A career in the creative industry is always an ebb and flow.
This is how Lesedi Job, the 2017 recipient of the Sophie Mgcina Emerging Voice Award describes her nine year journey in the arts.
“You move forward and then you move backwards but I think even in moving backwards you are still moving forward, it’s just going into the next direction,” she says.
The former Idols Top 32 finalist said it was her mom who pushed her into really making a career for herself in the industry. After high school Job decided to study Journalism but found herself miserable two years into the course.
“After Idols my mom suggested I go to the Wits School of Arts and I was accepted for both the music and dramatic arts degrees and that was the beginning of my journey.”
Job says this was the creative outlet she longed for while studying journalism.
“I thought to myself ‘when was I most happy?’ and that was back in high school when I was doing plays and singing. I realised that was what fuels me.”
In 2008 Job had her first professional debut in The Lion and the Jewel, a play directed by Market Theatre Artistic Director James Ngcobo. This is where the process of her becoming a director began.
“He spotted the director in me as an actress. During varsity I did a semester course of directing and thought I would one day want to do it. He (Ngcobo) constantly watched and observed how I worked as an actress and saw I was directing as I was acting on stage.”
Last year she went to Toronto for six weeks as part of a workshop for a new Broadway musical and got to assist British theatre director Adrian Noble and also received mentorship from him.
“Then I got thrown in the deep end and had to direct a play by Mike van Graan ( When Swallows Cry) at the beginning of this year and was mentored by Megan Wilson and that’s how the journey began,” she says.
She has since worked on two more plays as a director- Itsoseng earlier this year and Helen of Troyeville which she is preparing for the Grahamstown National Arts Festival at the end of the month.
As the recipient of the Sophie Mgcina Emerging Voice Award, Job will have the opportunity to present more work on one of the stages at the Market Theatre. This year’s announcement of her win coincided with the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Market Theatre.
Job says the award meant so much to her because of how the industry worked.
“You are constantly in flux with your work because at times it gets quiet. There was a point two years ago where I wasn’t working a lot and I thought ‘I’ve been in this for so long and I’m a hard worker and I put a lot of myself in my work because I love my work’ but in many ways this award is saying- you are moving in the right direction. It’s saying I can do this, I should be doing this.”
She says being a theatre director has been stressful as she continues to question herself often. She says this is because she puts so much of herself into the process.
“My heart is in everything I do but with directing all of me is engaged and involved. That’s why it is so strenuous. But when I see the final product and watch the actors be amazing on stage it gives me the greatest joy.”
SUSTAIN YOURSELF: Lesedi Job says more women are needed in director roles in theatre work. Though not easy, she says one needs to play to their strength in order to succeed in the industry. Picture Brett Rubin
Job says after Grahamstown she will be performing in another Mike van Graan play- If We Dig with actress Fiona Ramsay.
She’s already starting to dream the play that she will direct as part of the award.
“It’s been a good progression. I always think I can do so much more. I set a high standard for myself that I aim to reach.”