In the first decade of the 21st century, the most obvious shifts in mainstream South African theatre followed world trends. Stand-up comedy burgeoned into several annual festivals dedicated to telling jokes; Broadway-style, lavish musical spectacles, mounted in our state-of-the-art new theatres, dominated ticket sales; and the devolution of the playwright continued.
Audiences are at last showing some signs of demographic shift, but mostly in the province of entertainment. The coloured audience is now the most significant theatre audience in the Western Cape, filling runs that often last for months. The Lion King broke all previous box office records. Up to 656 000 people saw it, at least 25% from the burgeoning black middle class.
What is still to be seen is a South African musical that can rival the imports. The decade saw the sad constriction of Athol Fugard’s voice. His plays have shrunk to dramatised short stories, tripping over headline-grabbing issues such as crime, Aids and xenophobia. Living overseas and no longer working with local actors in workshop, his interactions with his home country are to their detriment now filtered by the mainstream media.
Comparisons are odious, but abroad there is a healthy clutch of old bards, still prolific, on the mark, some sharper than ever: Alan Bennett (75), Tom Stoppard (72), Michael Frayn (76), David Hare (62), David Mamet (62) and Edward Albee (81). It was always thinner on the ground here, but our playwrights do appear to have unusually short careers. Partly it’s a factor of the tumultuous times South Africa has seen, but it is also that the sheer difficulties of mounting work has dried up many pens.
Eurocentric or not, the straight play is a valuable cultural medium for a society, especially one as complex as our own, to reflect upon itself, to articulate personal moral and ethical dilemmas where these intersect with the public space, and above all to renew us against the emotional toll life takes on us.
Much of our theatre would be far better served to us as a radio play, a short story or as an episode in a television soap opera. Hardly any local playwright seems to be able to show rather than tell or to be capable of sustaining a single scene beyond five minutes. They can’t deal with matters in real time, but imitate television. What we get are blackouts that wince on and off like migraines and endless, tedious explication.
We are also, it seems, still stuck with the limitations of the one-person show; the poor-man’s theatre practised not for aesthetic or artistic reasons, but by economic default, which is not a good enough reason at all. A hopelessly overtraded genre, it has encouraged a legion of unimaginative scripts that attempt material not suitable for this treatment.
The primary medium remains English, but African languages are increasingly used on stage. Magnet Theatre’s Xhosa production Ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela (‘the grave of the man is next to the road”) was a riveting and groundbreaking work.
Stylistically, where we do seem to be succeeding is in plays that are less text-based, more a hybrid with physical theatre, marked by innovative direction, fair-sized casts and a synergy between European and African creativity. That grey zone between theatre, ritual, performance art, installation, dance and fine art is perhaps the most exciting area in South African theatre at present.
Among the rising stars here are Nelisiwe Xaba, Mlu Zondi and Ntando Cele. The annual Infecting the City (formally the Spier Arts festival) focuses on multidisciplinary collaborations, site-specific works, held anywhere but inside a theatre.
Thematically, plays have moved with the emotional trajectory of the country. One of the first works I reviewed for this paper (2003) was Fanon’s Children written by Lesego Rampolokeng. It was unrepentant protest theatre, but heralded a promising liberation from political correctness, from simply blaming the legacies of apartheid and colonialism. In this regard theatre has
continued to keep ahead of the national debate.
At the start of the decade, exile seemed the logical entry point to explore the moral complexities of the struggle, a changing society and disappointments in post-apartheid South Africa.
Zakes Mda’s Bells of Amersfoort (2002), Athol Fugard’s Sorrows and Rejoicings (2002), John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth (2002) all dealt with exile; much of the conflict as much generational as racial.
Black dramatists started to unlock new themes (some previously taboo), such as homosexuality, xenophobia, the tacit complicity between traditional African beliefs and its expression as violence against women in a deeply patriarchal society.
Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom rose to fame with a play set in a Hillbrow brothel, Cards, starring nudity and violence. His Relativity: Township Stories was elegantly choreographed, but the story quickly degenerated into a crude, predictable B-grade Hollywood serial-killer thriller.
Towards the end of the decade, the dominant theme seems to be the legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which uncovered more in the way of truth than it accomplished in reconciliation.
Yael Farber’s MoLoRa, Lara Foot Newton’s Reach, Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother, REwind: A Cantata by composer Philip Miller, and Truth in Translation by director Michael Lessac all explored forgiveness.
What one senses now as we enter 2010 is a new confidence emerging in the voices of our young theatre-makers. The decade ahead I predict will only get better.
————————–
The good, the bad and the brilliant
Phenomenally successful
The Handspring Puppet Company (Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones).
Pieter-Dirk Uys.
David Kramer.
Djamaqua (Oscar Petersen, David Isaacs, Heinrich Reisenhoffer).
Pick of the Decade
medEia (Oscar van Woensel, directed by Brett Bailey).
Not the Pick of the Decade
Fangs (Revival).
Most overhyped
Umoja — export, curio performance art for foreign audiences.
The Tempest — the RSC’s ‘Africanised” version.
Relativity: Township Stories — Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom.
Most underwhelming
Mark-Dornford May’s iKrismas Kherol.
Most rewarding
The decade saw thousands of new seats added in brand-new theatres.
Most overpaid
Mbongeni Ngema for Lion of the East.
Most underappreciated
Echoes of our Footsteps (Itumeleng Wa-Lehulere).
Ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela (Mandla Mbothwe).
Stoutgatpassie (Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo reworked).
Most prolific
Mike van Graan (10 new plays in the past 10 years).
Theatremakers in the vanguard
Brett Bailey (Orfeus, medEia, Blood Diamonds).
Yael Farber (MoLoRa).
Mcendisi Shabangu (Ten Bush).
Lara Foot Newton (Karoo Moose, Tshepang).
Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek (Onnest’bo; Cargo; Every Year, Every Day I Am Walking).
Sylvaine Strike (Coupé, The Travelling Players).
Helen Iskander and James Cuningham (Black and Blue).
Straight plays worth noting
Nothing but the Truth (John Kani).
The Shadrack Affair (Fiona Coyne).
Green Man Flashing (Mike van Graan).
Great revivals
Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (Athol Fugard).
Mooi Street Moves (Paul Slabolepszy).
Hello and Goodbye (Fugard, directed by Mark Graham).
One-man brilliance
Andrew Buckland
Graham Weir
Rob van Vuuren
James Cairns
Aldo Brincat
Craig Morris
Pick of the new divas
Chuma Sopotela
Faniswa Yisa
Mwenya Kabwe
Pumeza Rashe
Andrea Dondolo
Lebogang Modiba
New promise
Ntshieng Mokgoro — Thursday’s Child (2007), The Olive Tree (2009).
Omphile Molusi— Itsoseng (2007).
Still going
Nicolas Ellenbogen
for our review of the year and the decade in lists and multimedia. Books, movies, photos and politics — it’s all here.