CATS pounces on Cape Town this December!
CATS will run at the Artscape Opera House from 10 December 2025 to 11 January 2026.
Presented by Pieter Toerien and GWB Entertainment in association with Cape Town Opera, the production of CATS will also head to Johannesburg's Teatro at Montecasino from 17 January to 22 February 2026. Tickets are available exclusively through Webtickets.
Adapted from TS Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber's acclaimed musical brings to life a tribe of feline characters gathering for the mysterious Jellicle Ball. With eye-catching choreography, elaborate costumes and featuring the signature rendition of 'Memory', this new rendition of a much-loved theater classic promises an unforgettable night at the theatre.
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The Guardian
18 hours ago
- The Guardian
Does a song conjure painful memories? Try to rehabilitate it, say scientists
When Bonnie hears the opening bars of the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony, she is transported back to 1997. But it isn't a joyful memory that comes to mind; it is the painful recollection of driving home from school and seeing the sheriff changing a lock on her house. Then a teenager, Bonnie and her family were about to be evicted. And the Verve's song was everywhere. 'It was a big hit at the time, and it just seemed to be playing all the time, in takeaway shops and shopping centres, on the radio in the car. I just couldn't get away from this song,' she says. To this day the 46-year-old who lives in Canberra, Australia, says she will change the radio or leave the location where the song is playing to avoid hearing it. 'The lyrics of this song too closely described our situation,' she says. Indeed, many people avoid particular tunes because they are attached to the memory of an event that was either upsetting, or was once pleasant but has since become painful to recall. For Matt, 52, an engineer in the north of England, the entire oeuvre of Neil Diamond is to be avoided after a partner with a love of the singer confessed to having lied about the nature of a relationship with a colleague. 'We used to like Friday night kitchen discos. We used to listen to all kinds, and usually Neil Diamond would be on,' Matt says, adding his former partner had been to several Neil Diamond concerts, including one with her boss before she met Matt. The colleague, the woman insisted, had just been a friend. But after three years in a relationship with Matt, she confessed she had had an affair with her boss while she was married to her former husband and still had feelings for the colleague. Now, says Matt, when a Neil Diamond song comes on the radio, he has to skip the track. 'If I go into my local pub and it's on the jukebox I'll go into the other room or go outside,' he says. According to Ilja Salakka, a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, the relationship between music and memories is linked to emotions. 'Emotions play a key role in long-lasting memories generally, and since music can evoke strong emotions, it is likely that music can enhance the memory related to an event,' he said. 'Of course, this can also work in reverse: an event itself may be emotional and strengthen the memory of a situation that involves music.' Dr Stephanie Leal, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkley, said that when emotionally arousing music occurs, or is paired with, an emotional experience, it can be difficult to pin down which is causing the emotions that help instil the memory. 'The type of emotional response can really dictate what we're holding on to in our memories,' she said. In one study, Leal and colleagues found when people listened to music that induced either very strong or very weak emotions they were better able to remember the gist of an event, whereas they were better able to remember details when they had a more moderate emotional response. Salakka added that typically it is music from a listener's teenage years or early adulthood that evokes most memories. '[The] majority of memories attached to music tend to be positive in nature,' he added. But that is not always the case. 'Positive music-related memories are often more general in nature, whereas negative memories tend to be related to more specific events,' he said. As Matt's experience shows, however, the emotions attached to a song, and its associated memory, can change. 'Now it's drawing up negative memories in that [it's] stirring up new emotions that weren't originally there,' said Leal. While that may seem like the perfect reason to avoid a song, perhaps it could also bring hope. Although experts say there is a dearth of research in the area, they say it could be that listening to a painful song in new, happier contexts could rehabilitate it. 'If it's a very, very negative association with that song, maybe you'll never get over it,' said Leal. 'But the way to try is repeating it with new events that do make you happy and to hope that it overpowers and kind of reconnects your brain and rewires it to this new association.' Prof Renee Timmers of the University of Sheffield added that these new associations must involve strong emotions, ideally occur in a social context, and be meaningful. But Timmers also suggested another potential approach. 'Rather than seeing the music as something that is there, you can't do anything with it, and you are the victim of it, you can actually actively engage,' she said, adding that could involving humming along or even improvising on the music. 'Then the music becomes the active thing that you're engaging with, rather than the memory.'
Times
19 hours ago
- Times
Have we met? My life as a comedian who can't remember a single face
The plane began to shudder and bounce. I gripped my arm rest as the worst turbulence I'd ever experienced rocked the flight. I thought: 'This is it — this is the moment I'm going to die.' My mind turned to my mum and dad but I was unable to picture their faces. Some people might see their life flashing before their eyes at that moment, but I was unable to conjure up anything. Days before the flight, a comedian I was gigging with told me he couldn't picture things in his head, a condition called aphantasia. I told him I couldn't either. I've never been able to picture anything in my mind's eye. It dawned on me that I had the same thing. I find it crazy that people can think in images. We simply assume our brains work the same way as everyone else's. We're constructing our reality but our constructions of the world are completely different. Mine is all about language. I think in words. The main way in which it affects me is that I've got a terrible memory, particularly when in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival because there are so many people. I've no idea if they are comedians, audience members or if I'm just madly waving at a stranger. Once, after a gig, a guy started talking to me. He was really friendly but I'd no idea who he was. Because I was at the festival I took a punt and asked him how his show was going. It turned out he was a school friend and he then figured out I'd been talking to him for a quarter of an hour pretending I knew who he was. People think I'm rude. But I'm not rude, I just really struggle to remember faces. If you try to explain aphantasia it sounds a bit mad to a lot of people, as many are unable to conceptualise not being able to see images in your head. • Up to 5% of people can't visualise things. What's that like? When I watch films, I forget what happened. There are a lot of films I've watched two or three times and I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about them. But the main effect aphantasia has had on me is that I have a poor autobiographical memory. I remember little of my childhood. It affects your sense of self. For a few years I was like: 'Why can't I remember who I am?' Later on, when my former girlfriend would ask me about our first date, I couldn't remember the details. It's frustrating. I have a lot of pictures on my phone to help remind me. Finding out I had aphantasia made me realise my 'problems' were because my brain worked in a different way. For ages I would think: 'What's wrong with me?' I'd go to therapy and be asked to visualise something but I just couldn't. Now I can think: 'This is just how my brain works.' It's a hardware issue, not something bad-bad. When I understood that, a lot of the self-recrimination went away. Aphantasia is thought to affect about 4 per cent of the population, 2.7 million people nationwide, and it helps to know I'm not alone. I'm quite emotionally numb in my life, which is apparently a characteristic of people with aphantasia. Because I don't remember moments like other people do — I can't picture them — I feel things a bit less strongly. I can't remember that scene of breaking up with someone, which makes life slightly less intense. When I think of that breakup, I'm not playing it back and feeling the emotionals. Most people experience their memories as some kind of film playing in their head. I don't. I'm quite a dark comedian sometimes, without particularly meaning to be, and I wonder if that's because of my condition. When I started out I was always shocked by the reaction of audiences and I think that's because I'm not seeing the visuals I'm creating. I don't have that visceral reaction to jokes other people do. Instead, I see them as word puzzles. Aphantasia hasn't yet made it into my Fringe show this year. I forgot what a strange thing it was. But there is still a bit of time before it starts, so I can imagine some jokes about it might make their way in. I like to think it makes me a better comedian because all that I have are words.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Does a song conjure painful memories? Try to rehabilitate it, say scientists
When Bonnie hears the opening bars of the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony, she is transported back to 1997. But it isn't a joyful memory that comes to mind; it is the painful recollection of driving home from school and seeing the sheriff changing a lock on her house. Then a teenager, Bonnie and her family were about to be evicted. And the Verve's song was everywhere. 'It was a big hit at the time, and it just seemed to be playing all the time, in takeaway shops and shopping centres, on the radio in the car. I just couldn't get away from this song,' she says. To this day the 46-year-old who lives in Canberra, Australia, says she will change the radio or leave the location where the song is playing to avoid hearing it. 'The lyrics of this song too closely described our situation,' she says. Indeed many people avoid particular tunes because they are attached to the memory of an event that was either upsetting, or was once pleasant but has since become painful to recall. For Matt, 52, an engineer in the north of England, the entire oeuvre of Neil Diamond is to be avoided after a partner with a love of the singer confessed to having lied about the nature of a relationship with a colleague. 'We used to like Friday night kitchen discos. We used to listen to all kinds, and usually Neil Diamond would be on,' Matt says, adding his former partner had been to several Neil Diamond concerts, including one with her boss before she met Matt. The colleague, the woman insisted, had just been a friend. But after three years in a relationship with Matt, she confessed she had had an affair with her boss while she was married to her former husband and still had feelings for the colleague. Now, says Matt, when a Neil Diamond song comes on the radio, he has to skip the track. 'If I go into my local pub and it's on the jukebox I'll go into the other room or go outside,' he says. According to Ilja Salakka, a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, the relationship between music and memories is linked to emotions. 'Emotions play a key role in long-lasting memories generally, and since music can evoke strong emotions, it is likely that music can enhance the memory related to an event,' he said. 'Of course, this can also work in reverse: an event itself may be emotional and strengthen the memory of a situation that involves music.' Dr Stephanie Leal, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkley, said that when emotionally arousing music occurs, or is paired with, an emotional experience, it can be difficult to pin down which is causing the emotions that help instil the memory. 'The type of emotional response can really dictate what we're holding on to in our memories,' she said. In one study, Leal and colleagues found when people listened to music that induced either very strong or very weak emotions they were better able to remember the gist of an event, whereas they were better able to remember details when they had a more moderate emotional response. Salakka added that typically it is music from a listener's teenage years or early adulthood that evokes most memories. '[The] majority of memories attached to music tend to be positive in nature,' he added. But that is not always the case. 'Positive music-related memories are often more general in nature, whereas negative memories tend to be related to more specific events,' he said. As Matt's experience shows, however, the emotions attached to a song, and its associated memory, can change. 'Now it's drawing up negative memories in that [it's] stirring up new emotions that weren't originally there,' said Leal. While that may seem like the perfect reason to avoid a song, perhaps it could also bring hope. Although experts say there is a dearth of research in the area, they say it could be that listening to a painful song in new, happier contexts could rehabilitate it. 'If it's a very, very negative association with that song, maybe you'll never get over it,' said Leal. 'But the way to try is repeating it with new events that do make you happy and to hope that it overpowers and kind of reconnects your brain and rewires it to this new association.' Prof Renee Timmers of the University of Sheffield added that these new associations must involve strong emotions, ideally occur in a social context, and be meaningful. But Timmers also suggested another potential approach. 'Rather than seeing the music as something that is there, you can't do anything with it, and you are the victim of it, you can actually actively engage,' she said, adding that could involving humming along or even improvising on the music. 'Then the music becomes the active thing that you're engaging with, rather than the memory.'
