Tshepang

A special Multicultural Center presentation in collaboration with the Department of Theatre and the CenterSeries

A work of rare power at once crushing and inspiring, Tshepang brings the world of contemporary South African theatre to Williams. In 2001, South Africa was devastated by the news of a brutal rape of a nine-month-old child by the name of Baby Tshepang in the small town of Louisvaleweg in the Northern Cape. Once the sensational story hit the headlines, the scab was torn off a festering wound, and hundreds of similar stories followed. While the play is influenced by factual evidence, the story is purely fictional, weaving together “twenty thousand stories” (the number of reported child rapes in South Africa per year). Tshepang is a story of love, forgiveness and coming to terms with a devastation of this magnitude. Writer and director Lara Foot Newton, winner of the prestigious Rolex Prize, draws on a South African style of storytelling, combining striking visual imagery with an African sense of magic realism. She intrigues the audience by luring them into a world where sadness and despair live next to love, humor and hope. Tshepang is both intimate and urgent, approaching a supremely difficult subject in a uniquely poetic manner.

These performances are made possible by the W. Ford Schumann ‘50 Endowment for the Arts.