ABOUT US
Lara Foot
Nicolette Moses
Thami Mbongo
LARA FOOT, Director and CEO of the Baxter Theatre Centre, completed her BA (Hons) degree at Johannesburg's Wits University in 1989 before attaining her master's degree at the University of Cape Town in 2007.
Lara's passion is the development of new indigenous work, young writers and directors. She has directed over 40 professional productions, 29 of which have been new South African plays. She was the founder of the Barney Simon Young Directors and Writers Festivals, and has been integral in the development of more than 35 new South African plays.
Her plays Tshepang, Hear And Now, Reach and Karoo Moose have all toured internationally with great success and they are published by Wits Press and Oberon books. In 2000 she adapted Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying at the Market Theatre. Karoo Moose has won 15 top South African theatre awards and has been nominated for several others.
Contemporary classics which she has directed include Peter Shaffer's Equus and Amadeus, Athol Fugard's Hello and Goodbye, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Samuel Beckett's End Game and Waiting for Godot, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Harold Pinter's Betrayal and, most recently, Georg Buchner's Woyzeck. She has also directed several new South African works, including Paul Slabolepszy's The Return of Elvis Du Pisanie, Sue Pam Grant and DJ Grant's Take The Floor and Athol Fugard's Victory, as well as her own work.
In 1996 Lara was made Resident Director of the Market Theatre and from 1998 to 2000 she took up the position of Associate Artistic Director there. She became Director and CEO of the Baxter in 2010.
Lara has won many awards over the years. These include the Fleur du Cap Award for Outstanding Young Director (1992), National Vita Award (shared with Athol Fugard) for Best Director (1994), Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award (1995), Fleur du Cap Award for Best New South African Play for Tshepang (2003), and the prestigious Golden Globe Best Short Film Award in 2006. In 2004 she was the winner in the Theatre category of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initistive awards, and worked with the celebrated director Sir Peter Hall for a year.
In October 2011 she will direct her own play, Solomon and Marion, starring Janet Suzman. Also this year she will direct A Touch of Balance about the life of Malcolm Black, artistic director of the Remix Dance Company, South Africa's leading contemporary dance initiative, and resident company at the Baxter Theatre Centre.
NICOLETTE MOSES, Associate Producer and Planning Manager, is a trained classical ballet and contemporary dancer, who majored in Food Science whilst honing her craft. Her ballet training was done at UCT School of Dance under Mignon Furman and contemporary dance under Sharon Friedman.
Following a sojourn abroad, Nicolette joined the Jazzart Dance Theatre, which she managed before joining CAPAB as head of the Audience Development Department. In the transition from CAPAB to Artscape, Nicolette worked as Project Manager and then Artistic Manager until 2001. During her time at Artscape, she also worked extensively with the Nederlands Dance Theater (NDT), based in Den Haag. After a break from theatre, she was appointed as Project Manager at the Baxter Theatre Centre in 2003, and became Associate Producer and Planning Manager in 2010.
THAMI MBONGO, Artistic Director, Zabalaza Festival, is a performer, drama facilitator, educator, writer and director. He received his training at Community Arts Project (CAP) in 1998 and UCT Drama Department from 1999 to 2001. He has worked as a drama facilitator for the Artscape High School Drama Festival and Soundtrack for Life. His theatre credits include Trojan Women, King Lear, Onnest'bo, Karoo Moose, A Plague of Heroes and Woyzeck. He was also part of the cast of The Tempest (a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Baxter Theatre Centre in 2009). Thami won the 2007 Aardklop Best Actor in an Ensemble award for Karoo Moose and in 2008 he received the Brett Goldin Bursary. He was nominated for his role in Karoo Moose at the Fleur du Cap Awards as Best Supporting Actor and in the Naledi Theatre Awards as the Best Newcomer. Recently he was nominated for the 2010 Fleur du Cap Best Actor award for his role as Woyzeck in Woyzeck. Thami participated in the Ikhwezi Theatre Festival from 1998 on as a writer/director.