Lara Foot (Director and Adapter)
Lara Foot is a multi-award-winning playwright, director, and producer. She is the CEO and artistic director of the Baxter Theatre Centre at the University of Cape Town; a former Rolex protégé to Sir Peter Hall in the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé programme as well as a Sundance Fellow. She is also executive producer of (amongst others), the hit productions Mies Julie, The Fall, and Life & Times of Michael K, all of which have enjoyed great international success, won multiple awards, and toured extensively.
In recent years, her adaptations and direction of JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K and Othello have received critical acclaim. Life & Times of Michael K premiered at the Theater der Welt Festival 2021, at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus in Germany, and at The Baxter. The production has traveled to Luxembourg, Galway, Edinburgh, New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, China, and Johannesburg. It has amassed six five-star reviews and received high praise from the New York Times. In August 2023, Lara received the prestigious The Scotsman Fringe First award for innovation and outstanding new writing, at the Assembly Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, which she adapted for the stage, in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company. The production most recently won the Elliot Norton Visiting Productions Award, as well as the South African Fleur du Cap Best Production and Best Puppetry Design awards.
In 2022 she returned to Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus to adapt and direct the hugely successful Othello, by William Shakespeare. It was a critical success when it made its South African debut at the Baxter Theatre in 2024 and won a Fleur du Cap award. In 2021, Lara received the University of Cape Town Vice Chancellor’s Excellence award for Transformation, along with the Baxter Theatre Centre for the Zabalaza Theatre Festival and was honoured with The International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) 2023 International Citation of Merit Recipient award. She also received the 2023 University of Cape Town Creative Works Award for Life & Times of Michael K.
With a passion for the development of new indigenous work, young writers, and directors, she has put most of her energy into helping playwrights and theater-makers realise their work, having nurtured several dozen new South African plays to their first staging. She has directed well over 70 professional productions, most of which have been new South African plays. Since heading up the Baxter Theatre Centre, she and her dynamic team have transformed the theater’s development programme - the Zabalaza Theatre Festival - to become recognised and respected as one of the most vital and important platforms of its kind in South Africa. As a former Rolex protégé, she hosted a unique cultural gathering at the Baxter with renowned Mentors William Kentridge, Wole Soyinka and Peter Sellars, alongside seven protégés.
Lara worked at The Market Theatre under the mentorship of Barney Simon. In 1996, she became Resident Director, and from 1998 to 2000, she was the Associate Artistic Director. She wrote and co-directed (with Gerhard Marx) the interdisciplinary short film And There in the Dust, which won five international awards and two Golden Horn awards and was selected to be part of the Sundance Film Writer’s Lab in 2007 and the Sundance Film Director’s Lab in 2008. In 2016, she was the Featured Artist at the 43rd National Arts Festival, leading the charge on the Main programme which was composed of 80% of work written, directed, curated, or headlined by women.
With a host of South African theater accolades to her name, her own hard-hitting plays tackle social issues in South Africa, earning her great respect and recognition locally and internationally. Tshepang, Hear And Now, Reach, Karoo Moose, Solomon and Marion (all published by Oberon Books), Fishers of Hope, and The Inconvenience of Wings are just a few of her plays which have won multiple awards and toured internationally with great success. Fishers of Hope scooped four awards at the Naledi Theatre Awards in Johannesburg, including the coveted Best Production of a Play accolade. Earlier this year her latest play, The Inconvenience of Wings, earned her the Best Director honour, along with the Best Actress (Jenifer Steyn) and Best Actor (Andrew Buckland) nods at the 2017 Fleur du Cap awards. She also clinched three awards (Best Director, Best Production of a Play and Best Actress (Chuma Sopotela), for her play Karoo Moose at the 2017 Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (the largest Afrikaans Festival in South Africa.
In August 2017 she achieved the rare distinction of taking six Baxter Theatre Centre productions to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as executive producer of the season in a programme which included three of her own productions. Lara directed the hugely successful seasons of Marc Lotterings sold-out hit productions of Aunty Merle The Musical and the sequels Aunty Merle, it’s a Girl and Aunty Merle, Things Get Real. In 2022 she directed Zake’s Mda’s Ways of Dying. Lara completed her BA (Hons) degree at Wits University in 1989 and in 2007 attained her Master’s degree at the University of Cape Town. In 2005 she became the Resident Director and Dramaturge at the Baxter Theatre Centre - a post which she held until 2007. In January 2010 she became the first female to be appointed as CEO and Artistic Director of the Baxter.
Gerhard Marx (Costume and Set Design)
Gerhard Marx constructs drawings, sculptures, and performance projects through dissection and transformation of pre-existent conventions to explore the poetic philosophical potential therein. His seventh solo exhibition, Ecstatic Archive, was held at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 2019 accompanied by the publication of a monograph of the same title. His performance project Vehicle was staged at ‘The Centre For The Less Good Idea’ (Johannesburg, 2018) with musicians Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd and at the 2019 ‘Holland Festival’ (Amsterdam) with violinist Diamanda Dramm and bassist Shane Cooper. Marx’s work was selected for the Venice Biennale 2013 and is shown at international Art Fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel (New York), Frieze (London). He has completed several public sculpture commissions around Johannesburg including Vertical Aerial, Johannesburg (Constitutional Court), The Fire Walker, (collaboration with William Kentridge); and Paper Pigeon, (collaboration with Maja Marx). He has extensive experience in theater as a scenographer, director, and filmmaker, including the operatic REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony (directed by Marx, film by Gerhard Marx and Maja Marx, composed by Philip Miller), performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London (2010), the Market Theatre, Johannesburg (2008), and the 62’Centre, William’s College, Massachusetts (2007).
Kyle Shepherd (Music Composition)
Kyle Shepherd is a leading jazz, film, and theater music composer and pianist of his generation. He is the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Jazz and the 2019 UNISA piano competition winner, and has performed in 33 countries around the world, including performances in prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall (New York), The Sydney Opera House, Theatre de Chatelet (Paris), and The Stadsschouwburg (Amsterdam). He has released seven jazz albums with an impressive number of film, television, and theater score credits. These include Unseen, season 1, Blood and Water, season 2 (Netflix), Savage Beauty, season 1 (Netflix), Surviving Paradise, as additional music composer (Netflix), Indemnity and Barakat (South Africa’s official entry into the 2022 Academy Awards and winner for Best Score at the 2022 Silwerskerm Film Festival), Fiela se Kind (2019), also winner for Best Score at the 2020 Silwerskerm Film Festival, Vlugtig (Kyknet), and Noem My Skollie (South Africa’s official entry to the 2017 Academy Awards). He received the 2018 South African Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Award: Book, Creative Collection and Digital Contribution 2018, hosted by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS), for Best Musical Composition for his score for Noem My Skollie. Shepherd is also the co-creator of the hit Afrikaans television show, Koortjies with Jonathan Rubain (Kyknet). Along with multiple SAFTA, SAMA and Silwerskerm nominations, he was nominated for a Fleur du Cap Best Sound Design, Original Music, Soundscape, or Live Performance award for Lara Foot’s award-winning Life & Times of Michael K. Kyle has just completed a celebrated run of performances at the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris and continues international touring with Waiting for the Sibyl, a chamber opera created in collaboration with William Kentridge and co-composer Nhlanhla Mhlangu. The opera won the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award (2023) in the UK. Shepherd holds a master’s degree (Cum Laude) in Music upon receiving a scholarship from York University (UK) in collaboration with the Africa Open Institute (Stellenbosch University).
Patrick Curtis (Lighting Designer)
Patrick Curtis is a multi-award-winning lighting and stage designer with a career in the theater that spans four decades. After six years at the Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, five years at The Performing Arts Board of the Cape, and six years at the University of Cape Town’s Little Theatre, his most significant years have been spent at UCT’s Baxter Theatre as Production Manager from 2002 to 2018, where many of his set and lighting designs were nominated for awards. After retirement, he has continued to design and light productions for the Baxter Theatre, including Life & Times of Michael K. He won Fleur du Cap awards for Vanya/Oom Wanja, Betrayal, and Fishers of Hope, for which he also received the Naledi Award for set design. Other production designs include The Inconvenience of Wings, Endgame, The Goat, Aunty Merle the Musical, Aunty Merle, it’s a Girl, Solomon & Marion, Kamphoer, and David Kramer’s Danger in the Dark. In 2012, he was nominated for three separate Fleur Du Cap awards in set design for Doodsnikke, Mies Julie, and Did We Dance: The Sinking of the Mendi, for which he was also nominated for Best Lighting Design. He also designed Scrooge, Missing, Blue Orange, Born in the RSA, Karoo Moose, and Scenes from an Execution. Patrick has toured extensively to theaters in London, Paris, Vienna, New York, Washington, Toronto, and Pittsburgh, among others, with Baxter Theatre touring productions as Set and Lighting designer, and Production Manager. Most recently, he designed the sets for Athol Fugard’s Life of Babyboy Kleintjies, Nadia David’s Hold Still, and UWC’s Charlotte Maxeke.
Kitso Seti (Assistant Director)
Kitso Seti holds a master’s degree in political science and is currently a PhD candidate in Theater at the University of Cape Town. His research is focused on how Black (Consciousness) theater can be used to conscientise people and make sense of Black-positionality-in-the-world. In 2014, he became involved with theater, beginning with the annual UCT Res4Res Festival competition. In the same festival, he and his team won an Innovative Play award in 2015. He later produced Imbawula, which won the Best Writer and Best Innovative Play, with multiple nominations, at the 2018 Res4Res Festival. The production was later staged at the Baxter Theatre in July and December 2019.
Kitso was part of the cast of Dipalo, which won the Standing Bank Ovation Bronze Medal Award at the 2021 National Arts Festival in Makhanda. He wrote and directed his new play, Four Fathers: Bananas for the Baboons through the Baxter Masambe Writing Residency, under the supervision of Lara Foot and Nwabisa Plaatjie. He hopes to grow as a theater maker and an arts critic. His article, The Land of Many Mothers (2020), a review of Nwabisa Plaatjie’s play When We Awake, can be found in iLiso Magazine. He runs a journal titled ngaphakathi, where he writes theater reviews and has written feedback on Thando Doni’s Ndiza Kuwe. Recently, he staged a performance reading of A House on Fire through the Theatre Arts Reading Room.
