Renaissance Play

A freelance actor from Cape Town breaks up with his partner of five years. The heartbreak, coupled with some serious doubts about his abilities, talents and future as an actor prompts him to take a break from the redundancy of his everyday life. He applies for a two-year working visa and ends up as a night watchman at the National Gallery in London.

We meet him well into his first year, bored, broke, single and still not much wiser. We follow him on a night shift as he patrols the gallery. He tells us his story – an everyman memoir about growing up gay in small town South Africa, discovering his passion for theatre, his move to the city, his relationship with his boyfriend and finally the year abroad where he fell in love with a refugee and came to re-evaluate art – spending long hours watching over it.

As we follow his night patrol some works of art come to life and start telling us their stories too. These stories all somehow have bearing on the life of our protagonist – as their semiotics are filtered through his imagination.

The question of art’s purpose and power, it’s private and personal relevance to those who find catharsis and meaning in it, the role of the artist and storyteller and the holiness of beauty all come into play in this ironic but endearing satire of modern man’s relationship to art.

Written and directed by Wessel Pretorius
Starring: David Viviers, Jazzara Jaslyn and Len-Barry Simons
Photography: Many Freeman