Amper, Vrystaat
Amper, Vrystaat by Nico Scheepers (19**-)
The original text
Amper, Vrystaat is an Afrikaans South African dark comedy created collaboratively by Nico Scheepers with its cast in a workshop manner. It tells the story of three estranged sisters who reunite for their mother's funeral in the fictional Free State town of Amper, after the mother's lonely death sets the townspeople talking. First performed at the Vrystaat Kunstefees in 2015, it became one of the most widely travelled Afrikaans festival comedies of its period.
Nico Scheepers is credited as writer, director and designer; Antoinette Louw as a lead actress, the producer and a co-writer; and the remaining cast members, Cintaine Schutte and Milan Murray, are also credited as co-writers. According to Schutte's account, Antoinette Louw and Milan Murray had long wanted to work together and approached Scheepers to direct a play for them; he proposed that Schutte join the cast, after which the four developed the story together.
The work is built almost entirely from interlocking monologues spoken directly to the audience, with sustained dialogue reserved for a Christmas-lunch scene and the closing funeral scene. Although some festivals programmed it as a drama, its makers maintain that it is a comedy, albeit a dark one, working through themes of death, marital infidelity, sexuality and addiction. In 2016 Scheepers was nominated for an ATKV-Woordveertjie for best drama text for Amper, Vrystaat and Rooivalk, winning for the latter.
The final script is reproduced as Addendum B to Maria Susanna Hattingh's 2018 MDram thesis at the University of Stellenbosch, which analyses Amper, Vrystaat and Christiaan Olwagen's N is vir Neurose as Afrikaans festival comedies; the play is otherwise unpublished.
Performance history in South Africa
2015: Premiered at the Vrystaat Kunstefees (then known as the Vryfees), Bloemfontein, in the kykNET Scaena theatre, directed and designed by Nico Scheepers and produced by Antoinette Louw, with a cast of Antoinette Louw (Bea), Cintaine Schutte (Annatjie) and Milan Murray (Liz). The minimalist staging placed the three women on separate islands of rock, each isolated by a hanging lightbulb, and avoided depicting the town of Amper directly. The production won the award for Best Debut Production at the festival.
2016: Performed at Die Boer, Durbanville (3 February); at the US Woordfees, Stellenbosch (9, 12 and 13 March, at Hoërskool Lückhoff); and at the Potchefstroom Festival (Aardklop), staged in the Potchefstroom Gimnasium school hall. At the 2016 kykNET Fiësta awards an excerpt was performed; the production received several nominations, and Nico Scheepers won the award for Best Design for Amper, Vrystaat and Die Dag is Bros.
2017: Performed again at the US Woordfees, Stellenbosch, two years after its debut.
The play had an unusually long life for a festival comedy, performing at all the major Afrikaans festivals and also in independent theatres nationally. Scheepers later created a companion "brother" piece, Nêrens, Noord-Kaap, which debuted at the Vrystaat Kunstefees in 2017.
Sources
Hattingh, Maria Susanna. 2018. Finding balance: a study of the text and context of two Afrikaans festival comedy scripts. Unpublished MDram thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/103790
'Vrystaat Kunstefees / Arts Festival / Tsa-Botjhaba', LitNet, 2015. https://www.litnet.co.za/vrystaat-kunstefees-arts-festival-tsa-botjhaba/
'Amper, Vrystaat', US Woordfees 2016 programme.
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