Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg
`Eskus me,” says a heavily pregnant Lila Luna-Skya in her bruised and broken English, “Uh know is not very glamorous when you hav to give birth on stage .”
But I mean what can a girl do?
Particularly when she’s a foreigner in a foreign country. And not just any old foreigner either; but a beautiful, lovelorn, abandoned, fire-eating, card- reading, flame-throwing, bubble-blowing, barefoot mystic who has just walked all the way to Oudtshoorn in search of her man.
In her one hand she clasps her pregnant belly-dancer’s belly and in the other a bunch of withered flowers and a faded photograph of her beloved Dr Kruger.
“Ees there a doctor in the house?” pleads Lila . But in vain. All she has time to do is grab a bucket and squat before her water breaks and voila! out pops a shiny crystal ball.
“Baba,” she croons, “baba .”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just the beginning of Lila Luna-Skya’s incredible journey through a mysterious South African landscape as told by the dazzling young actor Amanda Lane in her new one-woman show Spookasem.
Quite frankly, Spookasem defies description. Lane has succeeded, using the barest skeleton of a spoken text, in combining the finest aspects of physical theatre, magic, illusion, storytelling and pathos in a show that quite simply oozes uniqueness. She has drawn from every trick in the book to bring her tale to life – and in so doing re-affirmed the growth of the local theatre experiment. Makes a critic want to gush.
That Lane succeeded in wowing the audience at Des and Dawn Lindberg’s weekly soire last Sunday night is one thing; that she has been touring Spookasem through the small towns and villages of the platteland over the past few months is another story altogether.
The real surprise is that a trendy young actor like Lane – star of such flavour-of- the- moment productions such as Popcorn – has virtually single-handedly re-called the origins of South African theatre.
The time when troupes of actors would create their own works and take them to the outlying regions of the country. A time when performers could pull off productions that reverberated with the courage of their convictions; performers who could sing, dance and act; who could share the magic of theatre with the broadest possible audience.
Slowly but surely – partly thanks to the growth of the local festival circuit – more and more South African actors have once again begun to take to the road to find that audience and recall that magic. Even so, precious few have managed to do so with the flair of Lila Luna-Skya.
Des and Dawn Lindberg will be presenting Rory Rootenberg’s Cadenza this Sunday June 14, closing off their autumn season with Intercourse by Mark Banks on June 21