Denise Rack Louw
`Seeing how the violence around us has affected the lives of the youth I work with is what motivated me to write this show,” says dramatist and director Jerry Pooe of his musical, Peace in the Valley, currently enjoying a run at Durban’s Bat Centre.
Singer, guitarist and actress Tu Nokwe composed most of the music and the choreography is by members of the cast, with some input from Boysie Cekwana, winner of the 1995 Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Dance, as well as several FNB Vitas.
Peace in the Valley, which is set in Kwa- Mashu, was influenced by West Side Story, which was, of course, based on Romeo and Juliet. In the South African version of the story, the star-crossed lovers, Sputla and Maria, hail from different sections of Kwa- Mashu. “Sections which,” Pooe explains, “are torn apart by political war.”
Most of the show’s performers live in Kwa- Mashu, so more than being familiar with the tense environment depicted, it runs in their very blood, having affected their lives on a day to day basis.
Ironically Pooe, who was born in Gauteng in 1970, was packed off to “rural Natal” at the age of 16, to get him “away from the violence in Soweto”.
He says of the current situation in KwaZulu-Natal: “I would like to contribute to bringing peace to the province.” To this end, he hopes to obtain funding to tour the region with Peace in the Valley.
His way of getting his message across through the musical is to “concentrate more on passion than on political speeches”, and to “introduce an element of comedy”. This is in keeping with the philosophy Pooe expounded to me at the 1998 Standard Bank National Arts Festival, where he was directing Athol Fugard’s The Island for the North West Arts Drama Company.
“I try to make things a bit lighter,” he said then. “Audiences don’t want to go to the theatre to cry anymore, so I often use laughter to highlight pain.”
Having studied drama at the University of Natal in Durban, Pooe now lectures in that subject at the Natal Technikon. He also has his own company, Eager Artists, “which does educational drama and industrial work, mainly Aids plays and workshops”. He is currently involved with an Aids education project in prisons.
Having written the script for Peace in the Valley, Pooe brought in Johannesburg-based Tu Nokwe to act as musical director. “I composed new lyrics, melodies and rhythms for the show,” Nokwe says. “And I also adapted and workshopped some traditional melodies with my mother, Patty Nokwe, who acts as vocal coach to the cast.”
The anti-violence theme of Peace in the Valley held immediate appeal for Nokwe, as she was born in Kwa-Mashu, and lived there before moving first to London and then to New York, where she studied at the Manhattan School of Music.
Back in South Africa, after discovering through her community work how easy it is for young people to fall into the “wrong company” and be led into criminal activities, she has recently been turning over in her mind “the idea for a campaign of music to combat crime and violence”.
“I believe that all problems have their roots in the mind and heart,” she says. “We need to be constantly reminded that we must not hate, because we are part of a greater design, which is all love.
“And music – when it is delivered with a right and positive intention – has the ability to penetrate the mind and heart so as to adjust our thoughts and feelings. I believe all art forms can do that.”
Nokwe’s latest CD, Inyakanyaka, which earned her a couple of South African Music Award nominations, also propounds the idea of peace and harmony. “How can we hate each other?” she asks in one of the songs. “We are from one source. We are family.”
In Peace in the Valley, Dawn King and Sonto Maphumulo – both third-year drama students at the Natal Technikon – share the role of Maria. Skumbuzo Nsele and Buyani Shangase, who both performed in the 1996 production of Umabatha, alternate in the role of Sputla.