Cissie explores the life and memory of the Cape Town activist Cissie Gool from the early days of her girlhood at the beginning of the 20th century to her death in 1963, just before the onset of the District Six removals.

Small vignettes create the backdrop for brief and imagined glimpses into her private world; from the dynamic social and political home of her childhood, to the heady years of her acclaimed public speeches and marriage, to her difficulty in trying to live a free life under the traumatic shadow of colonialism and apartheid.

Nadia not only wrote the tribute to this South African icon, she also directs a dynamic cast of nine actors who move effortlessly between characters and eras to evoke a work that spans from 1910 to today.

Headed up by Rehane Abrahams (who plays the part of both storyteller and Cissie), Quanita Adams, Vaneshran Arumugam, Charlton George, Thembi Mtshali-Jones, Chan Marti, Bo Petersen, Andre Samuels, and Andre Weideman complement the ensemble.

While the work trains its focus towards the particularities of Cissie’s life, it also uses Cissie’s story as a creative prism though which to talk about District Six, examining some of the larger questions about the fault-lines of history, memory and the attempt to tell stories through and about loss.

The play is a creative response to months of intense historical research and uses monologue, poetry, shadow, music and movement to evoke its different times, places and characters.

Davids was born in 1977, the same year that some of the last houses in District Six were demolished and so her understanding and knowledge of the area has only ever been through story and memory. She explains: “This play takes those twin concepts of memory and performance and offers the audience a different kind of remembrance, tribute and archive to a place and to a woman who called that place home.”

Her work, which is intimately concerned and connected with re-imagining the aesthetic and political possibilities of the post-apartheid South African landscape, has been produced, published and studied in Africa, Europe and North America.

Book through Computicket or the Baxter on 021 680 3989.