The world premiere of Nadia Davids’ Hold Still will take place at the Baxter Flipside from 7 to 19 November, 2022.
Acclaimed playwright Nadia Davids and director Jay Pather once again team up, with a stellar cast and creative team. The cast features Andrew Buckland and Mwenya Kabwe, with Tailyn Ramsamy and newcomer Lyle October. The creative team comprises Patrick Curtis (set design), Neo Muyanga (sound design) and Angela Nimov (costume design).
Hold Still tells the story of a family shaped by different generational traumas who must confront their own histories to get through a single, life-changing night. The multi-themed play focuses on a long-term marriage and through it, examines the limits of middle-class empathy, the complexities of an inter-racial, intra-cultural family living in the shadow of catastrophic political histories, and what we’ll do to protect those we love.
‘A good person’
“For the last several years I’ve been struggling with what it means to be a ‘good person’, with what it means to be a responsible, active citizen and with how ordinary people are expected to respond to these catastrophic times,” says Davids. “Hold Still comes out of an on-going argument I’ve been having with myself about my own limitations in this regard, about wanting safety in an unsafe world, about the impulse to withdraw when what’s needed is engagement.”
Set against a contemporary cosmopolitan London, rife with xenophobia, the fear of the stranger is a steady theme throughout the play. Rosa and Ben Feigel (played by Kabwe and Buckland) are a progressive, dynamic, North London couple. She’s the daughter of South African exiles, he’s the son of a man who escaped on Kindertransport. Their teenage son Oliver (October) – full of a political conviction his parents have encouraged – decides to hide a vulnerable person, his best friend and an asylum-seeking teenager (Ramsamy), in their home. As the night unfolds, Rosa and Ben must grapple with what their response to Oliver’s actions reveals about their marriage, their histories, and how it tests their image of themselves.
Writer and director together again
Davids is a writer and theatre-maker. Her plays At Her Feet, Cissie and What Remains, have been staged locally and internationally and between them have garnered 12 Fleur du Cap awards and nominations. She is widely published in South Africa and her work has appeared in the LA Review of Books, BBC and CNN. She is the current President of PEN South Africa and hosts the literary-political podcast, The Empty Chair.
Davids and Pather’s production of What Remains (pictured above) received five awards and seven nominations at the 2018 Fleur du Cap awards.
Pather is a choreographer, multi-media artist, curator, writer and teacher. He is Professor at the University of Cape Town where he directs the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA). He is curator for the Infecting the City Festival; the ICA Live Art Festival, the Afrovibes Festival (The Netherlands); Spier Light Art (Cape Town), co-curated the Africa 2020/21 Season (France); Body, Image Movement (Madrid), and has curated Live Art for Zeitz MOCAA and the Spielart Festival in Munich.
What: World premiere of Nadia Davids’ Hold Still
Where and when: Baxter Flipside from 7 to 19 November 2022
Tickets: Webtickets
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