Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg
From the parking lot already, it is obvious that this is not going to be a regular evening at the theatre. There are large, mounted candles burning outside on the lawn of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereenigings’s Trap der Jeugd national monument building in Cottlesloe, Johannesburg, and there are bizarre sculptures gracing the precinct, like strange, balancing, mutilated angels. Kuns is in the air.
Inside the venue, there is no sign instructing you please to switch off your cellphone; instead, eight large tables each seating eight people. These are reserved for ticket buyers, a bottle of red wine and two glasses ready and waiting. And shock, horror, astonishment: ashtrays on the tables.
Feels just like old times.
Like the times, I am told, in the Thirties and the Forties, when Afrikaans acting troupes would tour the platteland and rig up their play in whatever saal was available. Or, as Pieter Fourie, head of the Klein Karroo Kunste Fees would put it, “When you took theatre to the people, not when you expected them to come to you.”
The play we are here to see at the Trap der Jeugd theatre is called Agter Geslote Deure (Behind Closed Doors, a translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1947 existential nightmare, No Exit). It is a project driven by one of those old school pioneers, Wim Vorster, with the backing of the Johannesburg Amateur Theatre Organisation.
Amateur backing maybe, but Agter Geslote Deure is a professional production, starring such luminaries as Antoinette Kellerman, Paul Luckhoff and – in a welcome return to the stage – Rina Nienaber.
It is particularly Kellerman who shines in this simple tale of three characters who have died and gone to hell – hell, that is, according to Sartre, as “the inescapable judgement of others”. Those whom we trap and are trapped by as we shuffle off the mortal coil.
To be honest, it is not Agter Geslote Deure that impresses me, finely executed though it is. Rather, it is the setting and circumstance of the production; the ability of a group of talented actors to survive a barren season by going back to basics.
This is the response of a spate of recent Afrikaans productions, such as the groundbreaking musical Palang van Dwaal, Breyten Breytenbach’s uncompromising Boklied, Ilse van Hemert’s astonishing Mallemeulwals, and that of the actors’ troupe originated by Deon Opperman when work was scarce.
Even when the plays aren’t indigenous, these actors are adapting existing works, trying to lure back an audience and taking theatre back where it belongs – to the people.
Agter Geslote Deure runs at the Trap der Jeugd theatre in Cottlesloe, Johannesburg, until June 6