Playwright and director Ilse van Hemert will be bringing a challenging work – August Strindberg’s Skuldeiser (Creditors in the original) – to the Woordfees (Stellenbosch University’s annual “wordfest”, Monday to March 15) after more than a decade away from the stage.
Stephanie Nieuwoudt spoketo her about it: The success of Skuldeiser is determined by the actors’ interpretation of it, which is the greatest challenge of this piece.
“With other works, you can play with light and sound and design. But Skuldeiser doesn’t ask for music and all those other things. It asks ‘only’ for brilliant acting,” explains Van Hemert, who also translated the work.
Skuldeiser is the story of a happily married couple, the artist Adolf and his wife Tekla. Until Adolf is visited by Gustav, Tekla’s former lover, who manipulates Adolf psychologically. And when Tekla appears on the scene, Gustav tries to charm her all over again.
Anna-Mart van der Merwe is Tekla, André Odendaal is Gustav and Adolf is played by relative newcomer, Stiaan Smith.
“Working with experienced people has its challenges: you want to use their experience and the techniques that they bring to a play, but you don’t want them to fall back on interpretations that worked in the past. I want my actors to start from scratch every time. I’m actually seen as a despotic director because I want to orchestrate every breath, every pause.” says Van Hemert.
“I force actors to go back to a place of honesty every time. Anna-Mart, though, gives herself to her director 100 percent; she has the kind of technique that you don’t get without very hard work. André has similarly brilliant technique. And I’m excited about introducing Stiaan to audiences.”
Why did she want to return to the stage with Skuldeiser in particular?
“When you work with a classic, you know it’s stood the test of time. This work is more than 120 years old, but Strind-berg’s ideas were modern way back then already. The crises depicted in this play are still relevant. Jealousy is still jealousy. A woman’s need for her independence hasn’t changed. The issue of what a man and a woman ‘owe’ one another in marriage still holds. Trust is also still a bitterly thorny issue.”
This will be the first time that Van Hemert has tackled a work by Strindberg: “I’ve always been fascinated by his work and ironic view of life. I was intrigued to delve into a drama of his. Skuldeiser is a psychological thriller and a lot of wounds are inflicted; blood flows all over the place.”
As the translator of the piece, Van Hemert removed and changed references that are time and place-bound. But she used Afrikaans words that have become slightly obsolete in order to retain an old, classic feel.
“It’s interesting that audiences forgive glitches in their own language less easily. If characters in a production don’t use their mother tongue properly, or use crude language, the audience will object much more quickly by walking out, for example, than when this happens in another language.”
Van Hemert decided 15 years ago to start working full time as producer of the TV series Scandal.
“My son Alexander was only eight months old and I worked on theatre production with him in a cradle underneath the table. As a single parent, I took a materialistic decision not to do any more theatre work which pays very little. Another reason was that I was suffering from deep exhaustion.”
In the course of those 15 years, however, Van Hemert was able to fit two theatre productions in between her television work.
“Doing TV work is endlessly satisfying. You have to think carefully when you tell a story about corporal punishment and abortion, for example.
“And to be able to understand my viewers’ world better, I learnt to speak Sotho and Zulu.”
Has her television experience made her a better theatre director?
“I don’t know if I’m a better director. “But I do know that I’m a more compassionate and grateful person.”