This fresh comedy is not only a crowd pleaser, but also a timely and relevant reflection of contemporary South Africa. Although the play is essentially a romantic comedy and will, for this reason, be accessible particularly to the youth it doesnt shy away from examining issues which concern not only South African, but also British society today.

It deals with aspects of emerging communications technologies which have inundated the globe for the past fifteen years, as well as with issues of white emigration particular to contemporary South Africa.

Chatter promotes issues of cultural diversity, since it concerns two half brothers (one white, one coloured) and in this way also addresses issues of identity and belonging, while remaining very funny.

The creative merit of the work as a playtext has already been acknowledged in that early on in its development it was selected as part of a script writing workshop run by the Performing Arts Network of South Africa.

Craig Higginson (Literary Manager of the Market Theatre) mentored the final stages of the writing process and contributions towards its development were also made by other presenters at the workshop, including Clare Stopford and Malcolm Purkey.

Ultimately, the playscript won the Gauteng PANSA Festival of Staged Reading in October 2007 and the judges of the competition were unanimous in their praise of the scripts potential.

Maishe Maponya put his vote firmly behind it and Christina Kennedy called it “A contemporary comedy of errors for the information age”, while Sarah Roberts said that Chatter captures a sense of a new generation chaos, confusion and more."

The play was successfully performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival as well as at the 969 Festival in Johannesburg.

Funding is required for the production of a short teaser which will stand alone as a complete short film, and will be used to secure distribution and financing for the full length feature.

Short Synopsis of Chatter

Two brothers reunite after many years apart. Albert has been living in London for eight years and is returning to South Africa to meet a girl he’s fallen in love with over the internet.

Adler, on the other hand, has been getting ahead in the not so New South Africa and his communications company is thriving. So Albie is looking for love while Adi is expecting to meet his new franchisee.

But the identities of the two girls are mistaken for each other, leading to an increasingly embarrassing series of encounters helped along by awry smss and seductive internet chat streams.

Worlds of romance and commerce collide as issues of identity be it ethnic, national, or sexual become increasingly complicated by a series of misunderstandings.

After the air has cleared and everybody thinks they’ve finally figured out who’s who, a final twist reveals they may have preferred the confusion to the person they thought they were getting.