all my ex-lovers are dead debuts at Toneelhuis on Tuesday 14 February 2023 (making it the perfect Valentine’s Day Date Night) with a short run ending on Saturday 18 February 2023. Written and directed by Dara Beth and performed by Maggie Gericke, all my ex-lovers are dead is an all-too-honest one-hander that explores love, desire, poor life choices, and how many cups of tea it takes to wake up and smell the coffee.
The production melds storytelling with soundscapes and multimedia projections of moments and memories as the protagonist, They, unravels the history of their love life. Sometimes consumed with the picture they compose for themselves, sometimes searching for a memory in a cup of tea, They tell tales of vulnerability, longing, and what we do with the love we have left over when the lovers are gone. all my ex-lovers are dead toys with the bittersweet taste of memory, teases out the tangible ways we hold onto the feeling of others, and tinkers with the sensations that bring their breath rushing back to our necks.
A long time coming
A selected text for Artscape’s New Voices Programme in 2021 and STAND Foundation’s Pen To Paper Programme in association with NATi and Vrystaat Kunstefees in 2022, the play has now been invited for a fully funded run at Woordfees. This story has been a long time coming – written slowly, over the course of six years, pieced together from scrap paper prose scribbled at the edges of receipts, woven together with unfinished voice memos saved on and downloaded from multiple phones, and “laced with more internal monologues than any single person should allow themselves to indulge in”.
What: all my ex-lovers are dead
Where and when: Toneelhuis, Commerce Building, 55 Shortmarket Street (opposite House of Machines)
Tickets: Quicket
Photographs: Nardus Engelbrecht
WS
