JADE BOWERS DESIGN & MANAGEMENT specialises in directing, designing and production management for the stage. Jade Bowers Design & Management has co-ordinated the SA Theatre Season 2011, directed Juliet Jenkin’s THE BOY WHO FELL FROM THE ROOF and Rehane Abrahams’ WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME which received a Silver Standard Bank Ovation award and Naledi Nomination for Best Cutting Edge Production for UJ Arts & Culture. The following year they won another Ovation Award for TIN BUCKET DRUM by Neil Coppen. Jade is the 2016 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre.

JADE BOWERS
Director and Producer
JADE BOWERS is a Capetonian living in Joburg, and was the 2016 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre. She currently works for UJ Arts & Culture and runs her own production company: Jade Bowers Design & Management.

Jade graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Social Sciences in Drama and Sociology, and from the University of the Witwatersrand with an Honours degree focusing on directing and design for the stage.

She has been recognised by The Presidency as one of South Africa’s Young Achievers; was named one of AfriPOP’s Top Five Female Theatre Makers in South Africa, and the 2014 Arts and Culture Trust ImpACT Award winner for Theatre. She has received Naledi nominations for Best Sound Design and Best Cutting Edge Production; and a Standard Bank Ovation Award for her production of Neil Coppen’s Tin Bucket Drum. She was awarded a Pitch Perfect grant at the 2015 ACT | UJ Arts & Culture Conference, to support the development of an online database for playwrights and theatre-makers.

Jade has worked as a production manager, stage manager, festival director (for WALE 4.0), theatrical rights administrator, director and designer. For more information find Jade Bowers Design and Management on Facebook, follow @jadeherself on Twitter and Instagram, or check out her website jadebowers.com.
 
PENELOPE YOUNGLESON
Playwright
Penelope Youngleson is a theatre maker, designer, writer, composer, stylist and educator working in Cape Town. 
She has won several awards with Philip Rademeyer and their company, Rust Co-Operative, and in her own capacity, including: the Best International Production at the Dublin Festival, Runner Up for Best International production at Amsterdam Fringe, panel selection at Afrovibes Festival in the Netherlands, two Standard Bank Ovation awards, 3 Silver Standard Bank Ovation awards – and a Fleur du Cap award. Rademeyer and Youngleson were also nominated for a Best New South African Script Fleur du Cap in 2016.

Her latest work, Sillage (a two-hander about whiteness and womanhood in South Africa), won a Gold Ovation Award at NAF 2016. It was only the fifth theatre production to be acknowledged with this honour since the inception of the Ovation Awards at the National Arts Festival; and she is the second woman to achieve this. Her particular interest is South Africa-specific stories and has written 7 scripts in the last 4 years (Expectant, Nat, Full Stops on Your Face, Siembamba, Sillage, A Man and a Dog, An(T)oniem)  – all original works, all about and for and in praise of people from this country. She is currently a Bertha Fellow at the UCT Graduate School of Business, pursuing an MPhil in Social Innovation. Her specificity is in financial inclusion and sustainable practices of mentorship amongst at-risk girls and womxn in the public schooling system in the Western Cape. She runs an after-school programme working with vulnerable learners in Grassy Park and Lavender Hill called Drama Queens and is a guest facilitator at the Makukhanye Arts Centre in Khayelitsha. She was also named one of the Mail and Guardian Top 200 Young People of 2016. 

AMEERA PATEL
Actor
Ameera Patel recently received recognition as one of the Mail & Guardian's Top 200 Young South Africans. She is a storyteller at heart, jumping between the stage and the page with ease. Along with SCORCHED, she is also performing in WHISTLE STOP (Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award Award 2014 and PANSA New Writer's Award 2014) and RAT RACE, a family show for 4-6 year olds. Her debut novel OUTSIDE THE LINES published by Modjaji Books is currently on shelves. She is appears regularly on South African television, and will soon be appearing in a new sitcom SOAP ON A ROPE.

Audience Responses

Was fantastic. AMeera Patel was brilliant

Ameera Patel was incredible, she depicted so many characters with such conviction. Awesome play.

Was fantastic. AMeera Patel was brilliant

Hi, I never got to see it, my GPS was taking me round in circles, getting me lost so I went home instead.

Loved everything about it

i loved it so so much. Heartbreaking and relevant and Ameera is one of those effortless actors - such a pleasure to watch her.