“Ster City” theatre to unravel South African history in a unique style

Alliance Française Accra, Institut Français and National Theatre present “Ster City”, a unique multimedia (arts and music) and multilingual (Zulu, French, English, Afrikaans) play that traces the history of South Africa since the caveman to civilization.

The show lays out the entire history of South Africa – from the first Homo sapiens to the post-Mandela presidency using new technologies: portable video projectors, live webcams, close-ups on the actors and the public mixed with pictures from Internet archives, live sound and music, offbeat playbacks, manual subtitling and many more. In exploring South African history, the two innovative artistes, Lindiwe Matshikiza and Nicholas Richard Holmes Pule incarnate brothers, sisters, lovers, humans, animals, confessions and anti-historical truths, anecdotes, war treaties, race treaties, masters, slaves etc.

This performance, creatively designed for an audience of all ages is part of the “Carnets Sud / Nord”, a musical and theatrical travelling laboratory which has toured since 2002 in Brazil, France, Central and Southern Africa. Lindiwe Matshikiza is a young black actress, a rising figure of South African cinema and theatre, born of parents who were artists and journalists, who fought against apartheid and who went into exile in Zambia and England. Nick Welch is a young white actor who raps in Zulu, comes from a Scottish family that moved to Johannesburg a hundred years ago.

Lindiwe and Nick are, in their own way, legitimate representations of the new underground and popular South African art scene.

They are here to give their audience in Ghana a free and happy version of South African history under the ultra-contemporary influence of a country which, today, keeps playing with the landmarks and unclear boundaries between tradition and modernity.

Rate: 25 ghc / 12 ghc for students and AF members / free under 12