In 2006 Portobello Productions set up Isango Portobello, a new collaboration with Golden Bear award-winning director Mark Dornford-May to produce theatre and film projects focused on South African talent for an international audience.
Based in Cape Town, the company predominantly draws performers from across the townships surrounding the city. The company's work to date has specialised in re-imagining classics from the Western theatre canon, finding a new context for the stories within an African setting, and creating new work with is relevant to the heritage of South Africa.
The company's structure embraces artists at all stages of their creative development, allowing those with professional training to lead and contribute towards the growth of rising talents. The goal is to create a positive, celebratory message through the extraordinary and varied musical abilities of its group of performers.
The collaboration complements Portobello's slate of international projects for stage and screen and is part of South African-born Eric Abraham's commitment to promoting South African film and theatre achievements in the international arena.
Isango Portobello's most recent productions are THE MYSTERIES, A CHRISTMAS CAROL - IKRISMAS KHEROL and THE MAGIC FLUTE - IMPEMPE YOMLINGO. Together A CHRISTMAS CAROL - IKRISMAS KHEROL and THE MAGIC FLUTE - IMPEMPE YOMLINGO won the Whatsonstage Theatregoers' Choice Award for Best Off-West End Production. THE MAGIC FLUTE - IMPEMPE YOMLINGO then won an Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival when it transferred to the Duke of York's theatre for a season in the West End.
Mark Dornford-May, the Artistic Director of Isango Portobello, has been a theatre and opera director for over twenty-five years. He has worked in South Africa for the last four years creating the lyric theatre company Dimpho Di Kopane and was responsible for directing all their stage productions including the hugely successful staging of CARMEN and YIIMIMANGALISO - THE MYSTERIES.
U-CARMEN EKHAYELITSHA was Dornford-May's first feature film. He was nominated as Outstanding Director of a Musical for the 2005 Drama Desk Awards; received the Golden Bear for Best Film in Berlin 2005; received the award for Best Feature at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles; and was awarded a Golden Thumb by America's Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert.
His second film SON OF MAN received the Founders Prize at the Traverse City Film Festival presented by Michael Moore who described the film as "one of the most beautiful and subversive films of the decade".
Most recently, South African Cabinet Minister Trevor Manuel has agreed to become patron of Isango Portobello, and Isango is also building a new theatre, called The Fugard, to open in early 2010. For more information, please see our annoucement about The Fugard and Minister Manuel.