Visibility: James Ngcobo says the Market Theatre is celebrating the ‘tenacious young actors and people who are writing stories that speak to the now’. Photo: Paul Botes
Veteran actor James Ngcobo, artistic director of Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, wears many hats. Despite his demanding schedule, he took time out to speak to Ntombizodwa Makhoba about a recent milestone at the theatre, how it felt to scoop his fourth South African Film and Television Award for his role in Netflix’s Queen Sono, and his other loves: cooking fish, rabbit stew and biryani, listening to jazz and walking.
What does being the artistic director for the Market Theatre entail?
It’s a very daunting task to be an artistic director. Sometimes I think it’s just one of the most difficult things I’ve had to take on in my life. My biggest role is to find a way to programme these spaces, to curate words in these spaces onstage and to find ways to be constantly thinking about what other reasons you want people to come to the theatre, besides just coming to watch plays.
One of the things that I’ve had to do here has been to be very cognisant of the fact that we are making theatre and telling stories in a country that is constantly going through its evolution.
Since 1994, the story of this country has changed, we’ve opened our borders for people who have come from all over the world. Our role is to always be concocting new ideas and one of the things that I’m very delighted with is that we’ve successfully accomplished that by creating content that is told in our indigenous languages.
Do people still go to the theatre?
Yes, it’s business as usual but we are adhering to all the necessary Covid-19 protocols. Even though we’re going through this pandemic, sometimes people will end up being our patrons. They just want to escape and just go to a space for two hours where they can put a pause in their lives, and just explore somebody else’s story.
We are also making sure that in such a very bleak and difficult time, we are able to help where we can and be paying set designers, lighting designers, sound designers, actors, playwrights and composers.
It is a mandate and a commitment that we have as the Market Theatre to create employment. I’ve just worked with singers and young actresses who just graduated from different universities, because the Market Theatre was celebrating its 45th birthday in May.
It was amazing to work with these young actors and artists who were starting off, who reminded me of myself years ago.
That’s more than four decades already. How did you celebrate the historical theatre milestone?
It’s an amazing milestone for the theatre. I worked with six young female creatives who created a piece that specifically marked the celebration of the Market Theatre’s 45th birthday. We have opened three exhibitions that I’d commissioned to three young curators to create exhibitions. When you walk inside the building of the Market, our walls speak a story of our recent histories. And then we’ve also put those recent histories on the same pedestal.
We want to create a visibility of the young actors and young creators of content that have been working at the Market in the last eight to ten years. For us at the Market Theatre, we are also celebrating and taking our hats off to tenacious young actors and people who are writing stories that speak to the now, and that’s what we did for our big celebration. We also had an unbelievable programme that we put together on the actual day. We were able to have 50 people to celebrate with us in the theatre and even live-streamed the event to accommodate everyone, not only in South Africa, but also around the world.
People are increasingly using streaming services to watch content. In terms of technology, what have you done to bring theatre into our homes?
We have created a lot of content for our social media platforms. We are not dinosaurs telling stories in a corner somewhere. We understand what is happening in the now. If you look for us, you will find us with a couple of plays that are on all our social media platforms, that people have a link that they tap into, for us to bring in some revenue by selling those tickets. We are in the now. Sometimes some of the works are hybrid and we perform them in the theatre. We film plays and use them for online space. Our visibility on social media is massive and we are constantly speaking in that space. As you see, newspapers are on the decline, we are moving on digital marketing to those spaces to where the audience is, unfortunately we can’t sit in the past.
Describe how you felt when you won Best Supporting Actor at the South African Film and Television Awards (Saftas) for your role as the corrupt African leader President Malunga on Netflix’s Queen Sono?
This is my fourth Safta award. It was just so breathtaking for me to find myself in a space where I wasn’t responsible for anything. I was in good hands and it just reminded me of how much I love acting. Comedian Kagiso Lediga is an amazing writer, producer and director. I was delighted to have an opportunity to work with actors I’ve never worked with before; the likes of Pearl Thusi and Vuyo Dabula. I might be an artistic director for the Market Theatre but it doesn’t mean I won’t act anymore. I still audition for roles and I still get approached by production companies. I will be an actor until my last breath.
For a change, you were not calling the shots but taking orders.
I am such an easy actor to direct when I’m in that space and when I don’t wear another hat. I just become an actor. I understand how important it is to allow a director to dissect their vision of how they see a thing, rather than to impose my ideas on it. Of course, there were things that we discussed where I was asked, how do you feel about some of the things? I would give an actor’s answer. I know my place, and what is nice about me is that I also get to direct actors who are directors themselves, but when I’m directing them, they walk into the room as actors.
What do you do to relax your mind and body?
I love cooking. My grandmother gave me a gift of cooking and I’ve never escaped it. When I cook … I can be in the kitchen for hours on my own. My grandmother taught me how to make rabbit stew and I love preparing it. I also enjoy making biryani and cooking traditional dishes. I am a coastal boy who grew up in Durban so I just love fish. I get very experimental with fish and my favourite vegetables are brinjal and spinach. I can eat both everyday. I also enjoy listening to jazz and classical music. I walk a lot to clear my head. That’s the stuff that becomes my ticket to escapism.
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