With THE VISITORS Constanza Macras continues a collaboration between Dorkypark and many of the young South African cast members of her successful show Hillbrowfication in 2018. The cast includes includes as well new collaborators from the Windybrow Arts Centre.
Their new production dives into the strange world of Slasher movies, a sub-genre of horror cinema with its own set of narrative codes and aesthetic style. In these movies, teenagers are threatened and killed in numbers, while parents and other adult figures are absent or unavailable to help them in any way. The youngsters must always fight the monsters on their own. The killers may seem like faceless agents of a violence that comes out of nowhere, but they are often the result of the horrors of the past. “The past will come back to haunt you ” says an adagio of the slasher genre.
In THE VISITORS, these themes are re-signified by the South African context: the absence of the parents for instance, acquires very specific connotations in the aftermath of a state orchestrated destruction of family structures during Apartheid. Moreover, the typical slasher “hunt” becomes a trope for local and global issues, such as the capitalist negotiation of bodies and spaces: whose bodies are allowed to occupy which spaces and whose are chased away, evicted or deported. Whose bodies are allowed to circulate and whose are condemned to remain where they are (by being denied visas for example). The “horror” can also be found creeping up in everyday situations, like dealing with bureaucracy and corruption.
But through non-linear narratives and humorous associations, the youthful protagonists will struggle to get out of the grip of old monsters. They will attempt to move away from the relentless return of the past into a more “entangled” time made out of other pasts, presents and futures, where it is possible to churn up spaces for thinking and hoping.
Photo: © Manuel Osterholt
