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Isango Ensemble
The Isango Ensemble (''isango'' meaning "gate" or "port" or "gateway" in Xhosa and Zulu) is a Cape Town-based theatre company led by director Mark Dornford-May and music directors Pauline Malefane and Mandisi Dyantyis. It was established in 2000, when Dornford-May and conductor Charles Hazlewood travelled to South Africa to form a lyric theatre company for the Spier Festival; most of the company members are drawn from the townships around Cape Town. The company's work focuses on re-imagining classics from the Western theatre canon, finding a new context for the stories within a South African or township setting and developing new productions based on South African issues, stories and novels. Productions The legacy of South Africa's past has led to enormous gulfs in the world of education and Isango Ensemble strive to bridge this divide. Due to Isango's position and location, they provide a training and educational facility for both staff and community alongside their production wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xhosa Language
Xhosa (, ) also isiXhosa as an endonym, is a Nguni language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Gauteng. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language (approximately tied with Yeyi), with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click. Classification Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele. Nguni languages effectively form a dialect continuum of variously mutually intelligible varieties. Xhosa is, to some extent, mutually intelligible with Zulu and with other Nguni languages to a lesser extent. Nguni languages are, in turn, classified under the much larger abstraction of Bantu languages. Geographical distribution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zulu Language
Zulu (), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 12 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 11 official languages in 1994. According to Ethnologue, it is the second-most-widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Swahili. Like many other Bantu languages, it is written with the Latin alphabet. In South African English, the language is often referred to in its native form, ''isiZulu''. Geographical distribution Zulu migrant populations have taken it to adjacent regions, especially Zimbabwe, where the Northern Ndebele language ( isiNdebele) is closely related to Zulu. Xhosa, the predominant language in the Eastern Cape, is often considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the ''Mother City'', it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located. Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Dornford-May
Mark Anthony Dornford-May (born 29 September 1955) is a British theatre and film director, now based in South Africa. Personal life Mark Dornford-May was born near Eastoft in Yorkshire. His mother was a school teacher, and his father the Drama Adviser for Cheshire County Council, receiving an MBE for services to theatre in the 1980s. In 2002 he married South African actress and singer Pauline Malefane, and together they have three children (Dornford-May also has a daughter from an earlier marriage). In 2004 he became a permanent resident of South Africa and in 2007 he was officially inducted into the Sotho clan of his wife's family. Career 1977-2000 After reading Drama at Bristol University, Dornford-May was offered an assistant directorship with the Royal Shakespeare Company, working with Terry Hands on ''Coriolanus'' and ''The Duchess of Malfi'' as well as directing ''The Invisible Man'', based on the book by Ralph Ellison dealing with b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Young Vic
The Young Vic Theatre is a performing arts venue located on The Cut, near the South Bank, in the London Borough of Lambeth. The Young Vic was established by Frank Dunlop in 1970. Kwame Kwei-Armah has been Artistic Director since February 2018, succeeding David Lan. History In the period after World War II, a Young Vic Company was formed in 1946 by director George Devine as an offshoot of the Old Vic Theatre School for the purpose of performing classic plays for audiences aged nine to fifteen. This was discontinued in 1948 when Devine and the entire faculty resigned from the Old Vic, but in 1969 Frank Dunlop became founder-director of The Young Vic theatre with ''Scapino'', his free adaptation of Molière's ''The Cheats of Scapin'', presented at the new venue as a National Theatre production, opening on 11 September 1970 and starring Jim Dale in the title role with designs by Carl Toms (decor) and Maria Björnson (costumes). Initially part of the National Theatre, the You ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakespeare's Globe
Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse for which William Shakespeare wrote his plays, in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. The original theatre was built in 1599, destroyed by the fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644. The modern Globe Theatre is an academic approximation based on available evidence of the 1599 and 1614 buildings. It is considered quite realistic, though modern safety requirements mean that it accommodates only 1,400 spectators compared to the original theatre's 3,000. The modern ''Shakespeare's Globe'' was founded by the actor and director Sam Wanamaker, and built about from the site of the original theatre in the historic open-air style. It opened to the public in 1997, with a production of ''Henry V''. The site also includes the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, an indoor theatre which opened in January 2014. This is a smaller, candle-lit space based on histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bergen International Festival
Bergen International Festival ( no, Festspillene i Bergen) is an annual international music and cultural festival in Bergen, Norway. Biography The Bergen International festival is the largest festival in the Nordic countries in its genre and has a large number of activities in music, dance, literature, visual arts, folklore, etc. The festival is held over fourteen days from the end of May to the start of June and is located in numerous places like the Grieg Hall, Haakon's Hall, Troldhaugen, Lysøen, Siljustøl as well as streets and town squares of Bergen. In the same time span the International Jazz Festival, Nattjazz, takes place in Bergen. The first festival that started on 1 June 1953, exactly 55 years after its predecessor and source of inspiration, the first music festival in Norway Edvard Grieg's ''Bergen Music Festival'' starting on the 26 June 1898. The model was the Salzburg Festival, and the initiative came partly from opera singer Fanny Elstad. The original festival ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, mak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Khumalo
Fred Khumalo (born 4 August 1966) is a South African journalist and author. His books encompass various genres, including novels, non-fiction, memoir and short stories. Among awards he has received are the European Union Literary Award, the Alan Paton Award and the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award. His writing has appeared in various publications, including the ''Sunday Times'', ''Toronto Star'', ''New African'', ''The Sowetan'' and ''Isolezwe''. In 2008, he hosted ''Encounters'', a public-debate television programme, on SABC 2. Biography Born in Chesterville, Durban, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), Khumalo grew up in Mpumalanga Township. While still at high school he decided to become a writer, and went on to graduate from Durban's Technikon Natal (now the Durban University of Technology) after studying journalism, then earning an MA degree in creative writing from the University of the Witwatersrand with distinction. He is the recipient of a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard Univer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SS Mendi
SS ''Mendi'' was a British Ocean liner, passenger steamship that was built in 1905 and, as a troopship, sank after collision with great loss of life in 1917. Alexander Stephen and Sons of Linthouse in Glasgow, Scotland launched her on 18 June 1905 for the British and African Steam Navigation Company, which appointed group company Elder Dempster Lines, Elder Dempster & Co to manage her on their Liverpool-West Africa trades. In 1916 during the World War I, First World War the UK British Admiralty, Admiralty chartered her as a troopship. On 21 February 1917 a large cargo steamship, , collided with her in the English Channel south of the Isle of Wight. ''Mendi'' sank, killing 646 people, mostly black Union of South Africa, South African troops, as well as white Southern African officers and NCOs, and crew. The new port admin building at the Port of Ngqura, South Africa, has been named eMendi in commemoration of the SS ''Mendi''. Final voyage ''Mendi'' had sailed from Port of Cape ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort (a ski resort near Provo, Utah), and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. History 1978: Utah/US Film Festival Sundance began in Salt Lake City in August 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah. It was founded by Sterl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
