Emma Tollman’s Review of No Good Friday

Whatever day of the week, No Good Friday written by Athol Fugard (1958) speaks ideological volumes to a 21^st century Johannesburg audience. An iconic South African work, what, No Good Friday, directed by Samuel Ravengai (PhD Theatre and Performance) begs on a Tuesday evening is WHY? Why here, why now, and why a student production performed by our first generation of born-frees?

First enacted in Johannesburg’s Bantu Men’s Social Centre in 1958 and now, at Wits University’s Downstairs Theatre in 2014 by young theatre scholars; the hub of Braamfontein reflects the content of thematic debates around racial consciousness and social power in a modern setting. Braamfontein is a contemporary space of youthful integration where rainbow-generation young adults meet and debate contemporary post-Apartheid South African politics. No Good Friday, performed by a student cohort, paralleled these similar social activities.

The narrative follows the character, Willie’s journey, played by Nolo Mmeti, through disillusionment of the value of black intellect and a BA degree, in the traumatic face of the ethical principles against freedom and wasted life. The irony is that without the opened consciousness from tertiary education, Willie may not have found conscience in such a hard place. Thematically, the tensions of Apartheid’s racial binaries and oppressive systems are secondarily present through the character’s testimonies of their working relationship with the white boss. Inside the play, the conflicts of power and oppression exist through mobster control within the racial demographic of late 1950’s Sophiatown. The resistance of newcomer, Tobias, against the mob’s established means of control results in his violent murder and sets Willie along an unravelling path of distressed relationships, friendships, religion and himself.

Conservative but charming, Andrea Van Der Kuil’s set design used found materials- corrugated iron, timber, old clothes and furniture –  to capture the socio-environmental impact of an economically disempowered group. A demure aesthetic palette warmed the eye with maroons, browns and creams, accentuated by the occasional burst of blue. An enchanting, if unprogressively, vision! The costume design reached to recreate the iconic street fashion of 1950’s Sophiatown, but too many two toned shoes and pin striped suits looked gimmicky in this day and age. However, emphasising the jazz association of the era linked Ravengai’s No Good Friday with its 1958 counterpart (performed largely by musicians), and its black consciousness American equivalent.

Andrea Van Der Kuil's set

A student production, those who could act shone from their two toned shoes, embodying the jazz imbibed vigour of then Sophiatown through to rhythmical feet. Unfortunate technical noise and crude audio transitions made the challenge for those reaching for presence and technical proficiency that much harder. Bradley Cebekhulu, performing Tobias, sensitively explored his social and intellectual status as an outsider from rural South Africa, a newcomer to Sophiatown. His submissive body language, yet assuring voice articulated the tension between Willie and himself. His murder at the hands of the mob was touching, as a character he was endeared to the audience, and the alluring-repugnant energy of mobsters (Themba Twala and Malebogo Mqoboli) was compelling. Tobias introduced themes of assimilation, and failure to succumb to the corrupt powers that be (to some, known as success).

Malebogo Mqoboli, who played mobster Harry, contrasts the puppet of power who violently murders Tobias with current states of criminality and social corruptions against humanity. His reflection casts a lens on the devaluation of life experienced in South Africa, as well as the interactive, social violations of freedom enacted in our post-Apartheid, democratic state.

First and foremost we still have a high rate of crime, in particular in most South African townships. There are gangsters (a character like Shark) in the townships who take people's belongings and kill innocent souls every weekend and every month end. The community does not want to get involved and does not want to inform the police, it is better to keep quite. Black women are heavily abused and raped by their male counter-part. Children are being kidnapped.

Regarding Ravengai’s choice of text, Fugard’s text forms part of the core of a South African canon of literature, that clearly still holds social relevance. Issues of assimilation as experienced by Tobias are universal, and no less so for post-Apartheid experience of youth moving from rural and country settings, into a big metropolitan city. Like Tobias, one meets a new language that needs be learnt in order to survive. This, as a first generation post-apartheid young adult, I translate to language of oppression. As millennials, raised by social media and virtual imaging, I identify languages of materialism, consumption and narcissism as the hidden structures that control and oppress our collective existence. In this regard, I think No Good Friday, as an allegorical text (as well as historic) in the present, contains curious echoes.

As much as I admire Fugard, the prioritisation of a male point of view concerning social, political and economic ideas reflects the wrong side of history. And unfortunately, in the case of No Good Friday, it is wholly prioritised. In a play that thematically centres power and oppression, the very form and content reaffirm the oppression of women. The picture of gender relations painted by the text can only be critiqued in its stereotypical range of controlling or submissive husbands (Willie or Watson), and their domesticated women whose only objectives are marriage. Indeed, there is an overwhelming ratio of more than three males for every female, and only one of which (female) has any kind of substance/objective (marriage). Kelly Eksteen, the actress playing Rebecca said,

As a contemporary female actress I struggled a lot with No Good Friday. See, as much as the play promotes a universal human message I feel that as performers that sometimes gets lost on us. Rebecca is a 1950's woman, her job and ambition in life is to be a woman to her man and as a modern woman I know otherwise, also I come from a long line of strong ambitious women.

Regarding Ravengai’s choice to direct No Good Friday at an academic institute in 2014, which caters for both males and females; the requirements of the text seriously misrepresent the present social and intellectual currency we work with. It is my hope but not my knowledge, that therein lies a conscious statement, as in his works as a writer Trauma Centre (2001) and On the Brink (2000), Ravengai scripts gender-integrated texts.

No Good Friday’s run at the Wits Downstairs Theatre has reached its end, but no doubt more will be coming from director Samuel Ravengai and his cast of thirteen. 

The director, Samuel Ravengai, (left) with John Kani (right) having a post-performance discussion with cast on the closing night.

Wits Theatre and Wits School of Arts/Dramatic Art present Athol Fugard's No Good Friday

The Wits School of Art, Division of Dramatic Art, is staging a student production of Athol Fugard’s No Good Friday in the Wits Downstairs Theatre (an experimental black-box venue). A South African classic, the play will be directed by Dr Samuel Ravengai, a senior lecturer within the department. No Good Friday was first performed on 30 August 1958, in the Johannesburg Bantu Men’s Social Centre by Athol Fugard with Cornelius Mabaso, Gladys Sibisi, Bloke Modisane, Preddie Ramphele, Stephen Moloi, Ken Gampu, Daniel Poho, Mike Mokone, Zakes Mokae and Sol Rachilo, most of whom became luminaries in South African theatre.

Dr Ravengai says, “Our intentions in this project are two-fold. No Good Friday of 1958 was a break-through for South African theatre because of its creativity and its multiracial nature that produced theatre leaders. Our staging of the play is undertaken with the same spirit of nurturing a group of young South Africans, in this case, Wits Drama students: training them in directing, acting and production skills so that, like their predecessors, they can lead South African theatre in the future. The second reason is to see how South Africans, notorious for our fear of the past, respond to that ugly history, narrated in a love story, in the here and now.”

The play grapples with three issues; love, dreams and murder! Rebecca is a young woman in love with Willie, who is on the verge of realising his dream of becoming a black intellectual by graduating with a BA degree. When he is about to finish his degree, he realises that all the benefits that were supposed to accrue to him were just a pipe dream. He loses his mind and his love for Rebecca. He despairs of life, questions the existence of God and the notion that education could be as important as the pursuit of freedom.

His pessimism is all pervasive as he questions the notion of “doing good” in an existence that seems not to reward goodness - maybe freedom lies elsewhere? While grappling with this dilemma, a murder is committed right on Willie’s doorstep by Shark, the local Mafia Boss whose charming exterior belies a violent nature. The protection racket run by Shark conducts its operations every Friday evening. There is no ‘happy’ Friday as Shark causes havoc by intimidating every resident into paying a ‘protection fee’. When this rule of the jungle results in the murder of Tobias, ethical and religious dilemmas emerge. Should he be reported to the police where he holds ‘shares’ or will there be merely another murder to silence the uproar?  The answers to these questions lie in the production of No Good Friday.

The director, Samuel Ravengai, joined the Wits School of Art in January 2014 after ten years of lecturing and directing for theatre and television in Zimbabwe. He is a University of Cape Town graduate where he completed his MA in Directing with distinction in 2002 and his PhD in Theatre and Performance in 2012. While at UCT he wrote and directed On the Brink and the much acclaimed Trauma Centre. He is also a performer and played Philemon in Can Themba’s The Suit which won the Marta best production award at the Setkani/Encounter Festival in Brno, the Czech Republic in 2001. He has directed productions that participated at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). Within the Wits division of Dramatic Art, he teaches across a range of theory and practical courses covering directing, acting, writing, drama and film. No Good Friday marks his theatre debut in Johannesburg.

Free parking is available in Senate House; the entrance is on Jorissen Street, Braamfontein

PRODUCTION: No Good Friday, written by Athol Fugard and directed by Samuel Ravengai

VENUE: Wits Downstairs Theatre, East Campus, Braamfontein

SEASON:  Tuesday 23 – Tuesday 1 October 2014: Tue 23 Sep @ 19:30 (Opening), Wed 24 Sep (public holiday, no performance); Thursday 25 September [WitsTix] @ 19:30, Fri 26 Sep @ 19.30, Sat 27 Sep @ 14:00 & 19:00, Tue 30 Sep @ 19:30  Wednesday 1 October @ 19:30.

RUNNING TIME: Sixty minutes no interval.

BOOKING: www.webtickets.co.za

Full price online = R 45:00; discounts for pensioners and students online = R 30:00

Full price at the door = R 50:00; discounts for pensioners and students at the door = R 40:00

WitsTix = R 10:00 online and R 15:00 at the door:

ENQUIRIES: 011 717 1376 / Catherine.Pisanti@wits.ac.za  

For updates please visit www.wits.ac.za/witstheatre                                           

ENDS

Released on behalf of Wits Theatre by: Cathy Pisanti 

No Good Friday takes off with Auditions at the Wits School of Arts

Samuel Ravengai 2014

Auditions for the Athol Fugard play, No Good Friday, kicked off Tuesday the 13^th of May under the watchful eye of the director, Samuel Ravengai. It is envisaged that rehearsals will begin on 21 July 2014, the opening day of the second semester until the opening night on 23 September. Students started preparing for the auditions since Monday the 5^th of May. They have auditioned for 11 roles which the director delineated as follows:

Rebecca is a black female in her early twenties. She has been living in with Willie for four years. She is a patient and hopeful lady; very adroit in conversation and comforting to friends in distress, including Willie. By the end of the story, she is sick and tired of Willie, but deeply in love. She is morally upright

Guy is a black township musician who is able to play the saxophone or pen-whistle and is extremely talented. He is a loyal friend of Willie, given to counselling him and laying off his burdens on Willie’s girlfriend, Rebecca. He is focussed on job hunting and is a man of sober habits; in his mid-twenties.

Watson is a township politician, who can be black or coloured. He is in his early thirties. He is an obscure character who leads a strong trade union, although he doesn’t seem to have a job. He believes in making sacrifices for the good of all, but has not been seen in street demonstrations. No one, including his friends, knows how he makes a living. He is always carrying a briefcase and smartly dressed.

Willie is an educated black young man in his early 30s. He is a BA correspondent, very smart and independent in thinking. This independence which inheres in him makes him seek more solitude than communal engagement. He is a hater of blackness and all that it represents. He has despaired on life, is hopeless and deflates the hope that tends to grow in others. He knows his rights and is courageous, even in the face of death.

The only white character in the play is Father Higgins who is a catholic with liberal views. For that reason he is a lover of blacks and has become a local celebrity.

Tobias can be described as rustic. He has a strong rural background. Physically, he is always blanket-clad, is ‘unsophisticated’, but intelligent in all matters relating to his rural world. He is in his late thirties.

Another interesting character is Pinkie, a Sophiatown backyard boy, who is in his early 20s. He is given to drinking and womanising. Has a quick temper which easily degenerates into hysteria. He is a volatile character, but without courage. Lily-livered boy!

Peter, another backyard character, is simple, but philosophical in some kind of way. He is a good listener, given to less talking. His concentration levels are very high.

Moses is the eldest character in the play. He is a 50 year old blind man more like Tobias. He has been living in the city for 10 years, but has a solid country background. He is an ardent listener, a family man who lives away from his family. He earns a living from begging on the pavements of Sophiatown.

Shark, in his mid-30s, is the most feared character in the play. He is a coloured/black township gangster. He is the rational side of Harry, his accomplice. He tries to moralise everything in order to appear better than Harry. An arrogant and egoistic character who cannot be pushed by anyone. He has a network of criminals that includes the police.

Harry deputises Shark and is a black/coloured who is about 20 years old. He is Shark’s accomplice and can be described as representing the impulsive and irrational side of Shark. He is a man of action and few words.

The eleventh character is a nameless thug in his 20s. He is a vicious transient character; the killing machine of the gang.

No Good Friday was first performed in Johannesburg in 1958 at what was then called the Bantu Men’s Social Centre. Athol Fugard played the character, Father Higgins, using an undercover name, Hal Lannigan, to evade police detection. He also directed it. When the play moved to a segregated theatre, Brooke Theatre, on 17 September 1958, the cast had to be all-black and Lewis Nkosi played Father Higgins. Since then, it has been performed several times. The Division of Drama of the Wits School of Arts wants to bring back this 1950s play and see how it is going to be received in the New South Africa.

Zimbabwe’s cultural heritage gift: Chiwoniso Maraire

Stephen Chifunyise

When CHIPAWO staff and arts educators went to the funeral wake for Chiwoniso Maraire at her home in the Bluff Hill area of Harare, they paid their tribute to the mbira legend with a short performance of music and dance. This was a special tribute to Chiwoniso who became a member of CHIPAWO Youth Group briefly in the early 90s when she had already mastered from her father and mother the art of playing marimba and mbira and had already perfected her singing like someone who had spent many years as a professional performing arts practitioner.

The CHIPAWO tribute with music and dance was also rendered as recognition of Chiwoniso’s understanding of the importance of intergenerational transmission of performing arts heritage by ensuring that her children participated in performing arts education programmes that sharpen their inherently inborn talent. Chiwoniso made sure that her daughter Chiedza was enrolled into CHIPAWO arts education for development programme at Masaisai School’s CHIPAWO Centre where she was under the tutorship a traditional dance master, Enock Majeza, who performed a shangara dance to “nhemamusasa” mbira song at the funeral as a member of the CHIPAWO group that performed the classic “nhemamusasa” made popular by Chiwoniso, as well as amabhiza and mbakumba dances and CHIPAWO songs.

 

Chiwoniso in her short but rich musical career became an epitome of national cultural heritage itself. She performed the most distinctive performing arts heritage of the Shona people clearly as a disciplined and appointed custodian of a mbira heritage with a mature handling of its intricate spiritual elements while projecting an incredibly elderly respect of the essential aesthetics of mbira where the impact of her creative genius was ever evident.

 

Chiwoniso was a consistent messenger of her late father, Dr. Dumi Maraire’s passion and respect for mbira as one of the most significant symbol of our indigenous creativity. When the late Dumi Maraire returned home from the United States of America, he joined the then Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture, as my deputy in the Department of Arts and Crafts with a responsibility of promoting the performing arts industry. In his mbira promotion workshops with cultural officers in the ministry, Dumi Maraire advocated for Zimbabweans to take mbira music and instrument as a unique cultural heritage that would be a major identifying characteristic of Zimbabwe’s music industry.

 

In her stage performances, Chiwoniso not only cherished her late father’s passion for mbira music but also his respect for that cultural heritage which she rejuvenated  using English, in many cases, in order to accommodate a wider audience base while consistently echoing the feeling of indigenous mbira sounds. The many young Zimbabwean musicians who have appreciated the lucrative potential in the mbira music renaissance are a vivid representation of the repository of the benefits of Chiwoniso’s passion for mbira and her versatile adoption of that traditional music genre into a viable cultural industry product that remains emblematic of our rich cultural heritage.

 

It is very easy to take it for granted that Chiwoniso’s father, the late Dumi Maraire, Thomas Mapfumo, Stella Chiweshe, the late Sekuru Gora, Oliver Mtukudzi and David Gweshe, just to mention a few, as elderly musicians would naturally romance mbira music, but when a young person with western education becomes a robust exponent of our traditions entrenched in mbira aesthetics, we marvel at the rarity of such ingenious youth. Chiwoniso was an embodiment of that ingenious youth that possess abundant knowledge and value of a cultural heritage bequeathed to them.  Chiwoniso became one of the most respected custodians of the mbira music genre, on one hand and a consistent promoter of the cultural heritage she was safeguarding, on the other hand.

 

Chiwoniso demonstrated  how a singing voice that is well grounded in uniquely indigenous vocal texture and potency can be innovatively  utilized to rend songs in English or other foreign languages and musical instruments to produce a clearly identifiable Zimbabwean sound that remains authentic even when handled with  a creativity that benefitted from  wide contacts with other music of the world.

 

She was a great composer who created meaningful music and songs that carried the message that was intended to be articulated by feature films such as Everyone’s Child and More Time and documentaries made Zimbabwean film makers. It is the intelligence and maturity which she projected in her composition which seemed as if produced by a person who spent many years at colleges, academies or universities of music.

 

Chiwoniso was a brilliant analyst of mbira music, its cultural and historical context and its uniqueness as a most expressive art of the spiritual dimensions of our performing arts heritage. In her speeches about mbira music and the mbira instrument, she exhibited an incredibly rich knowledge of its functions and value in the traditional Shona society as well as what mbira music meant to her and what role she was playing in promoting its mastery and processes of safeguarding that cultural heritage.  She was a gifted music educator whose major strength was her ability to demonstrate accurately, the skills to be acquired. As a master who had benefitted from observing her father and mother as a member of Mhuri yekwaMaraire, she appreciated the value of clarity in demonstrating a performing arts skill.

 

Chiwoniso was a well-briefed, obedient and eloquent ambassador of Zimbabwean culture in general and of mbira music in particular, to many countries where she participated in numerous cultural festivals, arts workshops and in music collaborations with musicians of diverse musical backgrounds.

 

Having listened for five days to several messages of condolence from both the young and the old, which were conveyed on our six radio stations and different social media and contained in several articles in all our newspapers, there is no doubt that all these were vivid and passionate expressions of the fact that Chiwoniso Maraire was a hero of our ongoing struggle for continued respect for and viable exploitation of our rich diversity of cultural expressions.

 

Cultural legends of this quality are celebrated not just for the value of what they have created but also for leaving behind works that will for generations show the way. Chiwoniso has effectively played her cultural heritage promotion role. She leaves us with the task of continuing where she has left. May her soul rest in peace.

Feedback:Stephen.chifunyise@gmail.com

 

Giving Voice to the Artist: The Impact of Current Cultural Policy Discourse on Zimbabwean Arts

http://www.kubatana.net/docs/artcul/nhimbe_cultural_symposium_120606.pdf

The State of Theatre in Masvingo (Zimbabwe) through the Eyes of David Dzatsunga - Siya Cultural Theatre

After travelling through Mashonaland East and Manicaland provinces Grace Maguri and I finally reached Masvingo late at night on the 8^th of January 2008. Early the next morning on the 9^th of January 2008 we hooked up with David Dzatsunga, director of Siya Cultural Theatre.

“And obviously the thing that has to happen is change; political change. If there’s a change in our political dispensation, if we have a new way of looking at life, a new way of looking at ourselves as a people, a new way of appreciating diversity of opinion, until that happens, I don’t see that being easy for us to build a vibrant culture of theatre” (Dzatsunga, 2008)

Samuel Ravengai:       Obviously theatre is not as vibrant as it was in the yesteryears. Tell me how it was in the yesteryears and how it is like today.

David Dzatsunga:        In the yester years, we are talking about the late 80s and the bulk of the 90s. It was possible to run a club. You could go out and hold performances in schools, colleges and other institutions. You could also get funding from NGOs. You could be commissioned to do productions. Some NGOs involved in some outreach work, and even government departments, used to hire us for Theatre in Education campaigns like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, family planning and things like that. So really, there was a diverse source of funding which made it possible for us to maintain a full time theatre arrangement where we all pay our actors and actress. They were reasonably happy and did not see any need to seek alternative employment. And, then of course, we could perform anywhere we felt like. Basically, that was the environment that we operated in then prior to the period that I was talking about.

SR:       What went wrong?

DD:      Probably the umbrella word is politics. With all these development to do with the land reform, the advent of the vibrant opposition party, the MDC, and the various pieces of legislation that have been described as rather draconic. The environment in fact, immediately became rather stifling for theatre practitioners. There was POSA where you were saying now you couldn’t just automatically find yourself with a gathering of people without explanation to the authorities. There was AIPPA sometimes we were told that our plays needed to be censored and the relevant ministry needed to know what was in our plays. And then the schools themselves were not very open. They could not independently give our groups slots to perform to the students. They needed some clearance either from the National Arts Council or the regional directors, or such authorities. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to access institutions which used to sustain theatre clubs. For some time, we went off the bill because the problem now had to do with the NGOs Bill which I think had provisions that regulated the funding of organizations. So it became very difficult really, to access these NGOs and as a result we discovered that we could not get out productions commissioned by them. Resultantly, we could not pay actors as constantly or remunerate them meaningfully, and so we did not run rehearsals. Actors increasingly became hungry, and with the hunger we had a lot of conflicts within the actors or among the actors as a result of misunderstanding of the cause of our distress. It was like the blame game where we are now saying, like what has been happening in certain political situations where you blame this tribe B for your poverty. It’s all politics. So we ended up having all these conflicts in the groups, and naturally, the groups disintegrated. All actors started moving away from the town going to South Africa. Like in our particular kind of place, you have South Africa as a lure for most young people. So we have quite a number of our actors just migrating to that country. Others tried to go into chikorokoza, as we call it, so they would just come into town spend the whole day in a queue, buy some sugar for resale and things like that. And in our case also we have Harare-Beitbridge highway which is quite lucrative for some youths who have the energy to go out there at night and probably buy fuel from long distance haulage trucks and things like that. Foreign currency deals. Some of them made it as a result of that. They became better off than they were as theatre artists, and it has become very difficult to bring them back into theatre because there really is nothing on the ground to show that there’s hope for theatre in this particular place.

SR:       Now that’s why you come to the conclusion that theatre is not as vibrant as it was in the 80s or early 90s so to speak?

DD:      Yes, largely because there were many theatre clubs competing for a name. In this town alone, small as it is, you could have five or four theatre clubs, and there were always theatre clubs sometimes mushrooming and dying. But there was a vibrant theatre industry to the extent that you could actually say unionise. At some time we thought we could unionise theatre as artists in order for us to be able to bargain meaningfully with the other stakeholders for example, those who were commissioning us and those who were giving us jobs.

SR:       Now, you raised a very important issue which wasn’t an issue in the 80s and 90s, the rise of a vibrant opposition political party. And you are saying it has got a bearing on this death of theatre in Masvingo and probably at national level. Would you like to explain how that brings about that scenario?

DD:      I believe that with the rise of that development, what the ruling party, or the government rather, I think became paranoid because this party had a lot of urban support. And as a consequence, there was need to legislate against any perceived support or activities that may be deemed to support this opposition party. Government now wanted to control information dissemination because it was not going to be possible now to simply write what you think, put it on stage and perform it to an audience. And it became increasingly important to government to make sure that the content and movement of information was in their control. So I believe again that’s where AIPPA comes in, that’s where POSA comes in, that’s where all these other instruments that have been legislated come in to control the movement of information. Or even the NGOs bill, government was now of the perception that most NGOs had their sympathies with the opposition, and most of the NGOs that supported theatre were in one way or the other involved in governance.  And theatre as a tool for information dissemination naturally requires that you gather people, and gathering people becomes something that is threatening to the government.

SR: Now, would you like to be more particular, especially as it regards to Masvingo or theatre groups that you know that were directly affected by these pieces of legislation? Do you have any particular examples?

DD:      An immediate example would be our own club, SIYA Cultural Theatre Club. Our thrust as a club, and my thrust as a writer, has always been protest theatre. We are saying ‘okay we have plays that try, from our own perspective, to mirror the society as we saw it and to probably put across what could be considered controversial issues’. We deal with things to do with corruption, elements to do with land and all these things that concern people’s lives and which people talk a lot about with regards to their own rights. We have times when we worked with the Zimbabwe Human Rights Organisation. We had a play that we had done, Tafi, which is short for Tafirenyika. That was in 1999 where we were looking at the plight of the ex-combatants before they became aligned to the ruling party. But we were simply looking at the fact that there was neglect of ex-fighters, and some of them had actually degenerated into hoodlums of the city and most of them were victims of corruption in high places where you find that the leaders in power were deliberately neglecting them. We are simply looking at neo-colonialism per se. So in that play we were commissioned by ZimRights to perform that play. We took it around the province then in 1999. I remember during those days we always had the CIOs as guests of our performances. They were always around, following us around.

SR:       Did they in any way physically, directly or indirectly try to stifle you?

DD:      No! They were just there. You would feel that their presence was not welcome because it was intrusive. And you could tell that they were trying to intimidate us by simply being present in their dark glasses, quite conspicuous all the times. So you wouldn’t feel comfortable in that kind of situation, especially if you were knowledgeable about their track record.

SR:       We all know what they were doing, particularly during the 80s early 90s.

DD:      Ya, ya! Personally, I also happen to have had that kind of experience. I happen to have been arrested by them at some time. During the days of the Zimbabwe Unity Movement, I was perceived to have probably campaigned in a class room. I was taken to their offices, close by here. I spent about three days in there. I was interrogated intimidated, humiliated and so forth. But I’m saying I have that prior experience. But I continue writing because writing is a dream, so you cannot censor yourself. The moment you want to be insincere, you find yourself failing to really bring out the artist in you.

SR:       Let’s come to your writing. Apart from Tafi which you did in 1999, what else did you do?

DD:      Voice which we did in 1992. It dealt with disability awareness. But it was political as well, the politics of disability if you like. I wrote the one titled Sungai Dzibate. It had to do with the ESAP, the whole question of ESAP where the president was urging us to tighten our belts.

SR: Anything else?

DD:      In 1993 I did one that entered for National Winter Festival, under the auspices of Masvingo Drama Circle, titled Nhamo/Troubles. We were collaborating. My school was collaborating with Masvingo Drama Circle and I’m sure we won the Dominic Convent Trophy for developing Zimbabwean theatre.  The National Winter Festival as you would know was mainly an elite festival, mostly for the whites. We entered it as a community theatre production that was then adapted to a proscenium arch stage.

SR:       Now, you seem to be silent about 2000 to 2008. Could what you’ve been talking about partly influenced that lack of vibrancy, liveliness of theatre?

DD:      Ya! From 2000 onwards it became very difficult to bring actors together, that was the major impediment.

SR:       So can we say for you it’s a dry patch, 2000 to 2008?

DD:      Ya, it’s a dry patch. I did a bit 2000. I’ve done a few works here and there but really, it’s the lowest ebb of my career.

Grace: After Nhamo/Troubles what other productions do you have?

DD:      There are quite a number. I do have scripts for some, but some were just improvised by the actors when they were on stage. I can write them anytime, whenever I want to script them. I did one which is Idler’s Corner. Idler’s Corner is based on the days when we had the Daily News and The Herald. It’s looking at media polarisation, and the politics that is being played in the media.  You have characters on both sides of the political divide, each trying to justify their own, why they support this side and not that side.

SR:       Now, have you performed this?

DD:      We performed it here at the Charles Austin Theatre, again at the National Winter Festival. We were asked by the Drama Circle to come and perform as guests. But we have also performed it for audiences here, in and around Masvingo, mostly between 2000 and 2001. ... I have also done Matroubles which is looking at the youths and HIV/AIDS.

Grace Maguri:            (interjecting)   Can I ask about other drama groups that you know? You now are talking about your personal experiences. But what have you also seen about other drama groups? Are they any drama groups that the establishment has used?

DD:      Not that I know of. I know there have been drama clubs, but mostly the establishment does not like using drama clubs. They would rather use dance clubs. ...So when you try to perform at their events as a drama club, they are not comfortable. But if you are going we have Heroes Theatre Company here.  I wouldn’t say they support the establishment, but what we have discovered is that because they dance Imbube and other dances. They are from Bulawayo actually, but they came and settled here.  They do get jobs to perform at national events and for the establishment here and there, simply because they sing and dance. But for those of us who have a mind and who would like to say things, it’s not easy to then find a stand to perform on these events. So that’s what I can say. I can’t think of a drama club that has really endeared itself to the political leadership of the province on the ruling party side.

Grace: What’s your way forward?

DD:      Personally, it’s very difficult to see under the current environment how best we can go forward. I know it will really take a lot to bring actors back to the rehearsal room and back onto the stage, because really unless there’s funding coming from elsewhere, not really to believe that can be channelled towards an effort to build an audience, until that is done. I don’t see theatre really reviving out of the efforts of the artists here on their own. The artists need some help, they need a helping hand. They need to be brought back on to the stage.  There are there. Even today, if you were going to say you want a production and you want us to do some work for you, it wouldn’t take me a day to gather artist who are rotting in the townships there and come up with a production. It’s not a problem as long as there is an incentive. It’s a question of saying you guys there’s so much money for you, let’s do this. So really, I believe that the only possibility for the revival of theatre especially in this town lies in some Good Samaritan probably coming down here to fund some activities. That may then convince artists that there’s life.

SR:       Or probably when the economy improves.

DD:      And obviously the thing that has to happen is change: political change. If there’s a change in our political dispensation, if we have a new way of looking at life, a new way of looking at ourselves as a people, a new way of appreciating diversity of opinion, until that happens, I don’t see that being easy for us to build a vibrant culture of theatre.

Samuel Ravengai (Interview inside my car: Masvingo CBD)

Maninzi Kwatshube Shocks Zimbabwean Theatre Audiences with Mabaso’s Black Threat

Samuel Ravengai

A second year University of Cape Town drama student, Maninzi Kwatshube, brought a moving piece of theatre to the Savanna Trust hosted festival, Protest Arts International Festival (PAIF). This is the fourth edition of the festival and it ran under the theme ‘Imagining and Re-Inventing the Future’. When Maninzi heard about PAIF, she thought there was no better opportunity to protest against African notions of beauty.

Maninzi collaborated with Nkule Mabaso, a fellow UCT Fine art student, who made the braids (which Maninzi used as part of the props) for her BA project. Maninzi took it upon herself to create a performance using the material that Mabaso had provided. Maninzi played Rapunzel, a character who represents Nkule Mabaso. Rapunzel is trapped in a desolate and unforgiving environment. She explores the female experience of the city, negotiating the fragile balance of fear and survival, of wanting to be desired and the fear of being desirable.

Zimbabwean audiences are ‘haunted’ by the ghost of previous performances at Theatre in the Park. All performances that come to this venue, with a few possible exceptions, use dialogue together with other performance forms such as dance, mime and song. On 27 October 2012, Zimbabwean audiences brought with them the residue memory of those previous performances, which they obviously wanted to use to appreciate a new performance coming from South Africa, Black Threat. However, they had a rude awakening when they were confronted by a performance that began and ended without a single word spoken. Maninzi, playing Rapunzel, never mimed, danced or sang. She chose to be a slave to the properties that adorned the set.

Black Threat proposed new distinctive conventions, that is rules imposed by the performance itself and hence unknown to the audience. The beauty of distinctive conventions is that they add a new experiential memory for future use. In this new theatre, at least to Zimbabwe, it is no longer the story/plot/action, but the ‘game’ that becomes the generative matrix. In Black Threat, the game involves applying makeup, wearing a wig of braids and playing with it till it infuriates Rapunzel. The audience left with a number of questions. What was it they had just seen? Was it theatre or not? What kind of theatre? Can theatre take place without recourse to the spoken word?

In the performance Rapunzel’s hair represents all the repressive elements that hinder her femininity on the one hand and on the other hand, the hair functions as the gross bodily extension that is meant to increase her attractiveness. The hair also functions as a tower of conceit and self-hatred from which she must escape as her hair keeps her imprisoned in a cycle of self-hatred and ill-confidence.

When the audience got into the venue, the performance had already begun, contrary to tradition where a performance begins after the audience has settled. Rapunzel, played by Maninzi was sitting on an African reed mat applying makeup on her lips, eyes, face, body and legs. Faint warmers illuminated this figure in the centre of a theatre in the round.

The door leading to the set was made of plaited braids. Each member of the audience touched these braids as they entered the space, giving the braids a ritualistic significance quite unsettling for religious audiences. The braids extended to the ground and wound around an opened makeup box revealing all the paraphernalia, from which Maninzi occasionally drew more makeup.

There was a pre-recorded audio playing from a computer which was visible on set and operated by a person visible to the audience. It was a chat between Nkule and Nkanyisile which was recorded in one of the University of Cape Town residences. They were talking about African and Coloured identities as they were defined in the 1950 Population Registration Act. What came out was the segregation amongst Coloured communities. The standard preferred identity was the Coloured with straight long hair typical of population groups with Malay blood. Coloureds with black parents were ‘othered’ in both Coloured and Black communities. Nkule and Nkanyisile laughed, cried, complained, despaired and celebrated in the background. No visuals were used.

While the audio chat was going on, Maninzi pursued action of a different type, not based on satisfying a want, but playing a game with braids and pants hung on the line. When her figure was fully illuminated, she set facing the entrance and applying more makeup. She knelt down, head on the ground, in what seemed like a prayerful gesture and began to worship the braids. She did it a few more times and ended the routine with a burst of energy which loosened a loop and released the braids from the door.

 The rest of the performance centres around Rapunzel fashioning The Black Threat (title of the mass of artificial dreadlocks) into a dress that she climbs into and lounge around in, and admires her beauty and desirability until she realizes that is she is trapped and needs to escape but there is no escape, and so she exhausts herself fighting the towering dress she has built until she is free but only to start all over again in different spaces that represent different ills. The things that make a city more familiar and less alien are not the concrete or other physical markers, but the relationships and the people and the associations we make with that place.

It was an excruciating experience where an object of adornment turned into an object of horror and torture. A member of the audience sitting just above me couldn’t hide his exasperation and shouted ‘women are in trouble!’ I felt the urge to stand up and relieve her of the weight she was carrying, but remembered it was a performance. At that moment, another shocking experience happened. Maninzi decided to take off the cloth wound around her body. This revealed her whole body with only a brown tight pant covering the essentials. This was quite unsettling for a conservative Zimbabwean audience. The closest, a performer came to nudity was when Tinopona Katsande took off her g-string and threw it on the floor as she maintained her position inside the blankets, while playing in Noel Marerwa’s Hot Water Bottle. Maninzi dressed up in pink bra and pants in full view of the audience. She put on a leopard skin coloured trousers and matching high heeled shoes. She started modelling in this costume nearly falling on several occasions. She seemed to attack all symbols of African feminine beauty. Hair and its connection to attractiveness plays a large part of how black women project themselves out to the world and into the future. The underlying implications of the fake hairs that they adorn and the unconscious or conscious desire to resemble white women in order to be seen as attractive and socially acceptable is problematised.

Maninzi finally decided to put on a matching top, but with each attempt, the long braids prevented her from wearing what she wanted to. She tried several times and realising the futility of the exercise, she started stripping again violently. She turned the makeup box upside down scattering its contents all over the set. She removed the braids and threw them in a heap together with the high heeled shoes. She wound a cloth with ethnic colours around her head leaving the top part revealing her trimmed African hair. The blouse could now fit her body. The audience sensed the end and clapped hands bringing closure to the show.

The idea was to refocus on the ‘traditional’ ideas of beauty and its construction; how black women define their attractiveness through foreign standards which effectively ‘other’ them.  Was this theatre, the audience wondered? Mabaso calls her piece ‘contemporary performance’, while others call it ‘live art’ or ‘performance art’. Theatre of a physical nature has been taken as ‘contemporary dance’ and relegated to dance spaces such as 7 Arts in Avondale. This has limited its scope of penetration in Zimbabwe. Lloyd Nyikadzino is now involved in various workshops to train Zimbabwean theatre makers in the art of physical theatre. Stanley Mambo, through Conquered Plans has attempted to mainstream physical theatre. Ravengai has already directed Tirivangani and is currently deconstructing Magwa’s Njuzu [Merman] to create theatre of a physical nature. Maninzi’s Black Threat has introduced a new creative vibe that could see Zimbabwean theatre moving into a fundamentally new direction.