Telling Stories is Paul Nompumelelo Grootboom’s first play, one that hasn’t been staged until now, but which first established his blueprint and got tongues wagging. It bears all the trademarks that we have come to love and/or hate about Grootboom’s work: the gratuitous sex and violence, liberal profanity and overwrought dialogue.
As always, these are tricks aimed at jolting us out of our collective desensitised states, as well as sure ways of generating debate and pulling in audiences.
The story revolves around Madi, played by Mandla Gaduka, a young writer who wants to write a book about township criminals. To lend the book credibility, Madi immerses himself in the lives of these thugs — thus begins his downward spiral. But it is not as simple and obvious as it sounds.
Madi’s downfall, unpacked over four hours, unfolds slowly and methodically, too deliberately for some in the audience to bear (as evidenced by several walkouts).
As much as his works seem to feed off each other, Telling Stories is in a league of its own, both in terms of self-indulgence and structure. Everything is exaggerated beyond the point of irony, as if the playwright’s only concern is to embellish an other- wise tedious exploration of the writing method rather than to titillate or add insight into thug life. Moreover, the entire first half seems to echo thematically his previous play Relativity a tad too much, with only the second half feeling like a new production.
More than anything, the play is Grootboom’s manifesto and catharsis. One’s full appreciation of it, then, can only happen when one sees it as such. The writing process is painful, compulsive and alienating, the playwright seems to be saying through the protagonist, who forever stews in a pile of crumpled scripts. The surrounding violence, even once Madi is immersed in it, highlights inner conflict about muses the brutality of the creative process as opposed to pontification about the state of the townships.
That Telling Stories is unrefined, with actors seeming to scrape through some technically demanding parts (like a train murder scene) is, in this case, secondary. As with his other works, many of the same faces crop up, seemingly cast for their stage presence rather than their ability to deliver a nuanced performance. The profound subtleties in the production are in the choices Grootboom makes with texture: the continuous juxtaposition of the heavy-handed and the nimble, the subversion of pace and the lingering graphic images that are open to personal interpretation.
Although it masquerades as forceful and aggressive, it may just be the playwright’s most tender work to date.
After its run at the State Theatre ends on May 11, Telling Stories will head to the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Belgium, for a three-day run. His new play, Interracial, which delves into the dark side of inter-racial relationships, will be staged at this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.