Charl Blignaut : Theatre
It’s quarter past 11 on Friday morning and South Africa’s best- known actor, Sello Maake ka-Ncube, is late for our interview. While I wait I read the reviews of his new play Koze Kuse Bash (all-night party) stuck to a pin-board in the atmospheric old foyer of Johannesburg’s Market Theatre.
The pin-board’s verdict is unanimous: “Stunning new workshop play.” “An inside look at what goes down at a street bash in Soweto …” “Slice of life with sociological import.”
In many respects I agree with my colleagues. Koze Kuse Bash, conceived and directed by Maake, is fresh and dynamic and, in telling the story of four friends and a tragic turn of events that leaves its protagonist Leleti Khumalo alone, facing a difficult future, certainly gets its audience involved.
Still, something about the play didn’t gel; it felt in need of honing and a more pointed direction and I felt dubious about its moral tone.
“He’s late,” says Priscilla, the theatre’s no-nonsense receptionist as I stroll by, “We’ll give him until quarter to twelve.”
When, a few minutes later, Maake appears in the foyer, he bravely ignores Priscilla’s steely gaze and apologises for being late. He’d been at his daughter Lerato’s year-end school function. We settle in for the interview in the deserted theatre bar. Lerato curls up on a couch.
It comes as no great surprise that Maake is optimistic about South African theatre. You get that sense from his over-wordy programme notes for Koze Kuse; his studious desire to propel things forward.
Anyone will tell you that it has been a barren season as South African theatre has struggled to climb out of the gaping hole left behind by the fervour of political protest work that put institutions like the Market Theatre on the world map. It’s an age-old dilemma: The act of revolution destroys the revolution.
In a sense, this is what Kose Kuze is about – kids at a bash burning up without purpose, unleashing their energy in drugs, booze and sexual violence. Hip to be bad. It is brave of Maake to tackle the subject. Things were so much simpler in the old days when there was clear injustice and a morally pure resistance. And theatre was so much simpler to produce: a bold political message, usually wrapped in layers of song, forging a line that can be traced from Gibson Kente through to Mbongeni Ngema.
At a very cool moment in the interview Maake pulls from his bag a book by dramatist Edward Bond. He draws attention to a passage about communal understanding and the need to identify ourselves on stage. For Maake it is time to look beyond the big picture and get beneath the skin of the community; to speak with an audience and not preach at it; to reconsider our depiction of the psychological landscape.
Take the appearance of Leleti Khumalo in Koze Kuse. The actor who made her name as the young revolutionary Sarafina on stage and screen can now, for the first time, be seen in a work by someone other than her famous husband Ngema. You can see that the transition is difficult for Khumalo. She is still slightly wooden, too accustomed to the big actions and shouty delivery of protest theatre. Maake says he was always more inspired by workshop pioneer Barney Simon than Kente, who he also worked with. He speaks at length about his conviction that he must draw from actors’ life experiences. He is, in every sense of the term, an actor’s director and Khumalo is a different creature under his direction. “I felt robbed by Barney’s death,” he says. “I had got to a point where I realised I had a lot to learn from him … ” What he has taken with him is a sense of process. He listens to my criticisms of Koze Kuse without the defensiveness that critics in this town have come to expect.
At the very least, it can be said that Leleti Khumalo stars in Koze Kuse Bash. She is an international celebrity and, like Maake, is a name that can attract an audience. This is something that Maake understands all too well. If his faith in theatre is not surprising, then his defence of his television work certainly is. I had kind of expected him to be an apologist for a drama series like Generations, that made him one of the most recognized faces in the country. But Maake is too much the philosopher to waste his fame as Archie. “What is TV to you?” I ask. “Power, power, power,” he replies. “I can use my name to get people to the theatre.” It is a remarkably sophisticated thought.
Contrary to my initial fears, he is no old- fashioned man. He’s into self-improvement, not finger-wagging. “My mother always said to me that the party will always go on, go and make something of your life first, then go back to the party.” That’s why he wanted to do Koze Kuse Bash and it’s more Hubert Selby Jr than Billy Graham.
It is only when I ask him if his daughter went to see the play and he gestures her response in sign language that I realise she is deaf. It may seem trite, but with this realisation, Maake’s suss of communication and the human condition comes home to me. I ask him if I can write about Lerato and he says yes. He is not going to shelter her from reality.
Later, when I ask him about his experiences as an actor, he refers to her again. “This morning,” he says, “when I was at her school I realised that although her marks are fine, I should have spent more time helping her. But I was running around. I’ve been messed around so much and today I realised that all those people who messed me around didn’t realise that their actions had repercussions on a string of other people too.”
Again, it’s all there in Koze Kuse Bash. Our deeds do not exist in isolation. By the end of the interview I like Koze Kuse Bash a lot more than I did. It feels like a theatre that is emerging.
Earlier in the week while I was sitting outside the Market, sipping coffee and waiting to see Koze Kuse, the cast of Brett Bailey’s new play iMumbo Jumbo came bearing down on me. It felt as if a surge of energy crackled and snapped across the Market precinct as the cast of sangomas beating drums wound its way through the front doors and into the theatre.
If I were a German tourist I think I might have wet myself with excitement. It’s the same energy I felt in Maake’s play and it speaks of zeitgeist.