When the magical world of theatre descended on Ceres, a town in the Western Cape, it unlocked the dreams of young people who usually don’t have access to the performing arts.
Singing, acting and ballet and other dance forms were part of the Cape Town-based Artscape Theatre’s variety show held in the Ceres town hall recently. Before the show started, technical crew from Artscape unpacked on stage what happens behind the scenes and learners from the town’s high schools got a chance after the show to interact with the performers about pursuing theatre-related careers.
It was no ordinary school excursion for André Morkel, a learner at Ceres Secondary School. Ceres has no theatre and Morkel said he spent at least R140 to travel nearly two hours to Artscape to catch a show earlier this year.
“A whole lot of us rented a bus and we drove back home after the show. I just wish that we had more theatre in Ceres. It’s a beautiful thing. It would be good even if we just had drama clubs or dance schools so that we didn’t have to sit at home on weekends,” he said.
Finding out more about theatre also made him think about stage management as a career option.
Firdous Martin, another learner at the school, said that she would be interested in “doing make-up for actors”.
For both of them, that would inevitably require leaving Ceres to study and work elsewhere. The small town’s role models for its
majority farmworker communities comprise school teachers or social workers.
Jakobus Johnson, principal of the Welvaart Primary School in the town, said that “children don’t know much about theatre so this is a new experience for them”.
“They get to meet new role models and feel inspired to develop in music or dance. We don’t have theatre and drama classes at most of our schools so this exposes them to new possibilities,” he said.
Marlene le Roux, Artscape’s director of audience development and education, leads the initiative that for the past six years has taken theatre to rural towns. The aim is to build theatre awareness and audiences in small towns and to inspire young minds.
A multiracial youth dialogue session addresses problems faced in everyday life. Besides encouraging racial interaction in towns where the status quo very often remains unchallenged, the initiative targets leadership potential. It encourages the youth to “be more critical and take action”, Le Roux said. “We come back after six months to see if they made friends across the race groups. They sign an agreement that they will do it so that we can change the parents’ mind-sets in the household.”
The bigger picture was about being able to “see the beauty in one another because we were taught and conditioned not to value one another,” she said.
“South Africans come from a very harsh background. In these small towns, we have a farmer with a farmworker sharing the same theatre experience and then going home to realise that we are all human,” she said.
Work in the town began months in advance as they roped in municipalities and civil society structures.
“We form a committee with school principals and faith-based organisations. We engage people who are doing things for others. We get hold of the farmers doing good for their communities. We show that we can break down elitism in communities. We want to break down the poverty cycle. When we leave the town, we want those partnerships to go on.”
Le Roux said the project was worth the expense as it changed perceptions that “theatre is still elitist”.
“Theatre was historically only for white people so we need to make it an active part of people’s lives,” she said. “Now we need an education system that also values the arts. We have a losing battle in South Africa. We still need arts teachers. The arts create critical thinking.”
Grant Peres, a singer from Ceres, was part of this year’s show. He left Ceres 10 years ago to pursue drama, which led him to singing in Spain and Italy. Last year he moved back to Ceres to establish an “arts initiative”. He knows what young people in Ceres need. More than arts education, they need role models to inspire them.
“Growing up, we felt that there was nothing to do. You needed to leave Ceres to achieve anything. We had television, radio and music and that’s where I found my role models. Now young people are doing drugs. This town needs sustainable projects,” he said.
He moved home to “give kids a head start so that they don’t realise at 18 that they want to be a dancer”.
“I’m speaking to other artists who are also available to offer classes. There’s a lot that we can do with a start-up team and show smaller towns what they can do as well. We can do shows that we can take to a lot of rural areas.
“There is a lot of raw talent in Ceres. The arts are also a perfect platform to speak your mind. This is a space where people can be heard. Theatre can capture the kids sitting on corners,” he said.
Nombasa Mhlati, a mayor whose municipal government manages five small towns comprising 90 000 people, said they would support arts initiatives. Her office is in Ceres, the capital of the Witzenberg municipality.
“This is a start. We have seen the hunger and excitement that young people have for the arts. We will have arts projects,” she said at the performance.