Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg
Three-quarters of the way through Kere Nyawo’s gritty prison comedy Hola Majita, a young male prisoner is forced to don a frock and perform the duties of a whore. Where is all this leading, I wonder. Another quaint, stereotypical comic device pretending to be something more than a handy link into the next song? Another prison saga that will nudge and wink at the realities of prison sex but not develop the theme with any guts?
Wrong.
Half an hour later, as the delighted cast runs back onto stage for an encore, I am feeling considerably impressed and a tad queasy. We have just watched the young man in a dress being cornered by a gang, raped, choked with a rolled-up blanket and then brutally stabbed to death.
Rogers and Hammerstein it ain’t, but the violence played off on stage is not the reason I feel queasy. It stems from the fact that the audience watching Hola Majita had been positively howling with laughter right up to the bit where the boy is repeatedly stabbed.
Is it because South Africans have become so hardened that we find crime laughable? I think not, though it might help. Is it because we laugh to hide our horror and mortification? Possibly that has a bit to do with it.
But the laughter has, most likely, a more logical origin: The Positive Arts Society, a community-based group who developed the piece working in prisons in 1993, has fostered a breed of farcical social realism so particular that one would be hard- pressed to dismiss it.
This is not some glib conclusion reached over a drink at the bar afterwards. For some time after leaving the theatre, I wondered if Hola Majita really is significantly better than much community work we have seen.
It develops around the same old formula: it is didactic; plays on lowest comic denominators; boasts crudely energetic performances on the amateurish side; espouses an over-arching moral (rehabilitation is just a feelgood phrase; our prisons are inhuman). And then of course there’s the most telling clue — it weaves a song-and-dance routine into the action every 15 minutes.
Yet despite all that, the play is different. What sets it apart from a clutch of other community prison plays is both its willingness to tell it like it is without censure and the astonishing energy of its cast. Hola Majita is not just saying that the system causes brutality; it is saying that above all else, we are evil — and the system brings that evil out.
But more importantly, director Thulani Didi has developed a style of animated physicality that grips the audience firmly by its communal funny bone, yet defies easy classification.
He has identified and utilised the finest qualities of community theatre to his advantage, turning out a trademark piece of rich theatre on a shoestring budget. Call it rich poor theatre if you will.
Like some sort of Third World Shakespearean pioneer, he has employed the unlocalised stage to full effect, allowing the action to shift and leap where it pleases. He has used physicality to portray caged energy. He has used mime to replace props. And he has done it in a way that compels both the cast and the audience to stretch their imaginations to the full.
The creators of Hola Majita believe in that imaginative power. And they employ it to address social evils without preaching (too much). What leads to an encore is that they put every ounce of their energy into their mission.
Hola Majita is on stage at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg until February 28