Lara Bye is a highly renowned director of opera, theatre, and performance events in non-theatre spaces, as well as part time physical theatre Lecturer at UCT’s Drama Department. She has worked closely with local writers on new plays, directing 6 new South African plays over the last few years. Her most recent production is the multi award winning Oskar en Die Pienk Tannie starring Sandra Prinsloo. Her production of Nicholas Spagnoletti’s London Road toured extensively and played to sold out houses across SA. Lara has also staged several well-known operas such as The Flying Dutchman and Viva La Mama, to great acclaim. Her Afrikaans work includes the recent Nag, Ma as well as Die Vrou Wat Haar Man Gekook Het and Is Almal Dan Vokken Volmaak. Other productions include: Yellowman, Ionesco’s The Lesson, for colored girls who considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf and Jesus Hopped The “A’ Train for the Baxter theatre, Mike Van Graan’s Bafana Republic and Iago’s last Dance, and many more. Lara works with the theatre of suggestion, with small evocative sets that can travel far and wide, with powerful stories and with breathtaking, bold and fearless performances from her casts. Lara has just completed, with Distinction, a two year Master’s Degree in Theatre Directing. Her final thesis “Imag(in)ing the Poetic Body: A directorial approach to heightening text(ure) in performance,” was a return to her studies with Jacques Lecoq. Her thesis production was of young American writer Sarah Ruhl’s contemporary reworking of Eurydice.