The multi-award winning 2022 AFDA Johannesburg honours theatre play, Whistleblowers, directed by AFDA Live Performance lecturer, Rob Murray and Quintijn Relouw from the Toneelakademie Maastricht, in the Netherlands, is currently on tour in the Netherlands where it will play at various festivals and theatres over the next few weeks. The play has also recently been nominated for Best Student Production at the Naledi Theatre Awards 2022.
Whistleblowers tackles the themes of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and sexual assault through the lens of a high school girls’ hockey match. It is the final game of the season, and the championship title is on the line. But the stakes are much bigger than that, as the play reveals back-stories and situations that the young women have been experiencing. As the lines between the game and social commentary start blurring, and the team finds a collective voice of anger and frustration at the plight of women in this country, the team needs to make a vital choice: attack or defend.
Shifting between physical and visual performance, searing storytelling, and surrealist dream sequences, Whistleblowers is an honest and tragicomic call to action. A war cry for the soul.
Whistleblowers is created and performed by AFDA 2022 Honours Live Performance students Reabetswe Gaentswe, Boitshepo Maile, Kgaogelo Makgoba, Modipadi Mokgohloa, and Phindiwe Qakoshe, with a special appearance by Quintijn Relouw.
Whistleblowers has previously won a Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award 2022 at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda and won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Production as well as the Best Ensemble at AFDA Graduation Festival 2022.
