Satirist and playwright Pieter-Dirk Uys hopes that President Thabo Mbeki will be part of the audience for his new play, Auditioning Angels, which has premièred at the 2003 National Arts Festival.
“I would love for Thabo Mbeki to see this play, and maybe for him to be moved to tears — because it is a moving play. I would like for the government to see this play, for the minister of health to see it. I would like to kill her in the toilet — but I would like for her to see this play,” Uys says.
He says that he has no specific target audience in mind for Auditioning Angels, but that it is aimed at anyone who cares to listen. It tells a universal story. “It is not tied down to local politics — it is about the human spirit,” he says.
Uys’s despondency about the Aids situation in South Africa inspired him to write the play. He feels that ordinary people and the government alike have been careless in dealing with the disease.
It was this observation that motivated him to spend the last three years making self-funded trips to schools across the country to talk about the virus. He says the experience was “the most inspiring of my life”. These road shows, intended to expose some of the effects of Aids, have reached over 400 000 schoolchildren so far.
Auditioning Angels is the first play Uys has written in over a decade since his last play, Die Vleiroos. In the interim, he says, he concentrated on one-man shows because they are quicker to do. “South African politics needed artistic expression more than ever — the 90s were full of extraordinary things happening to this country,” he says.
Auditioning Angels forces the audience to think about a variety of South African issues. Uys said that the characters are “not necessarily painted into corners because of their colour”, but issues of race are touched on. For example, Majuba (played by Thoko Ntshinga) heads up half of a very successful public relations company, but some still view her as the token black in the company.
The play tackles the nonchalant attitude many South Africans have towards Aids, as when one character says, “I always change the channel when the subject comes up.”
“I wanted to write a play reflecting the hope, but also the terror,” says Uys. There are many urban legends about Aids, he points out, but nobody takes the time to educate people properly on the disastrous effects of relaying these legends to others.
The abandonment of HIV-positive babies acts as a catalyst for the characters in the play. “It’s like a box of kittens. Pick a kitten, otherwise someone will drown them,” says Uys on the issue of Aids orphans. Consequently, Uys strives to save the children, because he feels they are the most affected: “If we don’t talk to them about the dangers of HIV, they’re not going to make it. It’s a wild world out there.”
The play premièred to a standing ovation on the opening night of the National Arts Festival. It will later move to Johannesburg, where it will be the first play to run at Pieter Toerien’s new studio theatre at Montecasino. –ECN Cuewire