SOAP-A-THON in aid of Rape Crisis

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, South Africa’s longest running, award-winning and hilarious improvisation company Improguise, invite you to their Soap-a-thon, South Africa’s first ever live, improvised soap opera marathon, performed in aid of Rape Crisis. The 12 hour event will take place on 27 October at The Little Theatre on UCT’s Hiddingh Campus, from 10am to 10pm.

All Improguise shows are totally improvised: the actors make up the action and lines as they go along. But the Soap-a-thon will be an extreme feat of improvised comedy. The actors will improvise eight soapie episodes, starting from 10am. Each episode is 1 hour and 10 minutes long, except for the final episode, which is 1 hour 30 minutes, and ends at 10pm. There will also be food and drink, celebrity appearances and other surprises.

Just for this show, the actors have created a cast of characters set against the backgrop of a small fictional harbour town. Like any good soapie, it will explore threads like love, revenge, divorce, medical issues and family life.” says Tandi Buchan, Artistic Director of Improguise: “We can’t give away the story even if we wanted to because it is all going to be improvised. We will all be just as surprised as our audiences!” This unique event will make South African theatre history whilst supporting a really worthy organization – Rape Crisis.

Improguise is challenging as many of audience members to ‘do’ the whole thing with them. Most, if not all of the core group of players will try to perform for the full twelve hours, and would love any brave and strong audience members to try and witness all the episodes! The cast will be made up of TheatreSports veterans like Megan Furniss, Tandi Buchan, Candice D’Arcy, Leon Clingman, Heather Mac, and funny person Anne Hirsch, just to name a few!

Rape Crisis provides essential services to women through counseling and court support services. Their 24-hour helpline reaches 4 500 to 5 000 survivors each year. But Rape Crisis is facing a crisis of its own: a shortfall of R1.3 million this year, which is threatening to force the organisation to close. All proceeds will contribute to alleviating their deficit and help them to continue with the daily running of the organisation.

The Soap-A-Thon takes place on Saturday 27th October from 10am to 10pm. Tickets for each episode cost R60. It’s a family-friendly event, and there is a discount for bookings of more than four episodes. To book for the Soap-A-Thon, visit Webtickets at www.webtickets.co.za. For more info about Rape Crisis: www.rapecrisis.org.za.