WHEN HE TALKS about his current Magnet Theatre graduates, Mark Fleishman’s voice is a mixture of pride and weariness.
He is proud of what the 19 performers from the Magnet Theatre Fulltime Training and Job Creation programme are about to do as they graduate with a performance of In the City of Paradise.
The weariness comes not from the hard work, but from struggling to keep the programme afloat.
From the perspective of both Magnet Theatre’s training and his work as UCT Drama Professor he sees the value in the training institutions and that their graduates do find work. Some of the Magnet Theatre graduates have even bridged the gap and entered the UCT drama programme.
Magnet’s programme is taught by highly qualified teachers (academically and experientially) and interns basically enter the company as apprentices working alongside professionals.
Together with Jennie Reznek and a small team they are constantly increasing Magnet Theatre’s repertoire of original productions which emphasise the primacy of the human body in the act of theatre.
They target people who can’t access universities for socio-economic reasons but could benefit from an education in the arts.
“On the other hand it’s also bringing a perspective into the theatre from people who are coming from differents parts of our society who don’t tend to have a voice,” explained Fleishman.
Over the past six years the Magnet programme has produced almost 60 graduates, and that’s not counting the 19 they are about to set loose on the theatre world.
“What’s frustrating is we have these programmes, but DAC keeps on starting new ones,” Fleishman said, referring to the launch of the Department of Arts and Culture’s latest Incubator programme.
A few years ago Magnet Theatre formed a partnership with Artscape Theatre which used them as a development arm, but that association has fizzled out. “It might end up with a situation where they get all the money and we quietly dissolve into nothingness and that’s fine. We have no God-given right to exist.
“But, our programme is successful, you need only come and watch the show to see that,” he said.
In the City of Paradise will showcase the 19 graduating students plus one professional actress, Indalo Stofile as Clytaemnestra.
It is a modern reworking of the ancient story of the House of Atreus in which the descendants of Atreus and Thyestes are locked in an ongoing blood fleud.
Fleishman points out this show is as much a product of the students as the contemporary social context. When he workshopped it with UCT students in 1998 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was the hot topic of the day: “The kind of debate going on at the time was about how we deal with injustices of the past and whether we need some sort of vengeance or retribution or reconciliation.”
“There was a lot more hope and positivity then, the feeling in the country at the time was different.”
Ruefully he points out that now things seem different: “There’s a sense of disappointment that the possibilities present in 98 haven’t been fulfilled. In some respect there have been advances.
“But, a lot of the things we see happening around us today, the service delivery protests and violence against foreigners, are symptoms of underlying discontent that the process hasn’t really delivered the results we wanted. And, because people are feeling frustrated, that’s coming out.”
He describes the UCT students from 98 as a bigger racial mix: “it was a kind of rainbow nation metaphor of the time and that metaphor has lost its gloss.”
His current Magnet Theatre students are a mix of non-white students from previously disadvantaged areas who do not have access to the university “and they epitomise that sense of disappointment.”
The most fascinating aspect of the production though is how the contemporary students who are not English mother tongue speakers have taken the heighted English text and run with it: “They’ve embodied it in an incredible way.
“It surprised me how they took this challenge of making the language sensible and making it speak to an audience of today. It says that somehow they’ve connected to what it’s about.”
*In the City of Paradise is on at the Magnet Theatre, cnr of Lower Main Road and St Michael’s Road, Observatory, at 7.30pm on May 28 to 30, plus a 2.30pm performance on May 30. Tickets are R60, with discounts for students, pensioners and groups of more than 10. Call 021 448 3436 to book.