N is vir Neurose

N is vir Neurose

N is vir Neurose (also styled N is vir neurose) is an Afrikaans dark comedy (Afrikaans: swart komedie) by Christiaan Olwagen, first staged at the 2012 Woordfees. Set during a kitchen tea at the flat of a bride-to-be, Liz, it turns over the course of an evening — and a few glasses of wine — into a reckoning with anxiety, growing up and the expectations placed on young Afrikaans women, with a male stripper dressed as a policeman among the guests.

The original text

The play was written by Christiaan Olwagen at the invitation of Saartjie Botha, then drama coordinator of the Woordfees, who encouraged the Polony Theatre Collective to create an original work rather than stage a translation of a well-known American comedy. It was one of the first three productions mounted by the collective, a group of Stellenbosch University drama graduates, presented alongside Wessel Pretorius's one-man show Ont- and an adaptation of Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You.

The play remained unpublished. The script survived only in draft form, and a lightly revised version was reproduced, with the author's permission, as an addendum to Maria Susanna Hattingh's 2018 Stellenbosch University MDram thesis Finding Balance: A Study of the Text and Context of Two Afrikaans Festival Comedy Scripts.

Translations and adaptations

None traced.

Performance history in South Africa

2012: Premiered at the Woordfees in the Klein Libertas Teater, Stellenbosch (performances on 3, 7 and 11 March), produced by the Polony Theatre Collective and written and directed by Christiaan Olwagen. The cast was Roeline Daneel (Liz), Hannah Borthwick (Shani), Mariechen Vosloo (Rachelle) and Wessel Pretorius (Japie, a stripper).

2012: Following sold-out performances, the production was included in the Fees van die Uitverkooptes, a showcase of the festival's most popular productions, at the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio and the Klein Libertas Teater in May, and went on to play at Aardklop and the KKNK later in the year.

2013: The production received four nominations at the kykNET Fiësta awards* — Best Supporting Actor (Wessel Pretorius), Best Supporting Actress (Hannah Borthwick), and two for Christiaan Olwagen (Best New Afrikaans Production and Best Emerging Artist) — with a scene performed during the live televised broadcast.

Sources

Hattingh, M.S. 2018. Finding Balance: A Study of the Text and Context of Two Afrikaans Festival Comedy Scripts. MDram thesis, Stellenbosch University.

Woordfeesprogram 2012. Stellenbosch: US Woordfees.

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