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UCT Graduating Students Present Aimé Césaire’s Radical Reimagining: A TempestCape Town — August 2025 — The graduating class of 2025 from the Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) is proud to present A Tempest by Aimé Césaire — a provocative and urgent adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, reframed through the lens of colonialism, identity, and resistance.

Performances will take place at The Little Theatre, Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Gardens, on 26 and 27 September at 19:30, with a matinee on 27 September at 14:30.

This landmark production is directed by Professor Mark Fleishman, an important figure in South African theatre and long-time educator at UCT, who has been a part of the Drama department and then the CTDPS since 1991. A Tempest marks his final production with the Centre as he approaches retirement, bringing to a close more than three decades of groundbreaking teaching, directing, and artistic leadership.

Originally written in 1969, A Tempest is the work of renowned Martinican poet and anti-colonial intellectual Aimé Césaire, who reimagines Shakespeare’s narrative with Prospero as a colonising master and Caliban as a voice of rebellion and self-assertion. The result is a politically charged, poetic work that challenges audiences to reckon with the legacies of empire and the complexities of liberation.

“This production is the culmination of four years of rigorous training,,” says Mark Fleishman,. “Césaire’s text gives our students a unique opportunity to explore decolonial storytelling in a way that resonates deeply in our South African context.”