‘Casual brutality’: playwright Amy Jephta on Cape Town and shared histories of land ownership
The writer of A Good House explains how her new play explores notions of belonging, suburban living and community politics
Playwright, screenwriter and director Amy Jephta has spent her career exploring the contradictions of belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. Her landmark film Barakat made history as the first feature filmed entirely in Afrikaaps, a uniquely South African dialect blending Afrikaans with other linguistic influences. Jephta’s latest work looks at the complex intersections of property, privilege and identity in modern Cape Town. In A Good House, her provocative new play for London’s Royal Court theatre and Bristol’s Old Vic, a shack mysteriously appears in the middle of a quaint suburban community, causing consternation among the residents. At the centre of the play is the question that echoes throughout Jephta’s work: “To whom does the land belong? Who gets to call it mine?”
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