A rash of revivals of political plays from the 1970s and 1980s, on show at the National Arts Festival provide a framework for re-imagining the contemporary political landscape.
Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, Woza Albert!, Wathint’ Abafazi Wathint’ Imbokodo (You Strike a Woman You Strike a Rock) and We Shall Sing for the Fatherland are among the revivals that are, in part, inspired by the 30year anniversary of the June 16 Soweto uprising. They are four of a body of works at the festival that critically represent South African social and political realities.
The revival of Sizwe Banzi Is Dead by original actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona was solidly booked for the duration of the festival, and it elicited enthusiastic responses from audience members.
‘It provokes people’s minds to think about race relations. Some of those problems are still here today,” said Patricia Ndolovu, a high school teacher from Zimbabwe. ‘We brought some students to it, they are ‘born frees’, they don’t know anything about apartheid but they could understand it.”
For others, the significance of the play stood not in its commentary, but in the powerful performances and universal themes that continue to make it as engaging today as it was 30 years ago.
Similarly, Wathint’ Abafazi Wathint’ Imbokodo is striking for its entertaining storyline that interrogates the multifaceted struggles of working-class women. But while the piece is relevant to the experiences of many women today, it is also a clear tribute to the history of women’s resistance in South Africa.
In contrast, Michael Matsie chose to stage We Shall Sing for the Fatherland as a critique of contemporary society where ‘freedom on paper is not enough”.
Fists clenched in the air, shivering from the cold, two raggedly dressed former liberation army cadres sing a few words of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, give Die Stem a weak try and then collapse on to their park bench, where they freeze to death.
This moment, from a revival of Zakes Mda’s We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, is one of the play’s adapted scenes that cynically questions the gains of our 12-year-old democracy.
‘It was written in 1979, but it feels like it could have been written two months ago,” said Matsie, a dramatic arts student at the University of the Witswatersrand.
Having been discouraged from producing political plays, he chose to explore political themes and resist the ‘amnesia” that young, black, urban South Africans experience once they have entered the realm of economic privilege.
For years, however, issue-based plays have littered the fringe pages of the festival programme. HIV/Aids, rape and abuse are among the issues inspiring theatrical performances from a spectrum of performance groups.
Amanina — A Woman’s Place is Not in the Kitchen falls into this category. The story, replete with clichés, is about female construction workers who win a contract to build low-cost houses, but are cheated by a local government representative.
Ghetto Dust, another amateur fringe production, that could have been more polished and varied, provides more engaging social commentary.
On a stage littered with tyres and dustbins, a rag-tag group of street kids’ gumboot sequences compete with the swirling, wide-armed motions and graceful ballet and jazz moves of four older dancers in crumpled, button-down shirts and suit pants.
Orange and red lighting, softened by its projection from the side of the stage, reminds one of a slant of afternoon light that seems to have inspired the name Ghetto Dust.
‘It’s my experience as a choreo-grapher,” said Thulebona Mzizi, who trained the company of boys from KwaZulu-Natal, ‘that the only thing left in life is dust. This is my life; if the wind blows, there’s nothing left.” The storyline, about a boy searching for his absentee father in a big city, was inspired by his work with street children, he said.
Location 1973 by Martin Koboekae fits oddly alongside these revivals and contemporary political plays that explore the black urban experience. The play unfolds during the time when the revived plays were first written but, unlike those consciously political pieces, formal politics take a secondary role to the personal politics of daily life. Flashy clothes, flamboyant style, hip Afros, gang rape and murder are the brushstrokes in Koboekae’s musical and theatrical portrayal of 1970s township life.
Apartheid politics manifest in the realities of the shebeen and location itself, but the complications of race relations do not drive the plot — that is left to more localised complications such as jealousy, turf wars and thuggery.
These potentially tired themes and settings are given life through exuberant dancing and skilful acting, including a questionably farcical representation of rape.
‘Brilliant” is the judgement of one audience member, impressed by the sensation of life, energy of the dance and conviviality of the shebeen.
For her, it was great to see what the location in 1973 was like — she has been inundated with depictions of 1976 township life. The laughably wacky clothes and style may be time specific, but priests in the shebeen, the drinking, she says, ‘have always been there”.
But the real allure of the festival is the diversity of productions on offer, and a handful of plays that are concerned with entirely different themes stand out.
Coupé, produced by Sylvaine Strike and directed by Sue Pam Grant, tickled its audience with the absurdities of three travellers claustrophobically forced to share a single, revolving compartment. Sitting in crowded bleachers, the whispers of audience members sharing their amused observations — ‘Oh, look! She’s wearing his shoe!” and ‘Sif, man!” — contributed to the childlike delight the play provokes.
Matthew Ribnick again demonstrates his cultural fluency in his one-man performance, Hoot, about a white suburbanite who becomes a taxi driver when his business sours and his wife leaves him. Ribnick won over some audience members who admitted that they were borderline offended until he expanded his satirical portrayal to target a multitude of local cultural groups.
After the fest
- Coupé, Hoot and We Shall Sing for the Fatherland will move to the University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, as part of the 969 Festival from July 18 to 27.
- Wathint’ Abafazi Wathint’ Imbokodo (You Strike a Woman You Strike a Rock) will be on at the State Theatre in Pretoria from July 20 to August 12 and at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town from October 16 to 28 and November 4 to December 8.
- Sizwe Banzi Is Dead is showing at the Baxter Theatre from July 11 to August 5 and at the State Theatre from August 2 to December 19.