2014 has been tough year for theatre. Money was at a premium and audiences seemed reluctant to tackle anything other than pure escapism and yet, as DIANE DE BEER experienced, our artists simply kept producing work that should be celebrated.
Dazzling Directors
IT’S been a quite year for James Ngcobo as artistic director at The Market. For him it’s about serving the arts. He has always been enthusiastic, exuberant and energetic about the arts – especially live theatre in any form.
This has been a year of testing the ground – not so much for others, but for him personally in this position and for his vision. He wants to break out, embrace and bring as many arts communities and audiences together as possible. He is also determined to give young artists a platform – in the work he directs himself as well as with productions from around the country.
He wants to honour the classics from around the world to both play into nostalgia and memories, but also to educate a younger generation.
From Colored Museum at the beginning of the year, which he sprinkled liberally with music and performances from a breakout cast that blew you away, to his end-of-year adult musical Ketekang, which celebrates 20 years of democracy alongside 50 years of the US civil rights movement, his take is a thoughtful one as he blasts the past, but also points to the sacred nature of freedom which should constantly be nourished and cherished.
From the Cape Town Rust Co-Operative with Penny Youngleson and Philip Rademeyer with Expectant and The View, to John Kani (The Missing) and Athol Fugard’s (The Shadow of the Hummingbird) latest works, to the iconic classic Sizwe Banzi is Dead with Kani’s son Atandwa and the glorious Mncedisi Shabangu, to Zakes Mda’s The Mother of Eating and Have You Seen Zandile? given to young directors Makhaola Siyanda Ndebele and Khutjo Green for younger generation interpretations, it’s been intriguing stuff.
But there’s also been outside interpretation of the inside with A Human Being Died That Night which opens more discussion with the possible pending release of Eugene de Kock. This is the story of a man dubbed “Prime Evil” and a meeting with psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela which she wrote about. It’s an experience that tore at the heart and captured so clearly what forgiveness means and why people pay a steep price for their actions.
With this as a beginning, Ngcobo stated his intention which bodes well for South African theatre goers. We want to engage with our own stories and be excited by local theatre, but also reach back to the past with a contemporary perspective.
• As the featured artist at this year’s National Arts Festival, Sylvaine Strike blew everyone out of the water with her body of work which was joyous to experience. From a first collaboration with Andrew Buckland in On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco (written by William Harding) which can’t be described as other than sublime, to Strike’s performance with Atandwa Kani in Black and Blue, her collaboration with PJ Sabbagha and others on Cargo: Precious, in an emotional telling of the Saartjie Baartman story as well as directing Buckland’s son Daniel in The God Complex and Lionel Newton in Agreed, which she described as a theatrical fugue, it was a package sensationally giftwrapped.
Each one of those productions was a shimmering example of Strike’s work. Taking the honour seriously, there wasn’t a detail missed in any of these works, all of which should still be doing the circuit – truly extraordinary.
• And there’s theatre maestro Marthinus Basson, who does mainly the Afrikaans festival circuit yet will hopefully be given a chance at The Market next year. He is one of those visionaries others artists could benefit from with every production and they did when a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with Dawid Minnaar and Anna-Mart van der Merwe, titled Macbeth: slapeloos, in which he already hints how he will approach this classic with a contemporary brush.
Theatre in our country is extremely fractured in the worst possible sense. Especially as we are so cut off from the rest of the world, it is important that the different players in the country at least benefit from what others are doing. We have extraordinary artists, many of world class standard and yet audiences in Gauteng often have no clue what those in Cape Town are doing. Let’s hope that will change more rapidly than the current odd production doing the circuit.
Young Guns
If you haven’t heard the name Phillip Dikotla, you missed one of the year’s most extraordinary plays titled Skierlik. Not only did it win the Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival in Cape Town, he also won a Fleur du Cap for Best Newcomer with this extraordinary interpretation and exploration of the killings at this makeshift settlement. Starting with this work when he was only 19, Dikotla was fascinated by the response to the shootings rather than the actual racial incident which he felt had been explored many times. He was wondering about the people living there who had let go of their dreams for change, but then this terrible killing changed their future. “Do we have to die,” he wondered?
But it’s also the impressive perseverance with this work which he believed was important, his guidance by The Market Laboratory (“Oom Dan Robberts”) after working alone sometimes for a year on end, until he had the final product which blew critics and audiences away. That’s when you know someone is determined to tell his story and that he wants to do it in the best possible way. He had to listen and understand that the story had to be accessible. But growing up, he said, he knew what it felt like not to have a voice.
“I grew up poor.”
That has changed. Those of us who have listened to his story will pay attention to this extraordinary voice. He certainly has something to say and he does it with his own voice.
• Another shining light will emerge into a more national spotlight next year. Director, actor and/playwright Christiaan Olwagen (a Marthinus Basson protégé) has, for the past few years, made waves on the Afrikaans festival circuit arriving with a splash a few years back with shows like Woza Andries which did play at the National Arts Festival too, but his name had not yet been bandied about. It was one of the first con-temporary young Afrikaans voices that spoke about a country I under-stood and wanted to be a part of.
He followed this with dips into the modern classics, the Afrikaans translation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? and The Seagull, both presented with a chutzpah and a confidence that was a joy to witness. He also wrote a semi-autobiographical play titled Dogma, a cathartic (I suspect) compendium of his growing up years with parents who followed a charismatic preacher into a world that is dominated by the will of the people rather than God, which puts the family into free fall.
At this young age it is a body of work that is exhilarating and for theatre enthusiasts a bonus for the future. Rewarded as the National Arts Festival Young Artist for Theatre, he is delighted that he has been given the chance of a more national platform.
“I am eternally grateful to the Afrikaans festivals for all the opportunities,” he says.
But like all artists, he wants to speak to a much larger constituency – and so he should.
The Drama of it All
One of the fascinating things about looking back at a year is to experience in retrospect what is dusted and gone.
It’s about the magnificence of seeing a revival of something made for such a specific time like Ubu and the Truth Commission with the same actors, Dawid Minnaar and Busi Zokufa, and experiencing what this time says about a piece written and performed decades ago. Similarly, to witness a new generation watching something that had so much impact when it first played and grabbing them by the throat now as it did us then, with none of the impact diminished for either audience, is a thrill.
And for something completely different there’s Strike’s Black and Blue which deals with love and loss and rekindling a life, and reflects the way a good piece of work never dies.
The excitement of being able to tap into more contemporary international work like David Hare’s Vertical Hour, Nick Payne’s Constellation, Morris Panych’s Vigil and Neil La Bute’s Bash gives directors, actors and audiences a chance to work and experience theatre in a different context. It doesn’t happen often and here it was theatre impresarios Pieter Toerien (Montecasino) and Daphne Kuhn (Sandton’s Theatre on the Square) taking chances with struggling audience numbers in a year that wasn’t theatre-friendly. It’s a great bonus for those who catch these great productions and hopefully the theatre managements will reap the rewards for sheer perseverance.
An added bonus was three dynamic artists, (again) Christiaan Olwagen, Wessel Pretorius and Wilhelm van der Walt reviving a student production of Yasmina Reza’s provocative Art directed by Marthinus Basson which (hold thumbs,) should tour the country. Perhaps Olwagen can do it as an aside at Grahamstown next year – simply to show his versatility. But also because it’s a fun production and a great play.
Gloriously local playwrights like John Kani and Athol Fugard returned with new work which they both wrote and performed in. Kani again tackled themes of exile with Missing and Fugard explored ageing in The Shadow of the Hummingbird, while the writing of Kani and Fugard (together with Winston Ntshona) is currently on stage with the iconic Sizwe Banzi is Dead in the Barney Simon at The Market starring Kani’s son Atandwa and Shabangu before they’re off to the US for a tour.
And yet Dr Kani isn’t done yet. Holding hands with a theatre that both blessed him while he added to its status, the splendidly refurbished main theatre at The Market was aptly renamed The John Kani Theatre in June. It’s been a long time coming, as has the revival of that precinct which has been handcuffed these past few years by on-going building projects and the renewal of the area. Finally, the time has come when there are real glimpses of things to come and it looks as if everyone will be invigorated to make whoopee!
Music and other Wonders
It’s been a long time coming, but showing off some of their earlier work in Ubu and the Truth Commission at Grahamstown, the Handspring Puppet Company’s international hit War Horse finally landed on our shores. Joburg recently experienced the excitement and magic of these magnificent creatures that have captured the hearts of the world, while Cape Town will celebrate the end of year with this gorgeous, galloping gig.
It is all about the puppetry and the artistry of the two extraordinary talents that head the hardworking Handspring Puppet Company, Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, and it was brilliant to honour them on stage at the premiere of the show in Gauteng.
There is also that crazy phenomenon, The Rocky Horror Show, that’s again pulling them in at the Pieter Toerien Theatre (similarly as at the start of the year) with expected packed auditoriums until the end of February; Toerien’s revival of The Sound of Music that had a similar impact on family audiences as parents introduced their kids to the musical they grew up with; and Nataniël’s annual extravaganza, Rainbow at Midnight, which blew you away with big ideas, big costumes, big voices and a gigantic protestation and plea to battle mediocrity.
One can hardly talk music and not invite Jonathan Roxmouth to step on stage with his homage to his hero Liberace in a show, Call Me Lee, written with and directed by Ian von Memerty. It was everything one expected and more as this young entertainer keeps moving between big musicals and self-penned shows that he has been pulling off smartly with wise decisions of what he likes and what he does best.
But others have also noticed his versatility, hence his present performance as the affably arrogant yet naïve Wooster with Graham Hopkins as Jeeves tying it all together, with a character-overloaded Robert Fridjhon in Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense at Toerien’s Studio in Montecasino in another end-of-year romp ( sans the music).
And with music and magic dust, Janice Honeyman creates like the lyrics of song that never grows old as she does it again with an exuberant cast in Peter Pan, while James Ngcobo takes care of the adults in the heart-wrenching, talent-driven Ketekang.
The Brett Bailey Phenomenon
I was watching and listening to two young journalists, one white, the other black, discussing the audacity of artist Brett Bailey dealing with the lives of others and was amazed that censorship was being thrown about so easily without thinking of the consequences when one person or group decides what another may or may not do, or speak about or portray. It can be taken to all kinds of bizarre conclusions, but without treading too ridiculously on that terrain, I want to align myself with Bailey who says that unless it comes from a place of hatred, artists should be allowed to speak their minds.
You don’t have to agree, you don’t have to watch or even take the production into account (so many who spoke against it didn’t anyway), but in a world where so much of our lives are controlled or trampled on, please give individuals the right to decide what they want to see and how artists tell stories – whether their own, or those of others.
There was a movie about the East German secret police, the Stasi, a few years back, The Lives of Others, made by filmmakers from West Berlin. Those who lived in East Berlin weren’t happy with the result, but they didn’t feel it had to be censored. They were simply speaking their minds when saying they could have told the stories better as they had experienced the real thing.
That’s their right. Let’s all speak about it. So few artists achieve what Bailey has managed this past decade. I was told by an international agent that you simply have to use the name Bailey and that of Paul Grootboom, and international managements jump on board.
Let’s not handcuff artists when they’re trying to tell stories. They truly are the mirrors of society and we don’t want those shattered.