Arts
Vrystaat Arts Festival: A magical story about broken and discarded items, even hearts─── ZENANDE MPAME 06:00 Wed, 16 Jul 2025
“The King of Broken Things” is a spellbinding theatre production that weaves together ancient Japanese wisdom, and is centred on the idea that even broken things, whether objects or hearts, hold value and magic.
The King of Broken Things is a production that explores how broken objects, like bicycle wheels and rusted bird cages, can be transformed and given new meaning.
It will be shown at the Vrystaat Arts Festival on Wednesday (16/7) at 18:00 and Thursday (17/7) at 17:30 at the Kunstetrust Rep Theatre (the red doors behind the Scaena) on the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein campus. It invites audiences to reimagine their relationship with the world and the impact of their actions.
This multi-award-winning production blends ancient Japanese traditions and mythology with modern themes and uses rich metaphors and fresh idioms to reveal how brokenness can lead to renewal and identity.
“I was very fortunate that when I was thinking about this play, people dealing with brokenness, I stumbled across the ancient art of kintsugi,” said The King of Broken Things writer and director, Michael Taylor-Broderick.
“It just so happened that I found it at the same time that I was engaging in this idea of a story of someone working through the brokenness, but using symbolic things to fix that.”
Kids like things, they are tactile, and I was very clear when I was writing that there needed to be things, props, and things that are created that they will engage in, and go, what is that? And when I go home, can I make that? He said.
This multi-award-winning production won, amongst others, the 2023 Fleur du Cap Theatre Prize for Best Production for Children and Young Adults. It also won prizes for best director, best text, and best actress at the Golden Dolphin International Puppet Festival in Bulgaria in 2022.
“I think because it’s in the title, The King of Broken Things, whether it’s an emotional consciousness or eco consciousness, we are constantly now more than ever needing to heal ourselves,” said The King of Broken Things performer Cara Roberts.
“We know the crises of the world, so when you watch a little boy go across the stage and he says, ‘this is broken, but it means this to me’, it helps us remember that maybe the most magical things aren’t always the newest and the shiniest.”
