Danford teams up with director Lara Bye to bring this internationally award-winning show, which masterfully combines humour and pathos, to Cape Town.

As playwright and performer, Canadian Kristen Thomson has had considerable success with I, Claudia, her first play, which she developed over the course of two years. She has performed the role of Claudia at several Canadian theatres and festivals and later the play was adapted to film featuring the writer, winning her three best performance awards and a comedy award for writing.

This extraordinary story maps the raw but beautiful interior world of an irrepressibly funny misfit adolescent, suffering the triple afflictions of puberty, unpopularity and her parents’ divorce, told through four wonderfully exaggerated comic characters.

Using four expressive masks, which cast a spell that reaches into the heart and soul of Claudia, Danford craftily transforms into the quirky “official pre-teen” trembling on the cusp of adolescence, her grandfather, her father’s new girlfriend, and the immigrant school caretaker, a former theatre director in his old country.

Her parents’ divorce leaves Claudia reeling, she has a science project which is overdue, her father is remarrying and, to top it all, she has to deal with the physical and emotional throes of puberty. Her mind is too bright and her clothes are too tight as she struggles to fit in. To clear her head and escape the hard adult world around her, the young girl takes refuge inside the caretaker’s room at school where she hides all the things that are secret and dear to her. Although she is incensed and incredulous, the result is as humorous and magical as it is painful in its honesty.

“When I first saw the play in Canada, in 2001, I was not only struck by the incredible story but also the manner in which it was told. The combination of Kristen’s funny, wise and life-affirming text as well as the use of the finely crafted masks really make for a special theatrical experience,” says Danford. “I will never forget the impact that it made on me and I was immediately inspired. In fact, my curiosity compelled me to explore the process. So being able to stage it here in South Africa, for me, is an extraordinary opportunity.”

Danford, recently seen on television as Grace in Known Gods, last performed at the Baxter in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, which earned her a Best Actress award.