'White Guilt' spends the day in PE
[caption id="attachment_37458" align="alignright" width="405"] DEFINING FRIENDSHIP: Award winning comedian Schalk Bezuidenhout and Oliver Booth, who both starred in 'Champ', which went to the Edinburgh Festival last year, star in Justin Nurse's 'White Guilt'[/caption]
LAUGH It Off founder Justin Nurse is bringing his two-man play White Guilt to Port Elizabeth for one night only before heading off to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown for a seven-day run.
"[The play] is a piece of theatre about friendship. More specifically: bromance. It is about the trials and tribulations that we go through in life, and how we need our best friends to help us through these trying times," said Nurse, who writes and directs the piece.
The play consists of 12 scenes, all of which are take place just before poignant stages in the friends' lives, from university graduation, through to a bachelor's party, through to a big wedding day.
"It is for an adults-only audience, and will prove controversial to some."
"The challenge for me as the writer, director and producer of this piece of theatre is to create a piece of entertainment so compelling that it beats lying in bed watching your favourite TV series on your laptop," Nurse said.
"This play is like a '90s rave party. It's strictly over 18s, and it's not the sort of thing you'd bring your parents to either.
"Theatre is the last soapbox for free speech. If I can't get away with speaking my truth on a stage, then we're all screwed. I'm a modern- day Cassandra – destined to tell the truth but never to be believed.
"It's likely to inspire some sort of reaction, hopefully – if only an allergic reaction. Any which way, something is bound to happen," Nurse said.
Actor in the play Oliver Booth is a rising young star in the theatre world, having graduated with honours from UCT's drama department in 2012 and having then gone on to star in the critically acclaimed Champ which went to the Edinburgh Festival last year.
Co-star Schalk Bezuidenhout was winner of both the Cape Town Graca Comedy Showdown in 2012 and the Savanna newcomer award at the Comics Choice Awards last year.
Nurse is the founder of Laugh it Off – the T-shirt company which was sued by SABMiller over their now infamous "Black Labour" T-shirt.
He was the manager of The Most Amazing Show starring Corné and Twakkie from 2001 to 2005.
The play will be staged at the Atheanaeum Theatre on July 4 at 8pm.
In Grahamstown, it will run at Vicky's from July 6 to 12.
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