A poetic reworking of the Persephone story.
A one-woman show written and performed by Jennie Reznek.
Directed by Mark Fleishman
Choreographed by Ina Wichterich
Design by Craig Leo
Original Music by Neo Muyanga
Voice Coaching by Liz Mills
Photography: Jesse Kramer & Mark Wessels
“We could therefore say that every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and that every woman extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.” (Carl Jung)
Three incarnations of women: a mother, a daughter and an old crone. A haunting of past, present and future selves. Drawing loosely on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, this new play explores the process of individuation, the inevitability of the journey into the shadow and into the unknown, of the bonds that connect mothers and children to each other, of loss and the dense beautiful soaring life that we are all traveling through.
I Turned Away And She Was Gone is Jennie Reznek’s first one woman show since The Show’s Not Over Til the Fat Lady Sings, also directed by Mark Fleishman, which performed for two years all over South Africa and the world. This production happily reconnects the old team of Magnet creatives who developed such award winning works as Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints, Cargo, Onnest’bo, Every year Every Day I Am Walking and Voices Made Night.
The production has performed at the Magnet Theatre in Cape Town in 2016, at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam and at the Hellwach Festival in Hamm, Germany. In 2017 it performs a short pre run at Magnet Theatre (29 June – 1 July) before 4 performances on the Main Festival at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
It has been nominated for 6 awards: 4 for the prestigious Fleur du Cap Awards: Best Actress, Best Solo performance, best new South African Script, and Best original sound score; and 2 for the Naledi Awards for Best Cutting Edge Production and Best original score. The text of the play has been published by Modjaji Books in 2019.
