Between Cape Town and Durban: Finding ourselves in Pat Pillai’s 'My Cape Town'

Former TV presenter and actor Pat Pillai.

THERE is something deeply familiar about former TV presenter and actor Pat Pillai’s My Cape Town. Perhaps it is because, beneath the laughter, the satire and the beautifully crafted characters, the production is not only about Cape Town - it is about all the people of South Africa.

My Cape Town is about memory, migration, displacement, community and the ways in which ordinary people make extraordinary lives within the circumstances they inherit.

Presented at Durban’s Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, My Cape Town is a 90-minute journey through the people and places that shaped Pillai’s own imagination of the Cape Flats. Written and performed by Pillai, the production draws on the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, bringing to life a colourful gallery of characters from Rylands, Athlone, Phoenix and beyond.

So magnetic was the 90‑minute storytelling that ENCA’s marketing maestro, Khalick Sheriff, instantly sensed My Cape Town would sweep the cobwebs off theatre’s forgotten avenues - and without hesitation, he cast his weight behind Pillai.