Skrapnel

Skrapnel ("Shrapnel") is an Afrikaans play by Willem Anker (1979–).

The original text

A play about two young South Africans in London: a girls working as a carer for old people and a man working as a security guard at a shopping centre. They meet in a youth hostel and become involved. On 7 Jul7 2005 the man dies in a suicide bombing in the London Underground. The play begins shortly after the attack, and their story is told in flashbacks, that include insights into the religiuous fundamentalism of the yough Moslem suicide bomber, and the unfocussed and uncertain lives of the two young South Africans regarding identity, beliefand culture.

In 2022 a prompt copy for a teks called Skrapnel was discovered in the archives of the Stellenbosch Drama Department, apparently used by the stage manager Naomi Slabber in what appears to have been an earlier (preliminary? workshopped?) Stellenbosch student production. This text differ considerably from the later published version, containing 9 characters insted of three for example, with metaphoric names like "Kenner", "Nuwe", "Diener", "Orde", "Chaos", etc.

The text was clearly rewritten by Anker, and the final version was first performed in 2009 and published in 2011 by Protea Boekhuis.

Performance history in South Africa

2009: First presented at the Aardklop festival in Potchefstroom, directed by Jaco Bouwer, with sound design by Braam du Toit, and featuring Marcel van Heerden, Andrew Thompson and Jenine Groenewald..

2010: Presented at the National Arts Festival 2010, directed by Jaco Bouwer

2019: Performed by VNA Productions for the South African State Theatre's school set works program.

Sources

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27759376-skrapnel

Weekend Post 20 June 2010.

https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.4314/tvl.v49i1.27

http://news.artsmart.co.za/2010/06/naf-skrapnel.html

The stage manager Naomi Slabber's prompt copy for a teks called Skrapnel, found in the archives of the Stellenbosch Drama Department in 2022.

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