{"id":4866,"date":"2011-10-26T15:45:09","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T13:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/10\/fiela%e2%80%99s-child\/"},"modified":"2011-10-26T15:45:09","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T13:45:09","slug":"fiela%e2%80%99s-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/fiela%e2%80%99s-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiela\u2019s Child"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t<!-- Start Shareaholic LikeButtonSetTop Automatic --><!-- End Shareaholic LikeButtonSetTop Automatic --><\/p>\n<p>One of South Africa\u2019s most beloved tales will be playing out on the Savoy Theatre stage from 8 to 19 November.<\/p>\n<p>The Port Elizabeth Gilbert and Sullivan Society are deep into rehearsals for Ian von Memerty\u2019s FIELA\u2019s CHILD. The original novel, Fiela Se Kind was written by Daleen Mathee and the movie made Shaleen Surtee-Richards a star. Daleen Mathee then translated the novel into English (<a title=\"English Version of Fiela's Child\" href=\"http:\/\/etrader.kalahari.com\/referral.asp?linkid=5partnerid=8006sku=28373995\" target=\"_blank\">available on Kalahari<\/a>) and Ian von Memerty realised that this most beautiful of South African stories would make a most uplifting and beautiful Musical Theatre piece. And he turned it into exactly that.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, Director, Robin Williams saw it in <a title=\"Cape Town\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.MyCapeTown.co.za\">Cape Town<\/a> and fell in love with the music. Now she feels \u201cprivileged to be given freedom to draw on all my creative juices to place this beautiful piece of musical theatre back onto the boards!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Starring Centrestage\u2019s diva, Donna Africa as Fiela, Directed by prolific and award-winning director, Robin Williams, Musical Direction is by multi-talented Neil Leachman.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly-Leigh Mucka (My Fair Lady, The Producers) has been cast as Barta and Neil Leachman, stepping away from his MD duties will play her husband, abusive \u201cluigat\u201d Elias. Supporting Donna (Fiela) will be Herbie Clayton making a welcome return to the boards as Selling, Fiela\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin\/Lucas will be played by two actors. As a child he will be played by talented Grey Junior schoolboy, James vd Merwe and as a young man by Werner Viljoen who will be making his debut in a leading role for G and S.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly the role of Nina (the daughter of Barta and Elias) is played by two actresses. As a little girl, she will be played by Kasvia von Memerty, who has enchanted PE audiences in Annie and her Von Memerty Family shows and as a young woman she will be played by second-year Stageworld student, Megan van Wyk.<\/p>\n<p>Well known Port Elizabeth Musical Theatre folk have been hand-picked for the supporting roles. Bennie Gerber (Cabaret, Annie) will play the Census Man, Rose Cowpar (Footloose, Oliver!) is Miss Weatherbury, Mark Farrow (Oklahoma!, Oliver!), the Magistrate and Ann Yates (Fiddler on the Roof) is playing Malie.<\/p>\n<p>Playing Koos is G and S committee member, Craig de Vos and newcomer Hennie van der Berg is Fiela\u2019s white neighbour, Petrus Zondagh. 10 year old Daniel Goldberg (who recently garnered excellent reviews in Pinocchio) is Willem van Rooyen. Playing Fiela\u2019s other children are Reginald Hufkie as Dawid, Kgalaletsu Abigail Molema (High School Musical, The Caucasian Chalk Circle) as Kitty, Stephen Coetzee as Tollie and cute newcomer, Shanelle Stone as Emma. Cast as a tiny Ensemble are Sarah Morton, Caitlin Smith and Cecile Jansen.<\/p>\n<p>This heartwarming and uplifting production has 3 incredible artists creating Lighting and Set\u2026 Magnetic Storm\u2019s David Limbert, and Port Elizabeth G  S stalwarts Carole Stevens and Dawn Spence.<\/p>\n<p>Contact Production Manager, Denise de Vos on 0828751458 if you or your organisation should care to purchase a fund-raising Gala for this truly South African musical.<\/p>\n<p>Liking the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Fielas-Child-The-Musical\/278630845489958?sk=app_4949752878\" target=\"_blank\">Vleisboek page HERE<\/a> will put you in line to win a set of double tickets to see the show. Confession \u2013 Does it count if I read the instruction wrong and Licked the page instead?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The storyline:<\/strong> A child wanders too far into the Knysna Forest and never returns. Nine years later, two government officials, working on a census, find a white child living with a Coloured family in the mountains on the other side of the forest. They take him away from the stricken Fiela, who has brought him up, and give him back to his \u2018original\u2019 family. Whipped into using a new name and calling strangers \u2018ma\u2019 and \u2018pa\u2019, Benjamin is so stunned that he cannot cry and waits for Fiela to reclaim him. But Fiela, powerless before authority, never comes. So Benjamin has to grow up before he can go in search of the truth.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Start Shareaholic LikeButtonSetBottom Automatic --><!-- End Shareaholic LikeButtonSetBottom Automatic -->\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of South Africa\u2019s most beloved tales will be playing out on the Savoy Theatre stage from 8 to 19 November. The Port Elizabeth Gilbert and Sullivan Society are deep into rehearsals for Ian von Memerty\u2019s FIELA\u2019s CHILD. The original novel, Fiela Se Kind was written by Daleen Mathee and the movie made Shaleen Surtee-Richards [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1289,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-4866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mype","8":"tag-port-elizabeth-2","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}