I first met Barney in early July of 1991 in London. He was in town with a production from The Market Theatre, as part of the same Lift programme that had selected Death and the Maiden for its world premiere at the Royal Upstairs, so I felt that, even though he would probably have not the slightest idea of who I was, I had a good chance that this legendary director from South Africa might spare a few minutes to meet me.
It turned out, of course, surprisingly easy to reach him, and he immediately proposed dinner at a small Indian restaurant. The dinner lasted for hours and then our conversation continued endlessly in assorted pubs and then along the stumbling darkened streets of London, almost till dawn — because, of course, that first night we had to make up for the obvious mistake or sad joke of destiny that had foolishly kept us apart for the first half century of our lives.
I was to discover later that Barney had a similar communion with many others — but the discovery only came later because he made me feel that I was special, that this immediate deep understanding between us was due to something in me and not to his marvellous rambling camaraderie. He always made everyone he met feel himself, herself, to be the dignified centre of the universe. Though I have to admit that besides our interest in so many shared topics, what glued us together was also the twisted proximity of Chile and South Africa, one more case, as with Nadine Gordimer, as with André Brink, as with Achmat Dangor and Wally Serote, as with Sue and Allister Sparks (and I could go on and on), where the parallel courses of our unfortunate lands and the connected dilemmas of the transition we were facing, helped to create a common ground of experience and hopes and pain and quests which made it all the easier for perfect strangers from our two sad countries to feel as if they were twins separated at birth.
Even so, Barney was … well, unique. There was — what can I call it? — a well of wisdom that came flowing out of him, but obliquely, almost mystically, and yet so down to earth, so concrete, so ultimately pragmatic and funny. We said good-bye swearing eternal friendship, but Barney saw eternity between friends as projects, things you did together, minute by minute, and two days later he called me up. ‘That play of yours,” he said. ‘I saw it. It’s about South Africa. It’s what we need in Jo’burg. If you’d let me, I’d like to do it at The Market. If you don’t mind.”
If I didn’t mind. As if he were somebody unknown, as if The Market Theatre in Johannesburg were not one of the greatest stages in World Theatre. He recognised my play. Before any reviews, before it was bound for the Oliviers and Broadway, before it was destined to be directed by Roman Polanski. And as he spoke to me about what he discerned in Death and the Maiden, I realised that he did not only consider its immediate political repercussions, but was interested in its perversity, its exploration of how men and women love and betray one another, its search for the uncertain longitude of memory. He was, as a human being and a future director, opening the play up to me, adding to it, making it his and therefore more mine.
It was to be like this between us always. We met three or four more times in different places around the world, getting close on each occasion. But, more crucially, I began to call him in South Africa every week or so, just to talk, just to consult him, as if he were an elder brother who could guide me in the labyrinth of traps and temptations that surrounded my sudden success. And also, of course, to discuss the staging of the play and the newest work I was writing, Reader, which he also agreed to direct at The Market (a project that was never to be).
I remember particularly his plans for the set design of Death and the Maiden, how he turned the lack of resources of his theatre (‘a mirror is really too expensive, you know, Ariel”) into a positive development. (‘I’ve put the stage in the middle of the theatre and curtains will be billowing in the wind, half hiding the actors from view, just like they’re hiding from each other, until at the end the curtains will be drawn and half the audience will see the other half. I want to put the National Party on one side and the African National Congress on the other one, just have them staring at each other across the stage as if they were seeing themselves in a distorted mirror.”) I remember the day he called and told me that they had been forced to suspend the performance one evening because the black actor who played Gerardo had been jailed the previous day and Barney had tried, without success, to get him out of prison in time.
And Barney became, of course, a friend of the family. He told my wife, Angelica, with whom he instantly communed as soon as they met, what she should do with a project she had doubts about. He spoke to my sons as if they were his own children. He took my friends under his wings. And always, whenever we gathered and whenever we talked, the same melody and the same song. ‘When are you coming to visit me? This house is much too big for me. I have to fill it up with you and yours.” Including the last time we were together in Holland, where the Ro Theatre had organised a homage to my work and asked me to name the one person I wanted to attend and I had asked them to fly Barney in from South Africa. How was I to know (or did I know, did I suspect?) that those four, five days were to be our last together, and that’s why we spent all the time we could find talking, planning, drinking, eating, celebrating.
The news of his death came to us when Reader was about to open at the Traverse for the Edinburgh Festival — in the middle of the summer. His death came to us precisely a few days before I was going to call him from Scotland to tell him that the play was ready for him, that he should come and get it, or maybe the time had come for me to take it to him there.
Why in the hell didn’t you wait for us to come to South Africa, Barney?
But let me tell you something, hermano mio. I finally made it to your land, the land you loved and demanded so much of. And though you weren’t there with your smile and waving wand of your hands and that slow enigmatic ripple of words that wove together strands from here and there to form a real tapestry of meaning, even if you were not there to take me around and hug me and sit down for hours to explore God and justice and ambivalence and madness, well, you were every-where, Barney. Everybody I met remembered you, had another wild and outrageous and warm anecdote (many of them must be in this book). It was as if some deity had scattered your ashes over the land and covered every tongue and every eye and you had been breathed in and out of so many lungs, and I didn’t mind, all of a sudden, that you hadn’t waited for the visit we had so minutely charted so many times, I didn’t reproach myself for not having taken the plane while you were still alive. Because now I could mourn you among your people, the ones who missed you even more.
One more thing I need to tell you, I still can’t believe you’re not around. Even now, when I’ve got a problem or an idea or a project, I find my hand reaching for the phone, and then I realise that you won’t answer, there, on the other side of the line. I realise that I’m going to have to figure this one out by myself.
I’m going to have to figure your absence out by myself.
The World in an Orange: Creating Theatre with Barney Simon is written by Irene Stephanou and Lilia Henriques and is published by Jacana Life
Stages of experience
Knowing and working with Barney was like being with a man with huge breasts. — Gcina Mhlope
Barney never really spoke politics. Like he said, politics is obvious. And I agree with that. All he said about his relationship with Joe Slovo is they were friends. I don’t know what they did together, maybe watch movies together, or have coffee or eat cake. Always bloody eating cake. — Marcel van Heerden
Ruth First was not permitted to communicate with anybody else who was banned, and that was the majority of her friends. On Sunday nights there used to be a film club in Johannesburg, and she used to sit alone. I didn’t know her well, but began to sit with her at the film club, and we became good friends. I gave Ruth the key to my apartment to do what she liked. She just had to warn me not to come there when there were very important meetings happening there. — Barney Simon (Interviewed by Joseph Sherman)
I just said, if someone is good, they’re good. That’s it. If we are fighting racism we can’t be fighting ourselves along colour lines. I defended Barney to the last because I believed in him. We were criticised a lot. People would come and say, ‘Barney Simon has diluted Woza Albert! He’s put in a white element.” But Woza Albert was the most successful theatre piece of the time. — Mbongeni Ngema
His love life was always absolutely mysterious. I think he was a kind of cupboard gay. Why, I don’t know, because none of us would have cared a tuppenny damn. — Nadine Gordimer