THEATRE: Gwen Ansell
THE poet sits mute in a chair while the secret policeman berates him for writing poems which incite “raised fists at memorial services in Regina Mundi”. Not surprising, you might think, in a play staged as a tribute to the late Steven Bantu Biko, murdered 19 years ago.
Only halfway through the first poem in Maishe Maponya’s forty-minute one-hander, Monuments — I Read What I Like, it hits you that this secret policeman is a functionary belonging not to yesterday’s state, but to the day after tomorrow’s.
The show recycles poetry from Monuments/Bambaata, allows Matsemela Manaka to play a nifty djembe, and entangles Maponya in several onstage quick-changes into assorted African robes. Carfax is a lousy space for the spoken word, with acoustics like an aircraft hangar and this is not necessarily a promising formula. But the result is brilliant.
Despite all those robes, the production is as close to pure sound as you’ll get. It’s the words, and the speaking of the words which transfix the listener, while the drum provides pace and tension. Maponya has crafted his words finely, and speaks them movingly. A very tight format eliminates the histrionic repetitions which often sink political plays. So the ideas come like bullets. Writers (if they’re any good) have a responsibility to the truth. States (inescapably) are instruments of repression. “What colour will the sky be when the clouds clear? — an apt question to throw into the candyfloss cosiness of Rainbowland.
Monuments is just the kind of experimental production for which an arts festival ought to be creating space. Not part of the Arts Alive programme, it closed on Thursday night.