Destitution, soccer and violence are the themes of this year’s Young Directors’ Festival, writes Thebe Mabanga
Picture this: three guys are employed as delivery truck attendants. They watch the world go by from the back of a Coca-Cola truck.
Their favourite destination is the Sandton Health & Racquet Club, for here, while the yuppies are at work, they sneak in for a hot shower and escape to a fantasy world in which they are rich and famous. Come Friday night, they use their meagre earnings to go club-hopping and pub-crawling.
With Hillbrow as their hunting ground, they find the prostitutes a bit expensive and the attention from drag queens a tad too much. As the weekend draws to a close they sit drunk and penniless. They lament the emptiness of their lives and vow to change their ways. This is the plot of Deep in the Coca Lala, a play workshopped by the irascibly brilliant Johnny Barbuzano for last year’s Young Directors’ Festival at the Market Theatre.
The festival is fast becoming a major springboard for newcomers. Last year Coca Lala toured Israel and Amsterdam. And another festival piece, Thulani Nyembe’s Bozzoli . like Pantsula . like Mshoza . returned to the Market for a full season.
This year’s festival, the second of its kind, showcases seven new directors. It runs from October 12 to the end of November. On Tuesday it kicks off with The Long Wait, directed by Josias dos Moleele, who honed his creative skills while studying and later lecturing drama at Pretoria Technikon.
“The story takes place in the minds of a bunch of destitute people,” Moleele says. “As street dwellers they are adamant that their daily struggle to survive is merely a long wait to realise why they came to Johannesburg, in search of a better life – the ‘real’ Johannesburg.”
The piece is presented with elements of satire and seeks to provide an interesting insight into life on the street. Like most productions in the Young Directors’ Festival, The Long Wait is a group workshop. Unfortunately, though, the directors are not allowed to act in their work.
It’s a fact that has disappointed Obed Baloyi, whose piece Via Soweto premieres on October 19. Via Soweto is set in the taxi industry and, according to Baloyi, shows “not only what the industry is like, but also what it can be”.
Baloyi first won acclaim with his black comedy Ga-Mcahngani when it played at the Market Theatre Laboratory’s Zwakala Festival. He is one of three directors this year whose work has been developed there.
“One can safely say that the lab is the nucleus of the Market’s development programme,” says lab director Vanessa Cooke, whose venue is responsible for the annual Zwakala Festival also opening this week. Yet another Laboratory beneficiary is fieldworker Ntsieng Sithe, whose play Umdlwembe? – the Zulu word for spy – opens on October 26. Umdlwembe? explores the climate of violence in Alexandra in the early Nineties by focusing on a young girl accused of being a spy by both sides in the conflict.
“This is a deeply emotional piece, difficult but very interesting to engage,” Sithe says.
Departing from conventional forms is Nelisiwe Xaba’s iDiskie, street lingo for a soccer ball. Xaba, who is better known as a dancer, and more specifically as choreographer Robyn Orlin’s leading lady, looks at the game of football through movement and dialogue.
Next in line, on November 9, is Mncedisi Shabangu’s kaNyamazane Galvinomit/Akusiti that takes its audience on a bus tour (metaphorically, do not panic) to Mpumalanga.
It is here, in the kaNyamazane settlement, that his strangely titled play takes place. Basically, the work looks at the side of life that non-locals only read about – from afternoon dips in the Crocodile River to witch-hunts.
On November 16, the festival “moves” to Colesberg, near Beaufort West, for its penultimate production. Here, director Brett Lotriet introduces us to a sub- standard writer who is struggling with a book. As she chops and changes her content, her thoughts get played out on stage in this piece called If.
Finally, on November 23 Brian Webber directs Discount Cash and Carry. The star of the hit show Shopping and Fucking describes his piece as “the story of two young women meeting head on”.With it, the curtain comes down on what should be a roar of young lions.
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