Booi's Soul Searching Adventures

The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (CHR), in partnership with Net vir Pret are celebrating 10 years of puppetry in Barrydale!

Reboot Eden is our online program of four new puppet performances, written and directed by Net vir Pret and featuring some of the most loved giant puppets created over the 10 years by the Handspring Trust for Puppetry Arts and CHR Artists in Residence, Ukwanda Puppet Company. From the 16th until the 19thDecember we will be presenting a program of documentaries from the 10 years of puppetry and parading, tracks from the long-awaited musical album Celebration: 10 years of the Barrydale Puppet Parade, and the new puppetry performances which we will premier every day online on the CHR facebook page.

This year we could not have a large parade through the streets of Barrydale as we have done since 2010, due to Covid 19 health regulations, so the annual Barrydale Puppet Parade has changed its form. As a result our team of collaborators decided that a commemorative online event would be appropriate, revitalizing key puppets from shows from across the years into an online program. Entitled Reboot Eden, 4 short films have been filmed on specific locations in the landscapes of the Tradau valley of Barrydale, capturing these ephemeral performance events for a digital platform. The films are documents of small puppet performances written and directed by Net vir Pret, performed on site between Laing street and Moreson Rooikamp – an area which, before the Apartheid group areas act and forced removals of the 1950’s and 60’s, had been a space of cooperative and multiracial cohabitation along the river banks of the small town.

Two words guiding our young artists’ visions throughout this year’s collaborative processes and through the COVID pandemic lockdowns, have been hope and celebration, a yearning to celebrate life and the natural world again. To this end the children at Net vir Pret and the Barrydale community at large have been creating hundreds of prayer flags for the Barrydale Prayer Flags of Hope Project throughout the year. A string of almost 1000 flags has been put up at the site in Rooikamp. Angelo Endley of Net vir Pret described 2020 as a chance for nature and the planet’s eco systems to ‘reboot’, to start anew. The area of the Tradau (which translates as the Footpath of the Women in San) which begins in Suurbraak is named Xairu, the San word for ‘Eden’ or ‘paradise’. Could we use the puppets to explore what a new ‘Eden’ might mean and look like today, what might humanity try to do ‘better’ for our children, with our second chance? The land, plants, animals and sites themselves formed a vital element to our creative immersions and the four narratives of the new puppet performances.

Today’s first premier entitled ‘Booi’s Soul Searching Adventures’ is a short puppetry performance and is based directly on the 2014 production of ‘Kagg’agn Dreams’, which was a pivotal moment in the history of the parade in that the performance began to talk about and tackle important issues of identity as well as social and historical legacies of both pride and pain within the community. This year’s short performance is written and directed by Peter Takelo and intern Julio Malan (both of Net vir Pret) with puppetry direction by Luyanda Nogodlwana (Centre for Humanities Research, UWC, Ukwanda Puppet Company) and showcases puppets from the 2014 parade and production of ‘Kagg’agn Dreams’. Peter says ‘Dit gaan oor n jong man wat nie sy identiteit geweet het nie. Hy bevind homself in 'n klein dorpie Barrydale.

Die aand het 'n storm wind sy caravan weg gewaai en hy bevind homself in 'n grot vol klein take tekeninge. Toe hy werklik ontwaak toe bevind hy hom in die lewe van die Khoi mense. Hy het ook geleer dat alles nie so maklik is nie en gaan deur die verskillende fassete van die Khoi volk. Hier ontdek hy sy identiteit Khoisan ens.’

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Видео Booi's Soul Searching Adventures канала Centre for Humanities Research, UWC