Shirt of Fire / Hemp van Vlam, written by playwright Pieter Cilliers, is a one-woman opera, which explores the poetry and art of celebrated South African poet, Sheila Cussons.

Twelve poems were selected from Cussons’s lifelong oeuvre to tell the storyline and dialogue while celebrated international composer, Professor Hendrik Hofmeyr, currently Head of Composition and Theory at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, was commissioned to compose the accompanying music.

Mezzo soprano, Jolene McCleland, recently returned to South Africa from Vienna, is well-known for her interpretation of contemporary music, will be accompanied by well-known and much loved, José Dias, repetiteur, pianist and coach of the Cape Town Opera company, as well as Visser Liebenberg on clarinet.

Sheila Cussons, young, talented, beautiful and newly married, lived in Amsterdam after World War II. She was a student in graphic arts and fledgling poet. Soon, a passionate relationship developed between Sheila and her mentor, N.P. Van Wyk Louw, despite him being significantly older and married with children. After eight years the relationship broke up and Van Wyk returned to South Africa as academic and public figure.

After this rejection, the divorced Cussons moved to Barcelona, married a Spaniard and had two sons. Years later she was involved in an inexplicable gas explosion in her kitchen. She miraculously survived this near-death experience, but needed to return to hospital frequently and for long periods of time. Most of her face and her body were maimed by the scars of multiple skin transplants. One leg and various fingers were amputated. This monodrama indirectly questions the possible link between mental illness and creativity and the role of spiritual individuation towards peace.