Get Kraken

In which some folk had a sneak peek at my new play and I write a press release about it.

/ Jon Keevy / Leave a comment

On Monday night a full house at Alexander Upstairs got to see a preview of my new play, Get Kraken, as part of Play Things, a monthly platform for artists to showcase new writing, experiments and short performances.

Play Things was started so that artists from different fields could have a space to try out stuff. There always seemed to be events where musician of a specific genre, or comedians, or poets could get together… with Play Things we wanted to stimulate collaboration across art forms. People come and are surprised, whether they’re in the audience or on stage they discover things they wouldn’t ordinarily go looking for. This is the first time I’ve put any of my own work on and I was pretty nervous. But it was also my birthday so by 9pm I was also tipsy (just a little, I swear).

Get Kraken is a tale of high adventure; there are poachers, plucky heroes, ice-cold villains, breath-taking battles and a sea monster bigger than your imagination. All brought to larger-than-life by four actors. No fancy props or cd players making sound effects. Four sweaty actors take the audience under the ocean on the hunt for the greatest catch of all… the KRAKEN!

The response from the audience was fantastic. We shared the night with Tape Hiss and Sparkle, a scene from Oskar Brown’s work-in-progress Berlin was Yesterday, poetry by James Honibal and Black Lung.

Get Kraken will be at the Intimate Theatre, 37 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

16 April to 4 May Tuesdays to Saturdays 8pm

R70 Adults, R50 concessions, R50 parents accompanied by a kid (most suitable for 8 and up)

For bookings and enquiries please email kraken@jonkeevy.com, for more information visit jonkeevy.com

/ Jon Keevy / Leave a comment

In a small fishing community along the West Coast Jay and his Oupa try their best to make a living from the sea.  But you need slips of paper and signatures to get at the dwindling fish and perlemoen while police patrol in caspirs and Marine Patrol watch the waters. Despite the dangers Oupa takes Jay out with him one night to pull perlies off the rocks. Bam! Searchlights! They’re caught red-handed by Marine Patrol. But before the authorities can arrest them properly something under the water yanks them away. Suddenly Jay and Oupa in their tiny boat are being towed out to sea… When they finally stop they are drifting in the middle of the ocean, without land in sight.

That’s when things get strange…

Get Kraken! is my new play, written as part of ASSITEJ’s Inspiring a Generation programme. The goal of the programme was that each of the participants should write a play for young audiences somehow related to the theme of ‘poverty’. Taking poverty to be about resources, access and potential I decided to research issues around fishing. I got some amazing research from the University of Cape Town – facts, figures, and collected statements from fishermen from Hawston, Kalk Bay and Langebaan – and processed them.

Then I let my imagination go, using the research as inspiration, not a collection of data points that I had to include. Our Swedish mentor, Lucia Cajchanova, really helped me to find the journey of Jay and his Oupa, two people caught up in a big world that often doesn’t care.

Kim Kerfoot will be directing DJ Mouton, Shaun Acker, Jason Potgieter and Stefan Erasmus in a staged reading at the TAAC on the 28th and 30th of November at 6pm along with Lindelwa Kisana’s Doll Boy.

Telling it.

/ Jon Keevy / Leave a comment

Whenever I need inspiration, or my process stalls, I turn to Robert McKee’s Story. Today I opened it at random and got this:

“At last he [the writer] has a story. Now he goes to friends, but not asking for a day out of their lives – which is what we ask when we want a conscientious person to read a screenplay. Instead he pours a cup of coffee and asks for ten minutes. Then he pitches his story.”

The exercise of writing out the story inevitably leads us to write out what happens. But this is not story. The story is the distillation of what happens, the spine under the actions and events that gives them meaning. Telling a story is to select moments out of the infinite scope of ‘what happened’ (for in fiction anything is possible) into an emotionally moving sequence. When you tell someone your story out loud you’ll see if it works in their face and their body language. Then you’ll know if you have story that’ll hook your audience or just a list of things happening. I have never found a more useful exercise than to tell a reacting person my story. At the NAF the Inspiring a Generation folk got in front of a crowd of twenty or so Grahamstown kids. We were all a little nervous. The others read bits of their scripts, scenes or poems; I read nothing. I sat close, made eye contact and told them the story of a boy and his Oupa and the hunt for the Kraken. I got more out of that than the others because I could see what engaged the kids and what lost their attention. When the play is eventually produced it’ll have puppets, projections and performers, but all that is made compelling by the story they’re telling.