Thebe Mabanga
Veteran theatre practitioner and community worker Phyllis Klotz takes her 12-year-old outfit, the Sibikwa Community Theatre Project, to the National Arts Festival this month.
Sibikwa has produced prominent stage and television talent like Grace Mahlaba and Isidingo’s bitchy maid-cum-businesswoman, Tina Jaxa.
Their efforts have not gone unnoticed and were rewarded with Vita awards in 1993 and 1999 for works like DET Boys High, Kwela Bafana and the musical Uhambo. Their latest play, Behind Closed Doors, is fresh from a tour of Norway.
It sees the company continuing in its tradition of helping to develop a body of work that has a South African ethos. It takes an accessible look at a scourge of our times – domestic violence and child abuse. It has, as its intellectual foundation, two outstanding literary works.
The first is TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. “I used these lines because of the parallel irony of a murder taking place in a place considered to be a sanctuary,” Klotz says, pointing out how most violence against women takes place in a home – a place also considered a sanctuary.
The work uses rich, religious imagery. The second and more compelling piece of writing taken as inspiration for the piece is Greek playwright Euripides’s Medea, the story of a woman who kills her children. “This was used to show how, sometimes, mothers actually ‘kill their children’ by choosing to stay silent because [of factors that may not be immediately apparent],” Klotz says. She says the play actually “explores the complexities and pathology of how a family functions”.
The play unfolds with a very gothic backdrop. The set design is haunting, with reed mats, candles and all things voodoo used to create a very demonic shrine.
Behind Closed Doors attains the crucial dimension of accessibility by weaving the texts into recitals and simple, charming songs. The cast uses mime, elements of folklore and the games children play to chronicle the transition from childhood innocence to a ruptured, disturbed youth that is the result of years of abuse, helped on by a mother’s silence.
It is driven by rhythmic sound and beautiful voices, and played out by five actors.
Behind Closed Doors will be performed from June 26 to 28 at the Total Sibikwa Theatre in Benoni and at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown from June 30 to July 7. Enquiries can be directed to Tel: (011) 422 4359