Thirty years after its first performance, Barney Simon’s Born in the RSA is still just as relevant, writes Theresa Smith
THIRTY YEARS after WWII ended it became a period that could be explored in the greater world culture as a time that had passed, but needed to be interrogated as having bearing on the present. Could it be that we are entering that phase in South Africa, asked Thoko Ntshinga as she mused about why the Baxter Theatre will present Barney Simon’s Born in the RSA at the National Arts Festival this year.
“Here, now, it’s time to sit down and look at the interest among young people. It’s important to bring back pieces likes these because for today’s youth it’s a different ballgame, different politics.
“Also, the passion is different – you’re looking at how things were done, not only by the people who toyi-toyied, but also people who stayed at home. It’s important to look back and see what it was they missed,” said Ntshinga, taking a break from rehearsals at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town.
She was last in Grahamstown in 2011 as Christine in Yael Farber’s award-winning Mies Julie, but this run of Simon’s play raises memories of travelling the play not only around South Africa, but also to the Edinburgh Festival and the US to critical acclaim, rave reviews but, initially, fear.
Standing on the Market Theatre stage, about to perform the play for the first time, Ntshinga remembers how scared she was that they could be shut down by the Special Branch: “But, it was a story you wanted to tell, we were passionate about it,” she said.
Re-reading the script she realised there was a lot more happening back then, than she realised at the time.
“So many people were involved in trying to do away with apartheid.
“The housewife who sits at home looking after the child says: ‘It’s not that I didn’t know what was happening, my housekeeper told me what was happening in Soweto’. Here I was thinking they just put up this wall and didn’t want to know what was happening.”
In 1986, Ntshinga played the Thenjiwe character, one she had to go out and find a la -Simon’s workshop process: “Barney knew he was going to put on a play, but not what it would be. He just knew he had to bring together people who were born in the RSA.”
So the actors – including Fiona Ramsey, Gcina Mhlope, Neil McCarthy, Terry Norton, Vanessa Cooke and Timmy Kwebulana – went out, found people and reported back about what attracted their attention in the first place.
Ntshinga met a woman through her then politically active husband, a woman who was seemingly calm in appearance “but when she spoke, fire would come out of her mouth and I thought, ‘who are you?’
“So, Barney said: ‘Go and find her, take a tape recorder and get her to talk, find what makes her tick.’”
Now as the director of this reprise, Ntshinga is working off a completed script, but has had to situate this new batch of actors within the political context of the 86 State of Emergency. Faniswa Yisa plays Thenjiwe alongside Emily Child, Dobs Madotyeni, Roeline Daneel, Francis Chouler, Zanele Radu and Joanna Evans.
“We were lucky enough that by the time we got to the rehearsal Fahiem (Stellenboom) and (the Baxter marketing) team had collected everything we could read. We spent a whole week before rehearsing discussing what made those people tick,” she said.
Ntshinga did not have to teach any of these young actors how to toyi-toyi, though: “I think it was discovered earlier, from my time, that one of the ways that the bosses do listen is when you start toyi-toying.
“We would be having a problem with… whatever… say… loadshedding… and we would say: ‘It’s only our area having loadshedding, but when we go to the office we knock and knock and nothing happens’.
“But, when we get together and start toyi-toying, that kind of getting together brings a united voice. Pity about the stone throwing and burning of buses, but it almost never fails to make the bosses pay attention.
“Bringing the play back now helps us look back at how long one has been fighting against injustice and if, even today, you’re still fighting on flushing toilets, we were fighting that in apartheid, we’re fighting it now. So what does that say?
“You write letters, you send a delegation, nobody listens. But every area that has gotten up, gone to the municipality and toyi-toyied, they’ve got toilets, they’re flushing now.”
• Born in the RSA at the Graeme College at the National Arts Festival from Thurs to Sat and travels to the Flipside Stage at The Baxter Theatre from July 8 to Aug 8.