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Original Skin

Original Skin Returns

For women’s month, a human story that starts with teenage pregnancy and ends with resolution and a kind of liberation. Original Skin, based on the true story of Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, is the story of a black child who is adopted into a white family during apartheid.

The award-winning writer was adopted by an anthropologist who chose to keep her parentage a secret. “In the play I have changed the names because my adoptive family is very opposed to work. In fact, they haven’t spoken to me for ten years, since I started talking about it.”

In Original Skin, Alex Coetzee returns to her childhood bedroom when her parents die, to clear up and discard what she doesn’t want to keep. In the room she is visited by the ghosts from the past, as she relives her childhood, coming to terms with racial identity in a context that was hostile to people of colour.

“When I found my father and confirmed that I was half-Ghanaian, my friend Steven Markovitz said to me that I’m lucky because I was white in the old South Africa and I’m black in the new,” says Phillippa Yaa de Villiers with a rueful smile.

“Robert Colman helped me to develop the script and directed the first run of the show, so the sadness of the story is contrasted with quite a lot of humour”, she says.

Original Skin has performed at the Market Theatre, Grahamstown Festival, the Schools Festivals in Grahamstown and Bloemfontein and in Berlin and Bochum in Germany.

De Villiers, a poet and scriptwriter who studied theatre in Paris under Jacques Lecoq, is the author of two collections of poetry and a number of short stories. In 2009 she was the winner of the Writing Beyond the Fringe, a new award sponsored by Belgian literary organization Het Beschrijf and the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, as well as a shortlistee for the Pen/Studinski Prize. For ten years she wrote scripts for a number of television shows including Soul City, Backstage, Tsha Tsha, Takalani Sesame and many others. She has performed in a number of theatre pieces as well as created theatre for the street, most recently for Sandton Central Business District.

Teaming up with Vanessa Cooke as director on this run, de Villiers is delighted: “I am truly privileged to work with Vanessa Cooke on Original Skin. And it’s wonderful to perform in Sandton – this time not on the streets!”

For more information: call 084-304-8949