After his race-related outburst from the stage of the Naledi theatre awards ceremony last Monday, Lebo M (Morake), co-producer of The Lion King, is standing firm in his belief that local theatre is in dire need of transformation.
Whether Morake defied protocol by arriving late for the event — for which he was ushered into the back row of Gold Reef City’s Lyric Theatre — is immaterial now that a vitriolic debate rages. ”To pretend we have a healthy, fully representative industry is a fallacy,” he said.
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian, Morake denied that he had spoken on behalf of all black theatre practitioners: ”It would be naive for me, or for black people in general, to say we have a black agenda. I believe the sentiments of black practitioners can no longer be ignored and it is going to take a body of experts from both the black and white communities to create a new platform and a way forward.”
With the can of worms now open, radio talk shows pitted Morake against Naledi executive director Dawn Lindberg, whose event Morake had criticised for not adequately rewarding black theatre practitioners.
With predictable vociferousness theatre stars climbed on the bandwagon with race-related issues. Theatre doyen John Kani told the Sowetan: ”Transformation is urgent and is actually late in this industry.” The paper did not ask Kani what he had done to push for transformation in his long tenure as Market Theatre artistic director.
The Artslink website ran a column by commentator Ismail Mahomed, who laid the blame for the poor state of local theatre on the department of arts and culture. ”Publicly funded theatres — have failed many black writers, directors and actors,” Mahomed wrote. ”[They] receive large sums of money from the department of arts and culture and — should be tasked with implementing a transformation agenda.”
Mahomed said that Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan had ”abdicated responsibility” by not devising a strategic plan to promote black theatre actively. Jordan’s department did not fund the Naledi awards this year as it had done in the past, so in this regard the minister has spared himself some embarrassment.
Morake’s accusations have not targeted Jordan: his claim is that transformation of live venues will come only when the black Âtheatre-going public has enough economic clout to decide what it wants on its stages.
”We can talk about race and we can talk about culture, but business dictates,” Morake said. ”At the end of it all, change is going to be dictated by money — those that have it and those that do not, and how you put the two together. You can talk politics and you can scream in the news, but at the end of the day it’s about who has the ability to buy a ticket every weekend — who has the ability to put together a budget for rehearsals, for a licensing deal with Phantom of the Opera, with Cats or Chicago.”
With members of the theatre ”community” at one another’s throats, the M&G decided to ask some high-powered black theatre stars and observers how they felt about their industry. The responses were telling.
Mara Louw, who sings in the Naledi-award-winning production Hairspray, said that although she has great respect for the white winners of the awards, she is ”proud of Lebo for voicing some of the things that many artists are scared to talk about. We are such a small industry and many are starving. They have got no work because they say things and they never get hired.
”Even for what I have said now — for questioning the number of whites and blacks who won Naledis — already I have put myself on the line. But I also don’t want to be doing musicals and asking, ‘Am I in this show as a black empowerment figure?”’
A veteran of theatre, Louw recalls the days of apartheid when white actors were painted up to play black characters.
Director James Ngcobo decried the lack of black texts on local stages. ”We need to start living in Africa in the arts in this country. There are brilliant works written by Africans and those in the African diaspora that are on the same level as the Mamets and the Pinters. They need to be done in this country. We honestly need to look at what we haven’t done to fast-track this evolution.”
The most startling response to Morake’s outburst has come from the country’s favourite satirist, Pieter-Dirk Uys, who spoke out in favour of the Naledis. This week, Lindberg circulated letters of support for her awards, ironically from white theatre practitioners only. ”Bravo, darling!” Uys wrote. ”And let Lebo M go back into exile.”