User:Robyn Carrington/sandbox

About The Play
Other People’s Lives follows the lives of the four main characters; Meg, Larry, Jane and Clair. This play explores the differences and similarities within heterosexual and homosexual relationships and the way they are perceived in society. The narrative begins and ends on New Year’s Eve and shifts between current and past events experienced by two couples. They live in the same apartment block in the city are separated by more than just a layer of bricks and mortar. The adjectives of interracial dialogue and homosexuality are pertinent to the storyline although the minutiae of intimate relationships are universal regardless of sexual orientation or race. As the nature of their shared tragedy is revealed, the faultlines of their relationships are cracked wide open.

Relationships with intimate partners, neighbours and society are examined and found wanting. The tenuous fragility of the cultivated carapaces of uncaring, which enable people to live in an urban environment without sullying their days with other people’s problems.Amy Jeptha's play states that other people we live with in the world have lives and that our lives are separate from them, and that we should be more neighbourly in fostering understanding and peaceful coexistence.

Synopsis
Meg and Larry’s staid heterosexual union, mired in petty squabbles, is contrasted with Jane and Claire, an interracial lesbian couple embarking on a new relationship.

Meg and Larry are married, and their marriage is appearing to be on the rocks, Meg and Larry are fighting over many different things, such as different political views due to all of the hate crimes going on in the background and atmosphere of the play. Jane and Clair however have a positive outlook on life due to them being in an experimental phase in their lives including diving into their brand new lesbian relationship. However due to the discrimination and prosecution at the time against homosexual couples, Clair and Jane are directly affected throughout the play by hate crimes and discrimination, especially due to it also being an interracial relationship as well.

This play has been performed in many different theatres and has been directed by countless reputable directors.

About The Author
Amy Jephtahails from Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Townand works variously as a filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter, director and academic.

An alumni of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in New York, Amy has worked as a mentor to community-based theatre groups as part of the Twist Theatre project, has been a voice and acting lecturer at CityVarsity in Cape Town and the Woodward School for Contemporary Art in Vancouver and an invited lecturer at Queens College, New York.

As a screenwriter, Amy has three feature film credits to her name including the Afrikaans romantic comedy Sonskyn Beperk (West Five Films: 2016), the LGBT drama While You Weren’t Looking (2015: Out in Africa) and the biopic Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story (2018: Moving Billboard Pictures). Ellen premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, was selected as the opening film for the Toronto Black Film Festival and was screened at the Afrykamera Festival (Poland), Seattle International Film Festival and Pan African Film Festival (Los Angeles) before its national cinema release. Ellen was South Africa’s official submission to the 2018 Golden Globes for best Foreign Language Film. Amy’s short film, Soldaat (2017), won the Best Script and Best Short Film categories at the KykNet Silwerskermfees. She has staffed on several shows including Trackers (M-Net Channels / CINEMAX) as well as one in-development South African series (SHOWMAX) while developing a feature film with God’s Own Country producer, Jack Tarling. In 2019, she spent three months in LA after being selected to develop an hour-long original drama as part of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Impact program.

Amy has previously been named as one of the Mail & Guardian's 200 Top Young South Africans, is the 2017 recipient of the national Eugene Marais Prize for Drama and the 2019 recipient of one of South Africa’s highest art accolades, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre. A former lecturer at the University of Cape Town, Amy now focuses on producing for film and television via her company, PaperJet Films. She will be directing her first feature film, BARAKAT, in early 2020.

Amy is repped by 3Arts management in the US and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates in the UK