Johannesburg’s inner-city dwellers came to Joubert Park, next to the art gallery, in throngs to watch The Giant Match: Meet My In-Laws, a puppet show featuring the feuding Mkhize and Majakathata families, an adaptation of the Shakespearean classic, Romeo and Juliet. Last Sunday’s show took place in situ at Joubert Park, a place that teems with ordinary people in rather straitened circumstances, who steal a moment to enjoy the open space, the sun and the greenery.
The story — as we get drunk on an overdose of the World Cup — is mediated by an epic football scene. The giant puppet show (the characters are four metres high) has involved hundreds of actors, musicians, dancers and puppeteers from Gauteng and the French collective Les Grandes Personnes.
Asked on the phone, from Bloemfontein, about the genesis of the project, artistic director Christophe Evette said the idea came to them about two years ago while working on another puppet project in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg.
The overriding principle for Les Grandes Personnes has been a “reflection on collective creation”, said Evette, adding that “everyone was involved: the truck driver, the musicians and many other artists. Everyone was welcome to give their ideas regarding the storyline, the faces of the puppets and costumes.”
The street-theatre display, intimately conjoined to the communities in which it has played, features ordinary people, the kind of characters you would see on a stroll down a township road, say, in Soweto. There’s everyone: the natty dressers, those who love their drink, the sangoma, the workman clad in overalls and the trader woman. All of these immediately struck a rapport with the cheering Joubert Park audience.
The story, quite faithful to the timeless template set down by Shakespeare, tells the story of two young lovers, Bogale and Thobile, who are kept apart by a raging feud between their families. Taking a few liberties with the classic plot, the feud culminates in an epic football match, paving the way for reconciliation and a wedding.
Although the project features artists and craftsmen from France, Italy, Chile and Burkina Faso, the idea was to create characters that would be identifiable as South African.
The introductory sessions of the cultural exchange were followed by the making of the puppets, a process that took more than six weeks. Scores of people were allowed input in the drawing and puppet-making and, as a result, the work reflects different personalities and personal quirks.
The puppet show will perform at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown at 10am from June 25 to 28 before it tours the central African republic of Rwanda. For details, go to www.giantmatch.org.za