AUDITIONS: 21 January at 14:30
CHARACTERS
- Sipho (a young boy)
- Mama Wesizwa (his mother)
- Blommetjie and Palesa (twin sisters: one pale, the other dark)
- Zunga and Oagajaga (travellers from another place)
- Ceres (a nature spirit)
- Naledi (the Bright Morning Star)
A note on the characters:
- Mama Wesizwa is a rod puppet, larger than life. She is matronly and gentle.
- Sipho is played by a real boy. He is taciturn and clumsy. Sometimes he has to think very carefully about what he wants to say before he says it.
- The twin sisters are two young girls who are completely inseparable: like conjoined twins, they are joined at the hip and shoulder, and can only move their right and left arms respectively. They complete each other’s sentences, interrupt each other and at all times move as a single entity.
- The two travellers are glove puppets with oversize heads and pointy hats, one with bells on it. They may be operated by the same puppeteer and voiced by the same actor. Like Punch & Judy characters, they are raucous and vulgar.
- Ceres, like Mama and Naledi, is also a large rod puppet. She represents earthly nature in its abundance and its parsimony, its gentleness and its violence.
- Naledi is ethereal, completely white and silver, with a glittering and gentle, but almost cold, presence
Synopsis
Sipho is a strange young boy who lives alone with his mother in a remote village. His mother wishes he was not so strange, and wonders how she is going to handle him. She goes across the valley to visit someone, and Sipho, left alone, is approached by the two sisters who have been spying on him and giggling at his strange ways. The girls convince him that he is too strange and is a burden on his mother, so Sipho plans to run away to spare her the difficulty of raising him. He steals the money that his mother has been saving to send him to school or to buy him some new shoes and he sets off, accompanied by the sisters, teasing him all the way.
Suddenly the sisters disappear and two strangers arrive. They trick the naïve young boy out of his money and they disappear in turn, just as night is falling.
Not being able to find his way home, Sipho is met by a nature spirit who takes him under her wing for the night and watches over him while he sleeps, having struck a bargain with him that she will only keep the bad spirits away until just before dawn, otherwise she will be neglecting her work of keeping nature in balance.
On waking the next morning, Sipho finds that the nature spirit has indeed disappeared, and he is all alone, cold, scared and hungry.
As he is regretting stealing from his mother and running away, the Bright Morning Star appears and calls his name. She leads him back to his frantic mother and promises to get the stolen money back, if his mother does not punish him too harshly. As she fades away with the approaching sun, she leaves behind a trail of shiny coins for the reunited mother and son.
