THE DRAMA Department has kicked off the year on a high note, notching a number of nominations for this year's Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards.

Among the students, Quanita Adams, Jade Allen and Coba-Maryn Wilsenach were all up for the "Most Promising Student" accolade. Adams eventually won an award for "Best Performance in a Musical or Revue" along with the cast of For Coloured Girls Who Considered Suicide.

Also nominated was senior lecturer Geoffrey Hyland, who had won the "Fleur du Cap/Rosalie van der Gucht Award for Young Directors" in 1989. This time round, Hyland was a nominee in the "Best Director" category for his staging of the one-person show A Night in November, which, coincidently, ran last November at the Theatre on the Bay.

For Hyland, the nomination came as quite a surprise. “It's very seldom the director of a one-person show gets nominated, because you direct in a subtle way so that no-one sees your hand,” he said.

Although not in the run for any of the Fleur du Cap laurels, Associate Professor Christopher Weare, Director of the Little Theatre, took great pleasure in the two nominations – for "Best Performance in a Musical or Revue" and "Best Contribution to a Musical or Revue" – made to House of Usher. Not only did Weare direct the production, but was also responsible for the conception of the play, based on the gothic horror story by Edgar Allen Poe.

In exploring the relation between modern media and popular culture, Weare – working alongside the nominated Graham Weir over a three-year period – introduced everything from video footage and rock music into the adaptation. “Using video images in theatre is nothing new, but what I hoped to do was find a fresh and innovative way of incorporating these.

“I wanted to end up with a production where the narrative, emotion, symbol – everything – was carried by the video images.”

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