Image: Nicola Hanekom and Chileshe Musonda in The Tent, Artscape Arena Theatre, Cape Town, 2009
The Tent is set in a tiny rural town somewhere in South Africa. A mixed couple—Ruth is white and Samson is black—pitch their tent alongside the local gas station and store in the middle of the night. Their appearance rocks the town and splits it down the middle, with fear, racism, hatred, and violence at odds with kindness and healing. The Tent concerns the ‘other’ and the phobia that it sparks.
Playwright: Megan Furniss. Director: Zane Gillion. Stage directions: Namisa Mdlalose. Cast: Hamilton Clancy (Charlie, BP), Timothy Covington (Sello), Zane Gillion (Priest, Lungelo), Pierre Louise le Grange (Willem), Megan Metrikin (Ruth), James Scruggs (Samson), Caren Skibell (Susan, Customer 1).
The video of livestreamed stage reading is on the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10. RSVP through Eventbrite is required.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions for indoor events, seating capacity is limited and on first-come first-served basis. Reservations must be made in advance. Wearing a face mask is required. No tickets will be available at the door, and anyone who has not received pre-event confirmation will be turned away. Read about Festival Safety Protocol.
MEGAN FURNISS is a South African writer, actor, director, and improviser based in Cape Town South Africa. She has written and co-written stage plays, musicals, two novels, a children’s story, and a screenplay. She hopes to turn her play The Tent into a screenplay soon.
ZANE GILLION is a South African theatre-maker living in New York. As actor, he has appeared in numerous television series, soaps and commercials and was recently seen portraying Hamlet in the DQT’s Classics in Color series. Zane also facilitates business role-play workshops for companies that focus on growing leadership through communication and forum theatre. He is currently building his capacity in the development sector, focusing on sustainable development, and hopes to engage with communities affected by issues of climate justice.
NAMISA MDLALOSE is a Fleur Du Cap award winning actress who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa who now lives in Boston, MA. She is a theatre graduate from the University of Cape Town. She spent four years at the university learning, discovering and honing her craft not only in performance but also in writing, directing, designing and conceptualising her own work. As a performer, she has been directed under Jonathan Munby King Kong, Janice Honeyman The Color Purple, Janice Honeyman and Timothy Le Roux Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs Pantomime and Matthew Wild Kinky Boots. She recently starred in her first film directed under Charl- Johan Lingenfelder, A Christmas Chorus. As a theatre maker, she wrote, performed and collaborated with theatre maker and director Qondiswa James in the stage play Cwaka. This was staged and performed at the Theatre Arts Admin in 2020. Namisa has also gone on to collaborate with Director Shelley Lothian to write and star in their own experimental film Girl. The project walked away with an Ovation Award from the 2020 National Arts Festival. Currently, Namisa has been accepted into the highly acclaimed LA based Groundlings Improv school where she aspires to continue to grow and hone her talents through performance and theatre making.
HAMILTON CLANCY (actor, director, producer and concept artist) – has worked in New York as an actor, director, theatrician and producer since 1990. 2020 marks Clancy's 21st year as leader of TheDrillingCompaNY which he founded in 1999. He debuted Off-Broadway in 1993 in Tom Strelich’s Dog Logic with John Savage, Lois Smith, Karen Young and Darrel Larson, a legend of Hollywood at the American Place Theatre founded by mentor, Wynn Handmann. He’s had the pleasure of working with Joel and Ethan Coen, Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, Stephen Daldry, Terrence Malick, Jenji Kohan and Ridley Scott. He kicked off CBS All Access as Tom, the neighborly do-right Pittsburgh cop on One Dollar with Craig Zobel and followed that up with guest star appearances on Gotham, Mindhunter, Billions (with Paul Giamatti, directed by Neil LaBute), Bull and Blue Bloods (w/Tom Selleck). Directing credits include world premieres of Home of the Great Pecan by Stephen Bittrich, Mutant Sex Party by the award-winning Canadian Edward Manning née MacDonald, Over the Line by NYIT award winner P. Seth Bauer, Reservoir by Eric Henry Sanders, El Viaje de Beatrice by Andrea Moon (New York premiere), Hindsight by Simon Van Booy, and Bird Brain by Vern Theissen. Classical directing credits include, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Merry Wives of Windsor, Coriolanus, As You Like It, Othello, for The Drilling Company’s Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.
TIMOTHY COVINGTON started his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Hollywood). He hails from the Theatre streets of LA, performing in plays such as Jesus Hates Me (South Coast Repertory Theatre), Dream Girls (Center Stage Fontana). He now resides in New York City performing in some of his favorite plays with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Gallery Players) at the top of the list. Timothy is very excited to be a part of The Tent and hopes you enjoy the show!
PIERRE LOUIS LE GRANGE is a 37 year old actor and singer, originally from Pretoria South Africa. He completed his Bachelors of Music, specializing in Opera, in Potchefstroom, South Africa. After that he completed post graduate studies in Florence, Italy before he moved to New York City. For the past nine years he has been performing in musical theatre and plays in and around New York City.
MEGAN METRIKIN was born in South Africa and completed her theater studies at The University of Cape Town. She is based in New York, where she performs her solo show Finding Fellini, which won “Best Solo Show" at Midtown International Theatre Festival and" Best Actress "at United Solo Festival. Finding Fellini has been performed at Theatrelab, La Mama, New York Fringe and Frigid festivals. Megan performed the Leading role in Sophiatown, Designed by William Kentridge, which toured the world. She worked extensively at the Market Theater. Credits include The Dybbuk and Flight, directed by Barney Simon, Speed the Plow, The Tempest, Cowboy Mouth, Hamlet, La Ronde, Exit the King, Man is Man and Tooth and Nail (Handspring Puppet Company).
JAMES SCRUGGS is a writer, performer, producer, who creates virtual online interactive pieces, screenplays and large scale topical, theatrical, multi-media work focused on inequity or gender politics. His solo theater piece, A Voluptuary Life, received a MAP Grant. It explored the hetero-washing of LGBTQ+ history. It was presented at HERE Arts Center, 2019. In 2018, he created a site specific immersive, interactive, satirical work for The High Line, MELT!. He was awarded a 2015 MAP Grant and a 2016 Creative Capital Grant, to create 3/Fifths. Performed in May 2017, it was a fully immersive, interactive ethno-theme park, exploring race and racism called SupremacyLand. It got “4 stars in Timeout NY”. His 3/Fifths Trapped in a Traveling Minstrel Show, a piece about how in 2017 unarmed black men are often feared and legally killed. It was awarded an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Fringe Production, shown at BCA in Boston. Other grants include a 2016 New Jersey state grant NJSCA Fellowship for artistic excellence. Currently he’s working on a new piece, Bravado which will be a trans-media piece about the virus of hatred and his intimate connection to 9/11. James Scruggs has a BFA in Film from School of Visual Arts. www.jamesscruggs.com.
CAREN SKIBELL is a graduate of Northwestern University, The Second City Conservatory (in Chicago), and The New School for Drama. Favorite acting performances include Clouds Like Waves, NYC Fringe, and Great American Railway Journeys (BBC Television). Caren currently writes (or improvises) and performs sketch comedy and can be seen on Instagram and her website. She’s written and performed with IN Studios NYC and for the Chicago show, “We’re Geniuses in France”. She taught improvisation and playwriting in schools, colleges, and museums. Some of her plays won NYC and LA festivals while others have been finalists in Australia. www.CarenSkibell.com
ABOUT THE 2021 REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH THEATER FESTIVAL
The 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring Vaclav Havel is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association. The program is co-produced by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, GOH Productions, Czech Center New York, Polish Cultural Institute New York, One-Eighth/Daniel Irizarry Theater, Slovak Consulate General in New York, Palissimo Company, and Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague, Czech Republic.
The 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Ben Kallos. Additional support is by the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, Ceskoslovenska obchodni banka – Member of the KBC Group, PACE.V4 – Performing Arts Central Europe, Visegrad Countries Focus, and International Visegrad Fund.