Professor David Peimer
Dark Humour in the South African Theatre of Reza de Wet and Athol Fugard
Professor David Peimer - Dark Humour in the South African Theatre of Reza de Wet and Athol Fugard
- So thanks very much Georgia, and hi everybody, and hope everybody’s well everywhere. So this is the concluding session for me on South Africa and a little bit of a whistle stop tour through some of the highlights, or some of the main creators and pieces of South African theatre. I’m going to focus more on Athol Fugard and Reza de Wet, who are two of the most brilliant writers to have come out of the country. And what they try and achieve, I think, what they try and focus on in the context of South Africa and in particular, I think Reza de Wet, not many people may know, but I think she’s an extraordinarily fascinating, for those who don’t know, white Afrikaans woman. And I’m going to look at just one or two of her plays in particular and show a couple of clips from some of the plays as we go along to try and get a sense of overall a few main ideas, which are surprisingly what I think is grotesque or grotesque parody or perhaps dark humour and how these playwrights, intentionally or not, I think the effect on the audience can be a kind of a dark humour that emerges. And I’m going to link it to the idea of satire and the tradition of workshop theatre and satire as a form of theatre to cope with profound adversity and profound hardship and extreme of experience in South Africa during apartheid and after. So it’s ideas around prejudice, ideas around hate, ideas around how the other is represented, even if the other comes from the ruling group during apartheid, for example. You know, how is the group shown in these plays? What makes them really stand out and what we can gain or glean for today. Okay, so I’m going to look at these people here.
As you can see, Fugard, Reza de Wet, and then probably the greatest play to have come out of South Africa in the early ‘80s, “Woza Albert!” “Sophiatown,” created by a very good friend of mine and a fantastic director, theatre maker, Malcolm Purkey with Junction Avenue Theatre Company, “Sophiatown.” “King Kong,” which in a way is the originator of so much, 1959. And Gibson Kente, who I think is the real grandfather of so much South African indigenously created theatre. This is not a talk about obviously theatre imported from wherever. Could have been from, you know, during colonial times in the early 1900s. Could have been from anywhere in Britain or Europe or America, wherever. This is, you know, the theatre that grew up, in a way, came to maturity in South Africa, obviously during apartheid and then after. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. So the first one to briefly mention is “King Kong.” And of course we all know the movies that have come out, you know, with the huge gorilla and so on. But the original had nothing to do with that. The original, as you can see from the image, was a township opera, or a township musical really, jazz musical about a boxer. And it was created in 1959, and it was about a boxer called Ezekiel Dhlamini. And the press dubbed him King Kong for a whole lot of anecdotal reasons. And it was about… And it stayed relatively accurate to his life. He died young, in his early 30s, and he was destined for great things, for stardom as a boxer, really up and coming township, young kid, and with a remarkable ability for boxing and the the athleticism of it. So the story is about him and his…
You know, it’s sort of him and his girlfriend, and how he thinks his girlfriend is being taken up by a sort of mafia guy from the township. And he gets furious and he goes into attack the mafia guy. Anyway, cut a long story short, he takes out his revenge on the mafia guy, the girlfriend, and as a result, he’s arrested and thrown into prison. And he’s really goes through hardship. This actually happened to Ezekiel Dhlamini. And in prison he was made to do forced labour and many other horrible things and committed suicide in his early 30s, at a very young age. And through that… And that story of the gangsters, boxer, girlfriend, we can imagine, and this is 1959, that this, I called it a jazz musical. I think that’s much closer to the kind of music and the origin of it. And it’s really one of the most important founding plays and musicals coming out of South Africa, which again, is created, you know, in the country and then travelled to America. It travelled all over as a huge hit. And of course we know what those two words, “King Kong” and how it was taken up in film and other things much later in a totally different way with obviously the big gorilla image and so on. So that’s the origin and what it means is the idea of dance. It’s all the theatre forms together. It’s dance, it’s jazz, it’s music, it’s song, it’s acting, it’s using a lot of stereotype in comedy, a lot of wit and satire and comedy against the vast canvas of emerging apartheid coming out of colonial times and serious adversity and how wit and pain and suffering, you know, so often go together in some of the great South African theatre pieces, which is part of the charm and the aesthetic structure of these works of art originating, the first one for me, “King Kong” in 1959. Okay, we go on to the next slide, please.
So, Gibson Kente. No one can talk about South African theatre in any way, whether it’s Fugard or anybody, without talking about, just briefly mentioning at least, Gibson Kente. Because Gibson Kente took from, not only from “King Kong,” but he took from all the township styles, which was a fusion or a creative collision of jazz, of African Indigenous, of all the different ethnic groups in South Africa, the music, the dance, located in a township context. He would do plays in schools, community halls, travel around the country, all over. And he, in a way, he made so much theatre, some of it much more about social injustice and prejudice and hate, and some of it less, you know, more sort of about marriages or problems in marriages and, you know, I guess family musicals. But again, combining all the genres of live performance, dance, music, song, jazz, influence obviously from America, and other forms of, you know, traditional African, and other forms of music and song. Many characters are stereotype, similar to “King Kong” to a degree. And it’s the stereotype that we laugh at and laugh and enjoy until the, you know, the serious punch comes. As Athol Fugard said, you know, you laugh, in his great play “The Island,” which I’m going to look at shortly, obviously based on experiences of Robben Island, and not only Mandela, but others as well. You know, “you can laugh for three quarters of the play and then comes the serious punch,” paraphrasing from Fugard. So take you through the humour, the satire, the wit, and then the dark humour. And then how dark it really is, is when the last quarter of the play, you turn the audience into such a shock in a way. So you double the shock and a surprise for the audience and therefore pleasure.
'Cause we all like to be surprised in watching a story. The first surprise that this is about apartheid, it’s about Corona type, whatever. And it’s so funny and witty and yet it’s so full of pain and suffering inside it. And then three quarters away we stop laughing and we get the real seriousness and the impact of what these theatre makers are really about. The other important thing about Gibson Kente and “King Kong” and so many to come after, but especially through Gibson Kente, is the idea of workshop theatre. I’m sure many of you know the words protest theatre or resistance theatre, but it’s a workshop, the group, the actors, the director with some writers perhaps, and musicians, composers, dancers, singers. It’s workshopped by a group. And that’s, I think, part of the magic of what South African theatre has created and gave to not only the country, but the world. And I think quite stunned the world. Not only the content, which is obviously against the viciousness of apartheid and prejudice, but it was the form of workshop and the idea of collaboration. Collaboration of the races, collaboration of genders, all of that going together, you know, one tiny little area in South Africa where, you know, the races fought and were able to work together and collaborate through improvisation and workshop and create together. That’s probably one of the biggest hallmarks of the legacy of South African theatre for the world in that way. And obviously an attempt for people who lived 5, 10, 15 miles away from each other, but didn’t have a chance to get to know the details of each other’s lives, because you could never travel from A to B or go to X or Y, you know, as we, I’m sure many remember, those of you’re watching.
So how do you get to know to write a play about it or create a theatre piece or even film about it. If you don’t know something about the inner life or the world of the characters, then you already have very naive stereotypes as opposed to more informed stereotype. South African theater’s often been criticised for having too much stereotype, but I think it comes from that idea of obviously the literal word apartheid, you know, living apart, experiencing apart. How do you get to know the details of other people’s lives so that you can, you know, focus on what we call the inner life of character or the psychological three dimensional qualities of character. Part of the reason I think why so much was workshopped and using stereotype for comedy, comedy always needs stereotype and satire needs it as well. So Gibson Kente creating so many plays and so many of the young actors that he worked with, he trained, taught to become performers, dancers, singers, actors, musicians. And they went on to form their own groups throughout the country. Okay, that’s Gibson Kente. If we go on to the next slide, please. Hi, Georgia? If we can go on to the next slide, please. Ah, great, thank you. Okay, so we come to, who for me, and I’m sure many people, is probably the best playwright and, you know, the fantastic playwright to have come out of South Africa, the brilliant Athol Fugard and 1932. He’s in his 90s, he lives in the Cape area, outside Cape Town. You know, we all know, sort of fairly going to be specific. And I think Fugard’s trajectory really captures so much of what these writers were trying to do and what they were trying to take on. But it was coming from a workshop tradition, certainly initially at least, Fugard. So he, just to mention, is that 1985, “Time Magazine” described him as the greatest active playwright in the English speaking world.
We need to go back to the '80s and the '90s just to remember, especially the '80s, you know, just how influential he was everywhere, in America, North America, and obviously in Britain and Europe, many places around the world, how extremely influential, not only in getting the obvious political message out about apartheid South Africa, but in getting plays of real quality, of drama, of aware of structure and character and story, trying to break from stereotype, trying to include the psychologically nuanced three-dimensional character, not just the two-dimensional stereotype character, if you like, and sometimes a combination of both. But trying as hard as he could and to write and get to meet Black actors, other actors from all parts of the country and write from within the lived experience, not just projecting what he thought might be the lived experience. And that’s a big difference I think, trying to live, trying to take from how people actually living, what they actually, you know, how they really are. So Fugard makes this real attempt to bridge that gap between the stereotype and the workshop into more naturalism, we call it, but more mirror up to how people really are and try and capture something of that, even if there are elements of stereotype that come in. And of course using workshops still as well. So Athol Fugard, pardon me, he’s born in Middleburg in the Eastern Cape, 1932, as you can know. His mother was Afrikaans and she ran a general store and a small lodging house. His father was English and of French Huguenot descent as well. He was a former jazz pianist, but very disabled. And we see this reference in the plays, the father-son relationship, and we see it in Reza de Wet, the father-daughter or the father-son as well. So we start to get much more of the personal, as I was saying, three-dimensional character in the father-son and the generations and not only the political but the social beliefs of the father and the son and the clash between the two, the clash between, you know, I think for Fugard, the disabled father, strong mother, but coming from a really poor, white South African context background. And then started to work with Black actors.
1935, the family moved to Port Elizabeth and then he goes to university briefly and he dropped out in 1953, hitchhiked to North Africa and spent two years working in Asia and travelling and working on a steamship. In 1958 we find Fugard in Johannesburg. And he’s working as a clerk in what was, at the time, quoting the words from the time, it was called, quote, “Native commissioner’s court”, unquote, which started to make him aware, as he said in his own words, “aware of the injustice of apartheid.” 'Cause he’s working in the clerk. As a clerk, he’s seeing it day to day, the passbook, all the laws and the legal side and the social side of the policy of apartheid in the country. That begins his awakening, working in Johannesburg with that. Then he lived in South Africa, of course, Johannesburg, elsewhere, travelled around the world, plays got out into England, the UK, Europe, America, everywhere, all over. And then he went to live in America for quite a while, especially in California, daughter Lisa. And then finally in about, I think about 10 years ago, if I’m right, he went back to live outside Cape Town. In the early periods, in 1958, he started to work with multiracial theatre. I suppose today we’d call it multiracial. This is 1958. So apartheid begins in 1948. So 10 years after, he starts to become aware. Sharpville, of course, 1960. In 1961, we find Fugard in Johannesburg working with Zakes Mokae and starting with the first play, which really made a hit, “The Blood Knot,” directed by the great Barney Simon, who I’ll come to in a moment, talking about. Barney Simon really helped to develop new plays, new works in the Market Theatre together with Mannie Manim. The Market Theatre in Johannesburg, as I’m sure many people know.
Fugard refuses… Barney Simon, of course, comes from a Lithuanian Jewish background, for those who don’t know. Fugard refuses to perform for whites-only audiences, says one of the very first as a writer, which is, you know, to take a stand. Now he’s not only doing satire, he’s doing so-called, inverted commas, “serious drama” as well, but refuses to have whites-only, tries to find a way, as did Barney Simon, to have mixed audiences and mixed actors on stage as well, which became more and more difficult under the apartheid regime, of course, and the constant surveillance and harassment, to put it mildly. And then he supported the Anti-Apartheid Movement from 1959 onwards. And the boycotts of South African theatres, due to the segregated audiences, quite specific, obviously apartheid is the big picture, but the segregation audience is what he was really about here. He starts the Serpent Players in the '60s in Port Elizabeth. We find him in the early '60s in Port Elizabeth, and he’s working in the Port Elizabeth Museum with a group of Black actors from the townships nearby. Basically earning and living as teachers, labourers, I suppose we could call industrial workforce, and constantly under the eye of the security branch, the police at the time. And he meets two remarkable actors, Winston Ntshona and John Kani, two of the greatest, most fantastic actors to have come out of South Africa, and he works with them. He creates, “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead,” and he’d go on and on and on. So this is the first part of his life, which in a way is the formative period, and he’s really trying to bridge the racial divide. Fugard, and he’s made a clear choice and commitment as what he’s going to do. And in that way, he provides a role model for so many to come after. Okay, if we go on to the next slide, please. So these are just some of the plays I’m going to talk briefly about. The first, I want to mention something interesting, “Tsotsi,” many of you may know it, was a short novel, a short story that he wrote about gangsterism, crime, and a wonderful director, Gavin Hood, from Johannesburg in a much more contemporary post-apartheid context, who was married to my ex-student, Janine.
Anyway, they created, she helped write the script and Gavin Hood directed it, and it went on to win an Academy award for Best Foreign Language Film. And it’s a fantastically shot film for any of you haven’t seen it, and it comes from the short story of Fugard’s “Tsotsi,” which is, for those who don’t know perhaps, was township slang for, you know, criminal, shady character, you know, all of that. But often it’s these young guys, teenagers or in their early 20s who are in poverty and, you know, going to commit crime for obvious reasons, you know, to get some food or money or this or that. And then it goes wrong, it goes really bad and, you know, it becomes much more tragic in that story. It’s a beautifully written story. I think, for me, it’s the best short story that Fugard wrote. It’s so beautifully structured and written and crafted, you know, to have maximum emotional impact. And it’s so for our times because it speaks, as Gavin, when they made the film, it speaks not only to the violence during apartheid, but the violence after it and we all know, you know, how profoundly terrifying and horrific the violence, you know, when you have over 30% unemployment, the extreme violence in South Africa, you know, that we know now. My own play, “Armed Response,” which I’m not going to talk about, but it was based on post-apartheid work, one of them, one of my plays, which was about the extreme violence, you know, that many people have experienced in the country. So that’s “Tsotsi.” “Boesman & Lena” was about two mixed race characters similar to Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” And they basically got to just try and survive and make a living.
They’re suffering, poverty, hunger, having a place to live. They’re sort of like tramps, we’d call them today, I guess in a western urban context, we might use those words, or at least, you know, the homeless may be a better phrase, probably better, homeless people, you know, but they’re trying to survive adversity and pain and suffering through their wit, through their humour, and just get by day to day. It’s a fantastically written play, “Boesman & Lena.” It’s a two character and, you know, some of you may have watched some of Yuval Noah Harari’s talks on YouTube, and Harari has a fantastic definition, which comes from his Buddhist leanings. You know, he goes for at least a month or two to places in India or elsewhere in Israel or wherever and meditates. And he has a wonderful definition of morality, which comes from the Buddhist learning, the Buddhist understanding. And in one phrase for him, he says, “Morality is trying to lessen the suffering of other people and oneself.” It’s fascinating, that’s morality, about lessening suffering in life in the world. And I love it, and I think we get this in “Boesman & Lena.” It’s, you know, humanity on its knees, it’s humanity suffering, but having the wit, the intelligence, the ability to try and, you know, make a plan, to try and find a way to adapt and move on and keep moving and finding some way. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. So the two other players I want to talk about briefly are “Master Harold … and the Boys” and “The Island” of Fugard. He wrote over 30 plays and short stories, it’s a hell of a lot, you know. I only want to go into, you know, a couple of them now. The one in the middle, “Statements Under the Immorality Act,” which is the title, the Immorality Act, Black and white, can’t get married, well, can’t kiss, can’t fall in love, can’t hold hands walking down the street, as many of us will remember from apartheid times. So that was one play. But “Master Harold … and the Boys” and “The Island,” I think are the two that really last today with dark humour and prejudice and hate and how it gets played out. And the subtlety, the three dimensional characters I mentioned, in “Master Harold … and the Boys” is so intriguing and beautifully crafted in a play.
It’s not really stereotype, you know, and fundamentally it’s about a young guy, a teenage boy, or coming into teenagehood. And he has two, you know, and during apartheid times, the word was servant, two Black servants who are much older men. And in those days, as I’m sure many will recall, were called boys even though they were 50 years old, or 40 or even 60, whatever, you know, Black male servants were called boys and Black female servants were called girls under apartheid. Got to be honest. So Fugard’s title, “Master Harold … and the Boys” the boy, the teenager, the young teenager is the master, and his name is Harold, of course, and the boys are the men who are in their late 40s, 50s, you know, are the Black servants. So it’s a play around these relationships primarily and the family of the white guy a little bit, but primarily, you know, the relationship. And what I always found so brilliant in this play is that the theatrical climax is a spit. And I’m going to show it in the clip in a moment where we see that the climax is not a gun, a knife, a punch, a kick, more obvious sort of Hollywood B grade movie stuffs, it’s a spit in the face of another human being. And how it’s completely humiliating, degrading and how the semi-conscious prejudice and hate of a young teenager comes out at a much older person through that one act of one spit. And you can remember it forever once you’ve seen it on stage or even read it in the script. And we have echoes, obviously, of the Jewish experience in the Nazi area in the '30s and so many, you know, what’s going on now around the world. My Israeli sister’s son lives in Australia and a friend, other Israeli friends, they have a restaurant and some people came in and just spat on the food very recently.
So it’s the image of the spit, you know, because they’re Israeli, Jewish in Australia. I’m not saying everybody does that, I’m not saying it’s happening everywhere. It’s just an example of how humans can go so low in their treatment of others and show prejudice and hate and how effective you can make it in theatre or film when it’s a spit, more than the predictable gun, knife attack, et cetera. And there’s something so grotesque that it’s almost a grotesque parody, I think, for me, that Fugard touches. When we experience it, we are shocked, we get the horror, but it’s grotesque and that makes us not laugh. But there’s a very, very profound dark irony, which creates a dark humour inside that moment that something as banal and simple as that, you know, which kids do all the time and anybody, you know, but when it’s done in that context, is so devastating. Okay, so if we can… That’s “Master Harold … and the Boys,” which I’m going to come to and show a clip. And then “The Island” is the other play. And “The Island” is obviously about two characters who on the island, they are prisoners and obviously the reference is to Robben Island, Mandela, and many others, but there’s no name, you know, it’s about their experience. And all I’m going to say about it is that we have such a visceral experience and they use humour and comedy so much of the time because they decide they’re going to put in a play. The ancient Greek tragedy, “Antigone,” and “Antigone” was about… Antigone is the girl and teenager, and she is the niece of Creon, who’s the king of Thebes, of the Greek town at the time. And his law is transgressed by her brother, who is the king’s nephew. And so the body is killed and the body is taken outside the city walls.
But according to ancient Greek mythology, the body is not allowed to be buried because he committed a crime inside the city. But according to ancient Greek religion that she’s part of, she wants to bury her brother’s body. Two teenagers, and their uncle is the king. So she says, “Look, you know, break your law, let’s going bury your nephew, my brother outside of the city walls.” The king says, “No, I can’t break the law.” And so she sneaks out at night, buries her brother in the sand. The next morning the guards find, and obviously they arrest Antigone and take her to her uncle, the king. And he has to decide, does he follow the law because he is king or does he follow his personal desire because it’s his niece, you know, who committed this heinous crime of burying a brother, and he chooses the law. It’s a great classic of ancient Greek theatre. The law versus personal morality and personal justice. Brilliant, and inside the play and the two prisoners on “The Island” decide to act out the story of “Antigone” and rehearse it and a lot of comedy and wit and all that comes in. And then finally, in the last quarter of the play, we get the complete seriousness. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please. This is John Kani, 1942, one of the true great actors to have come out of South Africa. Brilliant, and then a writer as well and written, you know, plays post-apartheid. Fantastic actor, one of the absolutely brilliant in the world, I think, and written plays in the post-apartheid era also. These are guys, all young, working with a young Fugard. Next slide, please. Okay, Winston Ntshona, who also worked with Fugard. And these three created “The Island.” They created other plays, “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” and many, which became a great classic, the workshop tradition with humour, stereotype and psychological characters.
They created some of the great tradition of some of the great, not only anti-apartheid plays, but plays with humour, wit, comedy, dark humour around prejudice and hate and how quick and easy it is to play it out in a two or three-hander play with minimal prop, minimal set, and very low budget. Workshopping, the workshop theatre, again, idea coming as the three of them worked on it. Fantastic actor, Winston Ntshona. Okay, so I’m going to show a clip from “The Island” if we can go to the next one, please. And this is from “The Island.” It’s that serious part which comes at the end. The one character knows he’s going to be released from the Island, freedom. The other one is there for life.
I was wearing a white shirt.
Ja.
Black tie, a pair of grey flannel trousers.
Ja,
My brown Crockett shoes. It’s funny, Winston, I can’t remember the socks.
Ja.
But I had them on.
Ja.
My check jacket and a watch.
Ja.
I, I had a watch Winston.
They’ ll wrap them up into a parcel. Give the parcel to you, you’ll have it under your arms and then they lead you to the gates. New Brighton waiting outside for you. They will open the big gate and everybody’s going to rush to you. Your father, your mother, your wife Princess, is going to rush to you.
No!
The children.
Stop, I’m not listening.
I’m not finished yet.
I’m not listening.
Your people are going to take you home. New Brighton, 38 Gratten, everybody waiting for you. Your aunts, your uncles, neighbours, teachers, brothers. They’ll give you everything. They’ll give you food, they’ll give you water. They’re going to place you on a chair and you’re going to sit on that chair like a king. And you’re going to start talking.
No.
And you’re going to start telling them about this place, about the quarry, about Hodoshe, and about a friend you left inside called Winston.
No!
But you won’t be happy yet. They’ll buy your beers, they’ll find you women. They’re going to fix you with a beautiful woman, a joint, and leave you there. You’re going to watch her pull her clothes off and get closer, you’re going to feel her. You’re going to watch her pull her pants down and get closer. You’re going to feel it too, it’s going to and you’re going to start that woman.
Stop it, Winston. Stop it! What’s happening? Why are you punishing me? What have I done?
You stink.
No.
You stink of beers. You stink of company. You stink of a woman, you stink of . You stink of freedom. Your freedom stinks and it’s driving me mad.
No.
Don’t deny it.
No.
Don’t bloody deny it. You know where I ended up this morning? You know where I ended up this morning? I ended up in the quarry next to Old Harry. Do you know Old Harry? You know Old Harry?
Old Harry, 75 years old. Section C, serving life.
Take a look at Old Harry. Look into his eyes. Look at his hands. Have you ever watched Old Harry work with that chisel and hammer, making 20 perfect pieces of stone every day? Nobody can do it like him. That’s why they’re nice to him. They’ve changed him into a stone. He’s forgotten himself. He’s forgotten everything. He’s forgotten why he’s here. And that’s what is happening to me.
No.
Why am I here?
No!
Why am I here?
You put your head on the block for others.
others.
Don’t talk like others. What, what about the oaths we took?
.
What about our slogans?
slogans.
Our children, our country, our freedom?
Why am I here? I am getting jealous of your freedom. I want to count. God also gave me 10 fingers, but what do I count inside here? My life. How do I do it? How do I do it? Help me. One, another day comes. One, many more days come. One, another day. One. One.
Okay, if we could freeze it there, please, Georgia. Thanks. It’s one of the most amazing pieces of acting. Just two actors on stage. Remarkable performance. They’re so inside, what I was saying, it’s three dimensional character. They’re not just suddenly prisoners anymore. You know, the stereotype label, if you like, prisoners on Robben Island or “The Island.” They become more human in front of our eyes from the comedy I mentioned of rehearsing “Antigone,” acting it. They’ve got to act the girl, Antigone. They’ve got to act Creon and they don’t want to act, they don’t want to rehearse it, it’s an ancient Greek play, why do it? But this is about three quarters of the way through the play after, the reality starts to really hit us. From laughing and the satire, the dark humour gives rise to the real suffering inside. Why? Through prejudice and hate, the suffering. And this idea of a prisoner and the hostage, for me, in contemporary language, you know, what’s happening obviously in Gaza, the hostages, what’s happening for Ukrainians or whoever’s taken, you know, arrested young or people, whatever. I don’t want to equate it, but I’m saying we get a feeling of it. This is written so many years ago. It’s obviously linked to apartheid directly, but it echoes through the ages and it echoes through geographic lands for me so powerfully of prisoners. You know, therefore a belief or for an idea or simply how they’re born or just, you know, terrible luck, whatever it might be. So very powerful there. And the idea of what prejudice can really do, it destroys identity of course. And identity becomes a stone, a cold. They can’t remember anymore. Just a day at a time, whatever the day is. Okay, if we go on to the next slide, please. This is a clip from the same play from a contemporary Chicago production, relatively recent, with more visuals and other things added in just to give an idea of how different cultures can try it and stage it in their own way. Okay, if we can freeze it there, please. Okay, thanks, Georgia. So just wanted to give a couple of seconds to show, you know, we can stage it more visually, we can stage it in so many ways. But it’s again, with just a couple of props, a couple of objects, brilliant acting and a really good script, you know, which takes us into the inner life of these characters. Okay, I’m going to move on. This is a clip from “Master Harold… and the Boys,” and it’s building up to the moment of the spit that I mentioned. We can show it, please.
[Hally] You had two thin pieces of wood and you were smoothing them down with a knife. But when I asked you what you’re doing, you just said, “Wait and see, Hally.” It was only when you tied the two pieces of wood together into a cross and put that down on the brown paper that I realised what you were doing. Sam’s making a kite.
[Sam] Hally, it’s your mother.
I brought Daddy home, Hally.
I’m warning you now, when the two of you start fighting, then I’m leaving home. ‘Cause he’ll be at your purse before long, for money, for booze.
Now, Hally, stop, that’s your father you’re talking about.
Just leave me and my father alone.
I’m not the one saying terrible things about him.
And as far as my father’s concerned, all you need to remember is that he’s your boss.
[Mother] Tell the boys when they’re finished with the floors, they must clean the windows.
He isn’t, I get paid by your mother.
He’s a white man and that’s good enough for you.
What homework do you have? If we’re not careful, somebody is going to get hurt. Come Willie, let’s finish up.
Don’t turn your back on me!
Don’t do that.
Why don’t you start calling me Master Harold.
If you make me say it once, I’ll never call you anything else again. I’ve also got a memory of a little white boy in short trousers and a Black man flying a kite. Should we try again?
Try what?
Fly another kite, I suppose.
Very powerful and intriguing play for me and what I spoke about earlier. We can see this is in the trailer, but we can start to see the real complexity of characters coming out, which is what Fugard, I think created so fantastically in that play. Okay, I’m going to move on to the next one, if we can show the slide, please. Reza De Wet. And Reza De Wet was born in Senekal in the Free State, went to the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University in Grahamstown. She wrote 12 plays in her lifetime in both Afrikaans and English, obviously of an Afrikaans heritage. She won nine awards. Her plays have won more than 40 theatre awards all over. She’s one of the most staged playwrights in the country of all the playwrights that came out of South Africa. Not that well known. Tragically, her short life was ended with leukaemia in 2012. For me, a brilliant writer, understanding the mind of white Afrikaner, understanding the mind of those who are carrying out, you know, the prejudice, the hate, the seeing of others as inferior, primitive, savage, all the rest of it. But what happens to the mind of that family? And we see the complete breakdown of the Calvinist family. The idea of the laagers and everybody, you know, entrenched in a little laager, terrified to step outside. So make sure that everybody inside that laager inside the circle of the Afrikaner family is absolutely militaristically ruled and in their place. It’s Calvinism all the way, she gets it. The idea of the chosen people of Africa, the covenant with God, the Battle of Blood River that came about with that idea. White Afrikaner identity, what actually was it? The father, mother relationships and the dystopia, the savage breakdown of those relationships between the two and then the parent and child, the incest. It’s the dark humour, it’s grotesque parody. It’s grotesque what happens with incest and all these things. She goes right to the heart of it. But there’s always something witty and ironic, strange. It makes us laugh, but also quite freaked out at the same time.
It’s brutal and innocent. And that’s the effect on an audience. And that’s fantastic when you can create that effect on an audience where you make audiences feel, this is brutal what’s going on on stage. But actually these characters are quite innocent. They don’t really know what they’re actually doing. They’re just following the propaganda learned in childhood. You know, as one psychologist once said to me, a childhood is just internalised propaganda. Okay, we see that going on. We see the identity of Africa, the land, the volk, the people, the stories that go down that are lived and believed in. And obviously, you know, the religion, who’s the devil? Who isn’t the devil? And the child and the parent in a terrifying, endless conflict of power ultimately and control. She goes right in. She’s not trying to reach out in a way like Fugard is to understand, you know, people with a different colour of skin. She’s going inside her own group that she grew up with, Reza de Wet. And I’m going to just, a bit short of time, I’m going to speak just a little bit about one play of hers called “Breathing In,” and it’s set on a desolate farm during the Anglo-Boer War, 1902. She often sets it in the past during the Boer War and other times of great trauma for the white Afrikaner. 50,000 Boers with guns on horseback, taking on a quarter of a million British soldiers of the empire over three years and ultimately, well, winning first or at least holding them back and then losing because of the scorched-earth policy to burn the farms, burn the homes, and to get all the children and the kids into the concentration camps where they die of disease, which brings the poor farmers because they have nothing to eat and they’ve lost everything in their family. It makes them surrender, partly makes them surrender ultimately. So there’s the trauma she understands from history of that inherited memory of the Afrikaner but then what it’s done, you know, decades and decades later. So this play, “Breathing In” is a Boer general. He is taken in by one of the white Afrikaner families in 1902 during the war, the Anglo-Boer War, but he’s dying.
And the mother, the white Afrikaner mother and the white Afrikaner daughter are helping to keep him alive, tend to his wounds, give him a bit of water. And he’s moaning and crying, he’s in agony because he’s in such pain and they try and help. But here is where the grotesque parody and the dark humour come in. As he’s breathing in, the daughter, in order to stay beautiful and young, has always got to make sure she sucks in his dying breaths. “Breathing In” is the title. As long as she sucks in the dying breaths of the Boer general, literally over his mouth, over his face, she will stay beautiful and young. So Reza de Wet is putting in fantastic surreal grotesque parody. It’s dark humour, you got to laugh, it’s so ridiculous. But it’s surreal and it’s terrifying. It’s brutal and it’s comic at the same time. The relationship between the father and son, the metaphors that are going on, that he’s a general, he’s not just a father. So he’s really up the authoritarianism, Calvinism, all of that speaks in. She always creates profoundly moving images like that. Then the general dies. And a young soldier called Brand comes in and he’s all about patriotism and loyalty to the Boers and the Afrikaners. They’ve got to win the war against the British Empire, you know, and for the mother and daughter, they’re just trying to survive on scraps, a bit of food, a bit of bread, this and that. They couldn’t care about patriotism, authoritarianism, all of that myth. It’s just nonsense to them. They’ve got to survive day to day. They’ve got no firewood to keep warm, nothing. So what happens that he’s there, but he’s convinced, “Patriots, please help me.” He’s wounded, he’s injured, and the daughter does the same thing. She sucks in the dying breaths of the young white Afrikaner soldier in the Boer wars. So the daughter continues to stay young and beautiful. Reza de Wet has many plays which have these magical, closest to like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, sort of magic realism.
There’s a parody though, there’s a dark humour inside it, a wit and the imagination of those images, it echoes in our minds forever, I believe. As the mother says to the daughter at the end of the play, “Well, he knew about war and honour, but he didn’t know you or me.” In other words, what she’s saying in the play, “Okay, soldiers, you can know about war and patriotism and honour and all these great ideas, et cetera, but we try to survive. No food, no warmth, no fire, nothing, water anything. Only way to survive is suck in the dying breath of all these wounded soldiers that come.” It’s a grotesque imagery of, as I say, the dark humour inside it for me. And the parody of everything about Calvinism, of everything about land and volk and patriotism and all of that. She’s not scared to go to the heart of darkness of the Afrikaner life, but she’s also aware of the suffering in the history from the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps, the white Afrikaner farmers in the concentration camps, suffering and dying of disease, you know, under the British empires. So she’s playing with that complexity in the plays. So it’s not just one sided, it becomes fantastically incestuous, complex, nuanced and it’s gripping to watch these things 'cause you can’t believe what might happen or what might not. Okay, there’s other plays that she wrote, but we’ll leave that for now. Okay, if we can go onto the next clip, please. We’ll skip that, the “African Gothic.” These are some of the plays that she wrote. “African Gothic” is another one, which… But “Breathing In” for me is still the most powerful, that image that I mentioned. We can skip this one, we can go onto the next one. We can skip this. Okay, we go onto the next clip. Thanks. So we go on to the next one, “Woza Albert!” the great play, 1981. The most famous and most world renowned of all South African theatre. Comes out of that early tradition of Gibson Kente I mentioned and “King Kong,” the workshop tradition and it’s Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema, who went on to make “Sarafina!” and other things.
And the three of them together, they go to the Market Theatre in the early 1980s and they work with Barney Simon, the great fantastic South African director and theatre creator. And he helps put the play into context and helps script and put it into a structure and it becomes the most famous play, toured South Africa and the world for many, many years. And it’s still done everywhere, all over. The basic premise, two actors, very low budget, simple play, and two actors. And they have the question, what if Jesus Christ came to apartheid South Africa and what would happen? And the authorities freak and they decide they’ve got to create a nuclear bomb and nuke parts of South Africa. And they play many, many other characters in “Woza Albert!” And we see them acting out the white authorities, the white police. We see them acting out Black characters. Many, many stereotypes are played by the two actors with just a simple prop and a few simple, a change of jacket, a change of shirt, a change of a cap, change of body. And they act out many different characters. But like in “The Lehman Trilogy,” you know, three actors there act out about 20 characters each. Here two actors act out at least 17, 18 characters each. And it’s all done in satire to cover up the suffering under apartheid through prejudice and hate of the other. Go on to the next clip, please. So here we see in the middle is Barney Simon who came from, as I said, Lithuanian Jewish origins. And he started the Market Theatre, fantastically, with Mannie Manim, the brilliant lighting designer and producer in South Africa. This is the original poster, one of the very early posters of “Woza Albert!” on the left at one of the very early pictures of them. They use clown images, Commedia dell'arte of Italian influence, clown with a red nose in order to act and play different characters in a very physical comedy style, which was very popular and became even more. But again, it’s the workshop idea coming through it all. Moving on to the next slide, please. Okay, this is about “Sophiatown,” which I’m going to come into. And “Sophiatown…” Sorry, if we can just play this. This is the “Woza Albert!” clip, my apology.
Back in 1981-
If we can play this, please, Georgia.
Two of South Africa’s theatre greatests, Mbongeni Ngema, and Percy Mtwa came together to create “Woza Albert!” what would become one of the most iconic plays to come out of South Africa. Fast forward to 2019 and these two theatre royals have reunited for a run of their original work that has lived on stages both locally and internationally. In the play, Christ arrives during apartheid. To stop Him, the state launches a nuclear bomb, and from the ruins, great leaders like Albert Luthuli rise again to inspire the people.
So you, Barney Simon, and Percy Mtwa came together some 40 years ago and decided to create a play called “Woza Albert!” What was going through your heads at the time?
We were looking for, Percy and myself, we were looking for a subject matter. We had been investigating theatre techniques. We felt like we were ready to do something that the world had never, ever seen before, a phenomenon. We went to the Market Theatre and we met with Mannie Manim, who is present today as our lighting designer since then.
The first question really, when you’re doing a play and you’re dealing with the performers is who is going to direct it? Who will take it to another phase? You have a piece of glass and now we’ve got to find who can cut that to make it a diamond. I said, “Okay, who do you want?” And they said, “Barney Simon.” And I remember laughing, I said, “Hey, well, you’ve just asked for the guy who’s the artistic director of this place. He’s the busiest guy in this place and I don’t think he’s going to be available.” You know, Barney saw them, I think it was about three months later, and I remember waiting for him outside and he said, “Fantastic, fantastic. I want to, you know, I want to work with them and we will start this.”
It became like a volcano. Everybody just, “Woza” just suddenly from day one became this huge thing that everybody was talking about.
I’ve always said that “Woza Albert!” when we did it even many years ago, we did it with a spirit that was kind of unique. I think they probably recognise that even with “Woza Albert!” and many other plays because of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, theatre spoke even much louder than written words, you know, because it brought, you know, the experience, a live experience to those audiences, you know, that are watching the show. So we still have those problems we had in the past because not much has changed except that we are liberated from apartheid. But I believe we’re yet to be liberated unto total freedom.
We had to ask ourselves, what does it mean to do the play now? 'Cause whenever you do a play, it speaks to a current audience. It’s not just apartheid nostalgia. We haven’t rewritten the play in any way. It’s exactly the text that was originally performed, but the subtext has changed. And so the power of the play now is that it reminds us of the class and race struggle that was part of apartheid. It makes the audience remember how, some of them, how they felt at that time. And so the ending of the play, which is Woza Albert and Woza Steve Biko, and all these heroes. When they did it originally it was about mass mobilisation and a struggle against apartheid. Now, when they play that scene, it has a slightly different meaning, which is a call for moral leadership.
The reason people should come
If we can freeze it there, please.
and see this play- Thank you. So you can see how taking the play written many, many decades ago, trying to find this contemporary way, you know, calling for moral leadership, calling for, you know, something very different, ironically around the time of the elections right now. And I think those words all sum it up where the actors are talking, Mannie Manim is talking and the director there as well. But again, it’s using comedy, parody, satire of the greatest form, physical acting workshop. And after you laugh and you laugh and you laugh, you finally get the seriousness coming out with it. Dark humour leads to light insight by the end. Okay, go on to the next clip, please. And I’m going to very quickly go through the last play. “Sophiatown,” written by a good friend of mine, Malcolm Purkey, in Johannesburg, and fantastic theatre creator and director. And basically the idea, and so this is from a much more contemporary, a fairly recently done production in Johannesburg. And the basic idea was a Black family living in Sophiatown which then became Triomf under apartheid, Triumph. But “Sophiatown” was one of the areas where intellectuals, artists, creatives, we’d call 'em today, kind of a bit of like a, I suppose a Greenwich village and all got together writing, creating, doing things and so on, living jazz and drinking and, you know, just doing things young people would do. And there’s one Black family, they decide they’re going to advertise in the newspaper for a white woman to come and stay with them and see what happens. Set up as a joke, set up half serious. And then she does, and a white Jewish girl from the suburbs, Johannesburg, comes to stay. And then we play out the whole thing. The story goes after that from that fantastically inventive premise. And we get the comedy, the satire, the wit and the coming together, the collision and the clash and the coming together of the two races basically in the play. Later we discover the forced removals are happening where all the Black characters are told, they get a letter. They have to move, forced removals, into what will become into Soweto.
As we all know, the word Soweto stands for southwestern townships. Okay, and I’m going to finish this with just showing a short clip 'cause there’s plenty jazz music, singing and song in the spirit of the play together with that serious side. Again, dark humour covered up by a fantastic wit. If we can show it, please. Next clip. Okay, if we can freeze it there. Thanks. It was a director by an ex student of mine, Aubrey Sekhabi. So this is a play, you know, which like the others are trying to come together of the two races under the overall cloud, which is gathering storm of forced removals of Black people from one area to another area with very little. Okay, so I’ve just wanted to sum it up just in a nutshell, just give a sense from the beginning of Gibson Kente, “King Kong "and all the others is the extraordinary range of South African theatre. And I think what pulls it together is obviously prejudice, obviously hate, and the perception of the other and how the other is staged and performed in a way that isn’t boring, a stand and deliberate lecture or, you know, like an exhausting, you know, who’s right, who’s wrong, polemic basically, or a loud, you know, debate show sort of thing. It’s done with entertainment, it’s done with music, song, dance, with huge amounts of comedy is the key and satire. And we will always get underneath the wizardry of fun and satire and laughing. We will finally get hit like a punch in the guts with the seriousness of what’s really happening in the bigger picture as ordinary people trying about their lives. And just because of a bit of difference, it could be colour of skin, as it is obviously in South African history. It could be ethnic, it could be a religious difference, could be anything as we have today, which just gives us a sense of how the fever of prejudice can just ignite and destroy. Okay, thanks very much. I’m going to go into some questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Brandy, hi. Oh, okay, hi, thank you. It’s okay.
Thelma, "Grew up in Port Elizabeth, Athol Fugard’s younger sister, Glenda, was in my class at school.” Okay, great.
“His mother ran a cafe in the local swimming bars and I think Master Harold was from his background.” Yeah, he said that it wasn’t really memoir but it was obviously partly from his own personal history, not perhaps literally autobiographical the details, but overall from his personal history, yeah.
Q: Monte, “How would you compare cultural vitality of Black South Africans apartheid era to that of post-apartheid South Africa? Is it now richer?”
A: Phew, Monte, that’s a fascinating question and it’s huge and I don’t want to duck it. I just think that there are so many reasons why, what you’re saying, cultural vitality, I think that, you know, Freud said, you know, often we laugh, we have to make humour in times of terrible adversity. It’s a way of humanly coping, I think. So I think it’s about, you know, what I was saying with suffering and comedy, suffering and wit and how we try as humans make wit when in times of suffering or prejudice and that gives a vitality. And then South Africa, the influence of all the music types, jazz and folk and rock and African traditional and, you know, all the different racial types of music from all over the world coming in to the country, song and dance, I think it’s all there. I think these things go way back in most cultures anywhere in the world. And I think that they are rich, all of them. I think that just at certain times they just bubble up and come out like a volcano and then go down again and come out and go down. Certain times in America or France or England or Germany or Japan or wherever, they just burn and then go down. And I think it’s a constant shift because they go back so far, hundreds if not thousands of years in a kind of cultural memory. 'Cause that’s in the end what we grew up so powerfully with. We have our own cultures memory and bigger cultures that we are part of as well. And the stories that we grew up with.
Q: Macko, “Do you know it was the local police in Johannesburg permitted the integration environment at Dorkay House where Fugard and others,” yes, “created?”
A: Exactly. I remember going there at Eloff Street extension on the bad part from Wits University in the early '60s. Fantastic, yeah, it was at Dorkay House was where a lot of them started. Absolutely, Macko.
Julian, “Jean Anouilh,” yeah. “French dramatist, wrote a version of 'Antigone’ during the Nazi occupation.” Yeah, and it’s a great play and it’s a great version of the ancient Greek play that he wrote and the English translations are really good of Anouilh’s version written, as you say, during the Second World War, during the Nazi occupation of “Antigone” in Paris.
Monty. “The Boer wars, the British also burnt their crops and slaughtered their animals.” Yep, they certainly did. And thanks for that, Monty. Definitely.
Q: Ron, “Hope you’re well. Hope you’re keeping okay. Is there any censorship in South Africa today?”
A: That’s a brilliant question. I got to check it actually. I don’t think there really is in terms of anything like it was. I’m sure there is the hate speech, free speech, what’s allowed, what isn’t. I’m not a legal expert, so I’d need to check that before getting back to you, Ron. In terms of legality and in terms of social mores, I’m not quite up to date with that at the moment in terms of that kind of censorship, which is more social, not necessarily strictly legal. Great point.
Monty says, “Depends on your definition of censorship.” Yeah, well, there’s work, you know, what you can say, what you can’t say, you know, which is not necessarily legal censorship, but it’s certainly social control.
Q: Annette, “Is there a link you can give us for the express of the site discussion on "Woza Albert!”?
A: Yeah, if you want to email me with pleasure through Lockdown, through the Lockdown website, I can give links to any of this. And “Woza Albert!” and others, sure. That clip, it happens about three quarters of the way through more. It’s close towards the end of the play, you know, and finally, and that’s when all the comedy and the satire are trying to act out “Antigone,” rehearsing, not wanting to, and all the witty things happening in the prison, it starts to, it just drops in front of your eyes and the cold reality of prisoners who forget their identity, forget why they’re even there, the number is a day after day and they have no hope for a future and it hits us so powerfully. It’s incredibly structured, that play. “The Island” for Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, it’s so beautifully done together with “Master Harold.” I think those are the two, for me, that stand out of all his plays.
Rita, “Discrimination to prejudice. I prefer the word discrimination to prejudice.” Okay, Rita, that’s great. I’m happy to use one or both. A lot of people have asked me to use the word prejudice as well, so if you’ll bear with us, Rita, we will try sometimes use the word discrimination and sometimes prejudice. I’ve had emails asking for both, probably about, you know, well, more to use prejudice, but I’m going to take it. Thank you for saying that. Appreciate.
Ray, thanks. “I’ve worked with many of these performers.” Fantastic. Oh, that’s great Ray. Love to hear more.
Q: Paula, “Can you please define magic realism?”
A: Magic realism I suppose was a phrase coined really about South American literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and many others. It’s where the event or the story takes suddenly surprisingly strange… Surreal things start to happen, which are almost dreamlike and you’re not sure is it real, isn’t it real? Did it really happen, didn’t it? And you discover if it really happened or it didn’t. But it’s not following, I suppose, a mirror to exactly how people are living naturalism, which would be, this is how they live, this is how they eat, this is what they do, this is what they sleep, sing, et cetera. It takes on some other surreal experiences which seem dreamlike. We’re not sure if they’re real or not in the novel or in the play or in the movie. And then later we learn it’s this or it’s that. So it’s kind of combining ordinary characters and naturalism together with a kind of surreal sequences but not obvious dream in a way, it dawns of us. It’s a bit of a long answer. I’ll get you a shorter answer. Okay, great question, Paula.
Ray, thank you. You also worked there in Bloemfontein in a trip down memory lane, yeah. Okay, great. Well that’s a little overview of some South African theatre and I wanted to show through the Fugard and Reza de Wet in particular, and the others, some of the treasure that in essence, if you look at the whole world, a fairly small country going through pretty terrible time at the time throughout under the eye of the police all the time and threat of arrest and worse, it just threw out so much creativity with dark humour, with wit, with intelligence and insight and such a entertaining mix of theatre genres on very low budgets primarily. What can be done with just a stage and a couple of actors and a couple of props and a good script.
Okay, thanks very much everybody. Hope you have a great rest of the weekend. Thanks Georgia, and take care.