Multiple award-winning theatre artists Jeremy Crutchley and Geoffrey Hyland will collaborate on a new production, Sacred Elephant, an adaptation of the celebrated work by poet Heathcote Williams, from 2 to 18 February at the Intimate Theatre on Hiddingh Campus. The season marks the South African
premiere of this work.

Crutchley is directed by Hyland in this simple, startling and moving one-man show that passionately reveals the soul of the earth's largest land-living mammal. Sacred Elephant is a powerful alchemy of verse using fact and feeling to demolish the myths that keep us complacent about the fate of one of the most intelligent and profoundly skilled of all the world's creatures.

Geoffrey Hyland, Associate Professor at UCT Drama, kicks off his stimulating 2012 Sabbatical with this production before heading to London where he will direct a Shakespeare production with postgraduate students at the Central School of Speech and Drama. From there he will give classes in New York and Los Angeles before directing at York University in Toronto.

Jeremy Crutchley is known for his diverse and unique roles in Theatre as well as on Film. He was most recently seen onstage in the internationally acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning I Am My Own Wife for which he won two Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards in 2010 for Best Actor and for Best Solo Performance. He also won the Fleur for Best actor for his role as Shylock in the 2009 production of The Merchant of Venice. While continuing to appear in various film roles, Sacred Elephant is his latest theatrical challenge and he is delighted and inspired to be working again with Geoffrey Hyland for the first time since their collaboration on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the 2006 Maynardville season.

Heathcote Williams, poet, playwright and actor, has made a significant contribution, especially for his extended poems on environmental subjects such as Whale Nation, Falling for a Dolphin, Sacred Elephant and Autogeddon. His plays have also won acclaim, notably AC/DC and Hancock's Last Half Hour.

Sacred Elephant, with lighting and costumes by Fleur du Cap Theatre Award winners Luke Ellenbogen and Illke Louw respectively, runs Tuesdays to Saturdays from 2 to 18 February at 8:30pm at the Intimate Theatre on Hiddingh Campus, 57 Orange Street.

Tickets cost R65 per person for the previews on 2, 3 February and thereafter R100 per person with all bookings via 0214807129.

Intimate Theatre on Hiddingh Campus, 57 Orange Street in Gardens