sustained theatre

Further blogs from the Sector artists can be found be visiting this link The South Africa Blogs! Sector Artists Respond

A key extract from the blog written by Regional Hub member Felix Cross on his recent visit to Grahamstown Festival.

Felix Cross

As a mixed race person it is interesting to spend a little time in a country where everyone is defined primarily by his or her race. Other than here and in Vienna I have probably felt this nowhere else; the sense that people are crystal clear about racial definitions and are totally at ease discussing them to someone they have never met before, ie me. “Yes we love sport here, cricket, rugby, soccer – well that’s what the blacks play…”. All said without malice or affectation for my benefit.

Day 6

Cats and Dogs

Paul Grootboom is, in my humble opinion, one of the most talented theatre makers in the world today. There, I’ve said it and I stand by it; even after Foreplay and Interracial ( a piece I saw in Vienna last year). I knew it after Township Stories and I know it now.

This is how Tarantino would make theatre if he was capable – trashy, brilliant - and if he was told he only had a 25p production budget. Actually, think of those 40s/50s black and white gangster movies – for this is truly a movie onstage, a cartoon comic-book movie yes but a fascinating piece of genre-playing. It has a big heart in the middle, slightly less comedy than it thinks it has (that, with a few cuttable moments, is my only criticism) and is wonderful storytelling. Paul’s work always juxtaposes harsh, harsh township realities with classical and European references and here we have Beauty and the Beast meets Pulp Fiction. Great fun and I hope it comes to England.

Here’s a tip: if you want great service and perfectly cooked food in a restaurant, go in with a pen and notepad and set them down on your table. Order as usual, be polite and ask as many questions about the menu/wine list as you like. I am currently doing this at the Calabash restaurant, High Street, Grahamstown and clearly they all think I’m a food critic! I love it! The service! How many times now have I been asked if everything is alright?

No everything is not alright; I have just been walking aimlessly through the streets, sullen faced, my mind loaded with awful images of what I had just seen: the brilliant installation show by Brett Bailey, Blood Diamonds. Now I’ve found a single table in the only decent, quiet restaurant with a black clientele and I’m writing down my thoughts.

Of course, for the critic’s image, it helps that every time I take a mouthful of food, I put down my knife and fork, pick up my pen and write, all the time chewing thoughtfully….

So Blood Diamonds.
Make no bones about it; this is a racially divided town. Not like Notting Hill (white rich, desirable versus black, trendy, desirable) or New York (Italian bit, black bit, etc), this is much simpler, stark: white, wealthy, comfortable versus black, staggeringly poor, desperate.

At the geographical point of the divide they built the railway station; small, quaint even – could be a small Sussex branch line. Disused since February this year, it is the site of this promenade/installation piece. We are all waiting outside – maybe twenty-five of us - and it is not warm. Young black children occasionally run by, seemingly from nowhere, across the station car park and disappear by the side of the building. A door opens and a young black woman tells us in formal tones to enter the station building. As we enter we are each given a playing card and we are now in the waiting room. We sit and wait. On the walls, recent signs for 1st, 2nd AND 3rd class passengers (if blacks were second-class citizens, who were third? I think, then remember the coloureds, they were second). In the background there is beautiful, haunting music; classical soprano voice and strings. One by one our cards are called out and we are told to go out on to the platform silently. When it’s my turn I step out and a young boy, ten maybe appears at my side and holds my hand. We walk along the platform and stop at various places to view tableaux which are simple, real, powerful. The first, a black woman, like so many invisibles we walk past daily, she is wrapped in a blanket surrounded by barely sellable goods and surrounded by a cage of wire mesh. We move on to a small but grand stage with fine European Victorian/Edwardian tunics and other clothes. At first the contrast seems too obvious, then you notice the black feet just sticking out from underneath the podium, seemingly crushed. We move on and on. Over a bridge, down onto the tracks, children playing in piles of rubbish, no, not playing; searching – for food, anything useful. And we move on again. Away from the line to scrubland, more images. Turn a corner and (it is dark now) into a graveyard. No need for images here, my mind is doing all the work. Finally a black man and a white man – sick, cold - comforting each other. The boy leads me back across the tracks and to the side of the station building where he speaks for the first time, “goodbye” and runs off across the station car park to join his friends. I am speechless.

Okay, let me admit to sentimentality; the boy was about ten years old, the same age as my eldest son, back in England, safe, snug-in-bed England. This boy held my hand throughout with a young, gentle confidence. As we progressed I found myself clasping his in paternal protection, but who was protecting who? Here it was him, in the real world it should have been me, us. It was heartbreaking.

Upon my return

Just a quick observation; it was mentioned to us early in the festival that Afrikaans theatre was where a lot of the new idea were. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to see any – I’d be keen to discuss this with any one who did. I was told that the reason for this was simple: during the apartheid years the only theatre to receive funding was Afrikaans and therefore it had more time, facilities and chances to evolve (an argument we make everyday in England about arts funding) a style or styles. Yet, when watching the work of Paul Grootboom and Aubrey Sekhabi there is a strong style, built out of years of only having beer crates and oil drums for props; out of a storytelling tradition; out of an intrinsic understanding that music can be an integral part of a story.