University of Cape Town (UCT) Associate Prof Nadia Davids’s play What Remains has won the English Academy of Southern Africa Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama (2020).
The prize forms part of a larger annual competition in creative writing of English expression, which includes prose and poetry.
The award is named after the South African author and activist Olive Schreiner.
The convener of the adjudicators, Prof Owen Seda, said in the committee’s report: “What we have here is a profound piece of creative writing that demonstrates an unequivocal and deliberate effort to tear the form book as it breaks new ground through extensive research, effort and a depth of thinking about issues which is second to none.”
What Remains is a fusion of text, dance and movement to tell a story about the unexpected uncovering of a slave burial ground in Cape Town, loosely based on the events at Prestwich Place, the archaeological dig that follows and a city haunted by the memory of slavery. When the bones emerge from the ground, everyone in the city – slave descendants, archaeologists, citizens, property developers – are forced to reckon with a history.
Roshan Cader, the commissioning editor at Wits University Press, said they have always wanted to work with Davids and to publish her plays. “Regrettably, other publishers often beat us to the post. Our luck turned when we approached her to publish What Remains and happily she granted us permission to license her play for the South African market.”
Cader said it is an important play for South African audiences to read, and that they hoped universities and schools around the country would make use of it. “There is important history being told by our storytellers and dramatists that don’t often find its way into the school curriculum. Yet, as publishers we see something unique and daring in what the writer is doing and so we feel compelled to publish it and hope that it will be picked up by readers who will be similarly moved.”
