Janet Suzman is in Johannesburg to audition local actors for two proposed international theatre tours. She spoke to CHARL BLIGNAUT
JANET SUZMAN may have taken a dip at the standard of local theatre management during her recent spell at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, but when it comes to local acting talent she’s positively brimming over with praise.
”You sit in an audition room and pray that something remarkable will walk in … but it’s only every now and then that you pick up the unmistakeable breeze of real talent. It’s that talent I’ve experienced here. It’s very exciting and it doesn’t happen often.”
The renowned South African-born actor/director is back in town auditioning young actors for two projected international tours. Based at the Market, she has seen about a dozen actors each day for five days and her only complaint is about how much intense concentration the process requires: ”I get home at night and I just crash.”
Both Suzman and the Market management are wary of discussing their plans until everything is tied up, but the auditions are intended to provide cast members for two particularly exciting theatre ventures.
The first concerns the adaptation of Brecht’s Good Woman of Setzuan that Suzman co-wrote with Gcina Mhlophe and directed for the Market earlier this year, The Good Person of Sharkville. During the run, two separate sets of overseas visitors came to have a look, ”because people are inquisitive about what’s being done here”.
They were representatives from New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music and from the Stockholm Stadtsteater (the ensemble who later performed Twelfth Night at the Market). The adaptation so excited the visitors that, together with the Market and theatre tour producers Fifth Amendment, they have proposed a 12- to 14-week tour of the play that includes stops in Sweden, the UK and New York City. The tour is proposed to get under way in September 1997.
But not all of the original cast of The Good Person will be able to tour, including the two leads (Pamela Nomvete and Sello Maake ka Ncube – ”Sello can’t; Pamela won’t”) and hence the re-cast.
The other project that has brought Suzman to town is also an adaptation, this time of Chekov’s Cherry Orchard – ”set in post- election South Africa, it’s a way to repoint Chekov’s political theory: the defunct orchard sawed down to make room for houses to be built, that it becomes fruitful again”.
Suzman is looking to cast four to six locals to combine with a cast from Birmingham Rep in the UK. She stresses the experimental nature of the proposed collaboration, which will fall under her own direction. Early plans mark rehearsals to get under way in Birmingham in March 1997.
Together these projects amount to one of the most exciting breaks ever offered to emerging South African actors and Suzman’s enthusiasm is infectious. She can’t get over the latent talent that has paraded before her this week.
”The big difference one notices now,” she says, ”is from the youngsters, particularly the black actors, who have had the opportunity of going through credible drama departments. Their skills are more honed, they can apply themselves now. It makes me extremely happy to be involved.”