Disappearance Of Three South African Sailors Takes Centrestage At Requiem For The Impossible World Premiere

Read Time:4 Minute, 8 Second

Musicians Lucy Kruger (South Africa) and Liú Mottes (Netherlands) lead performance at Cape Town’s Homecoming Centre in February

January 13th 2025: The disappearance of three South African working sailors in the Indian Ocean a decade ago is the subject of a stunning new music and interactive technology project that will have its world premiere in Cape Town in February.

A story born out of love and an unquenchable yearning for answers, Requiem for the Impossible launches with a limited run of four performances at the Homecoming Centre in District Six – a trio of evening performances on Thursday February 13, Friday February 14 and Saturday February 15, and a special matinee performance on the afternoon of February 15th.

This unmissable interactive and musical experience is performed on stage by internationally acclaimed musicians Lucy Kruger (South Africa) and Liú Mottes (Netherlands). It blends an entirely new original musical score (the requiem) with documentary-style voice recordings, poetry and interaction through a dedicated phone app that allows the audience to be part of co-creating the moving experience. The project is by Amsterdam-based creative studio, affect lab and produced in Cape Town in collaboration with The Good Times Co.

Requiem for the Impossible is based on the true story of three South African working sailors who went missing at sea during a yacht delivery trip to Phuket, Thailand. Poignantly for the Cape Town world premiere, the sailors – skipper Anthony Murray, first mate Reginald Robertson and young deckhand Jaryd Payne – left from the city’s V&A Waterfront Marina in December 2014. The last known contact with the sailors was on January 18th 2015 when the yacht was deep in the Indian Ocean, between Madagascar and Western Australia (26.00S 080.09E) where it had encountered tropical cyclone Bansi. They have not been seen since.

Produced by a special collaboration between award-winning Dutch and South African artists, Requiem for the Impossible honours and memorialises Murray, Robertson and Payne, and brings to the public consciousness the psychological condition of Ambiguous Loss. Established by American family therapist, Dr. Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, Ambiguous Loss differs from ordinary loss in that there is no verification of death, leaving those left behind frozen in grief, endlessly veering between hopelessness and hope. It’s a psychological state that impacts hundreds of thousands of people globally, in the devastating circumstances of war, occupation, migration across the sea, catastrophes arising out of climate breakdown and many more.

Requiem for the Impossible was initiated by well-known South African music journalist Diane Coetzer, the sister-in-law of the yacht’s skipper Murray. A portion of the lyrics for the Requiem score are based on the poetry of Jay Savage, Murray’s brother, and the performance includes excerpts from personal recordings done by the skipper during several ocean voyages before the fated final voyage in 2014/2015.

The Cape Town premiere performances follow two pilot performances in Amsterdam in July 2024.  Shared by one attendee following the Amsterdam performances,  “The Requiem feels like when you walk into a church, or walk into nature, like things are very big and vast and you just feel very small. It made me feel grateful for the tiny bits of time that I have on this planet”.

Please note: the Saturday 15 February matinee show will be followed by an artist talk (45 minutes) for those interested in understanding the requiem and its creative unfolding in more detail.

To coincide with the Cape Town world premiere, the music created by Lucy Kruger and Liú Mottes for Requiem for the Impossible will be available for streaming on all the usual platforms through The Good Times Co. Kruger and Mottes’s performances at the Homecoming Centre will follow on from four early February dates as part of the South African tour of Kruger’s Berlin-based art pop noise project, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys.

Performance details

Homecoming Centre (formerly Fugard Theatre) Corner Buitenkant St & Caledon St
District Six, Cape Town, 8001

Performances:
Thursday 13 February at 20:00
Friday 14 February at 20:00
Saturday 15 February 14:00 and 20:00

Credits

Requiem for the Impossible is a project by affect lab

Performance duration: 60 minutes, no intermission

Ticket link:https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/event.aspx?itemid=1561315525

Ticket Price: R295 (excluding booking fees)

Parking (open 24 hours): Harrington Square Parking

Concept & interactive design: Klasien van de Zandschulp

Concept & narrative: Dr. Natalie Dixon
Creative production: Juliette Brederode
Project initiator & writing: Diane Coetzer

Musical score: Lucy Kruger & Liú Mottes
Lyrics & poetry: Jay Savage
Technical production: Blaise Janichon (The Good Times Co)

Creative coding: Luciano Pinna
Performance visuals: Sebastiaan Smink & Lukas Ruoff

Graphic design: Jana & Koos & Guanyan Wu
Booklet design: Daniel Elkayam

This production is kindly supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Creative Industries Fund NL and Stichting Stimuleringsfonds Rouw.‏

 

 

Happy
Happy
0 %
Sad
Sad
0 %
Excited
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
Angry
0 %
Surprise
Surprise
0 %