Times New Roman 12pt. Do not use underlining or lines anywhere in the document.
3. A sample half-page of the required format is given at the end of this call.
4. All African folktales derive from the general consciousness of the people, so all will be an ‘adaptation’ of a sort. Submitting your play will be an undertaking that this is your own work. If, however, you are adapting a specific prose re-telling, you must acknowledge this, giving the author’s name, the title of the book in which the original appears, stating compiler, publisher and date.
5. Your play should be for performance by or to youngsters at the top end of the primary school or the bottom end of the high school. Most experts are agreed that very young children should not be performing written texts in public.
6. In your retelling, go for the authentic, the robust, the vigorous. Studiously avoid the cutesy.
7. Your play should be a minimum of 1 500 words and a maximum of 5 500 words, counted from the title to ‘The End’, including everything. (Click on Tools, then Word Count.) Nothing shorter or longer will be considered. State the number of words below your play.
8. The author must be a member of a SADC country or a person living or working in Southern Africa. There is no age restriction. It does not matter whether or not you have had plays published or performed before.
9. You may submit one play or two plays or three plays, but not more.
10. Only emailed PC-generated submissions are acceptable; no hard-copy submissions. If you do not have access to a PC and email, you will need to get your work scanned, formatted and emailed by a PostNet or copy shop. We need to be able to communicate with you by email.
11. Submissions need to reach us at info.junkets@iafrica.com by 31 January 2014. No late submissions will be considered. Publication will be in early-December 2014. Only writers whose work is accepted for publication will be contacted. If you have not heard from us by July 2014, you can assume that your submission did not make it through the selection process; and please accept our thanks for submitting your work. No correspondence can be entered into concerning entries not selected.
12. This is not a competition; there are no prizes, there is no money involved at this stage. Junkets is usually a not-for-profit operation, so no fee is offered; instead, contributors will receive a gratis copy of the book. In the unlikely event of there being a profit after all expenses and bookshop discounts are factored in, contributors will be paid a small royalty pro rata. Authors retain the copyright of their individual plays.
13. As the selection will be made anonymously, your name (and postal address) should appear only on the title-page; nowhere else.
14. For further enquiries, contact Robin Malan at email info.junkets@iafrica.com or on cell number 076 169 2789.

Sample of format in which play is to be typed

The setting of the play is a wide, open stretch of veld. Whistling is heard offstage. HYENA enters.

Hyena (Sees audience, addresses them.) Hello, people. That was me whistling back there. I’m full of beans today. (Burps. Smiles.) Well, not literally. Now, down to business. I have a little plan …

There is a loud crash-bang offstage, and AMEHLO THE OWL enters, carrying a bucket, a mop, and a step-ladder.

Amehlo Oh, eish, eina! I keep not seeing where I’m going. (Drops everything.) I just can’t do this on my own. (Sits down on the upturned bucket, dejected. Mops his brow.)

Hyena ’Morning, Amehlo the Owl! I wonder, (With a sinister laugh.) if I can perhaps help you …

Amehlo Would you? That’s kind. I have to clean the sky so that the sun can paint a rainbow on it, but I seem to have mislaid my spectacles.

HYENA climbs the ladder and plucks the spectacles off a branch of a tree. He hands them to AMEHLO.

Hyena (Speaking very carefully.) Are these they?


These are the details of the above format:

• Everything flush-left; no indenting of speeches or stage directions
• Character-name in Bold uc&lc (e.g. Hyena), no colon, 1 character-space, then speech, running on, no indenting
• Single spacing within a speech
• 1 line-space between speeches and before & after ‘external stage directions’
• ‘external stage directions’ in italics, no brackets before or after. e.g. [flush left]:

HYENA climbs the ladder and plucks the spectacles off a branch of a tree.

• ‘internal stage directions’ (within speeches) inside regular round brackets, text in italics, start with u.c. letter, end with full stop, e.g. (With a sinister laugh.)
• This is how we want you to present the play to us. Our typesetter will adjust this format for the final published text.

email info.junkets@iafrica.com  website www.junkets.co.za

(Source - Pansa)