The Market Theatre

Shockwave

/ antakalipa

SHOCKWAVE: The Closet, the Church and the Cruelty of Conditional Love

Antakalipa | Consciousness of culture.

“I can’t change who I am. God made me this way. Love who you love, because life isn’t guaranteed.”

There are moments in theatre when the stage stops being a stage and becomes a mirror. You arrive expecting a story, perhaps a little entertainment, perhaps a few hours away from the demands of ordinary life. And then something happens. A line lands differently. An object on the stage begins to carry the weight of an entire lifetime. A character’s silence becomes louder than the words spoken around them. Suddenly, you are no longer simply watching somebody else’s life. You are confronting something about your own.

At the Market Theatre, SHOCKWAVE, written by Chantal Stanfield and directed by David Dennis, invites us into precisely this uncomfortable territory. Set in apartheid South Africa during P.W. Botha’s State of Emergency, the production explores sexuality, religion, identity, morality, prejudice and the desperate human desire to belong. Its central character, Larry, is a closeted gay librarian trying to survive in a society in which his sexuality could make him a target of discrimination, rejection and humiliation.

But the genius of this premise is that the closet is not merely a physical or psychological space. It is a social construction. It is the room society builds around you when it cannot accept the person you are. It is the silence imposed upon you by people who insist they love you, provided you never become too honest about yourself.

SHOCKWAVE asks a devastating question: what kind of love requires another human being to disappear?

A country at war with itself

To understand Larry, we must first understand the world that surrounds him.

The 1980s were a turbulent period in South Africa. Apartheid’s machinery of racial oppression was met with intensifying resistance, and the State of Emergency declared by P.W. Botha in 1986 brought extraordinary restrictions, police powers and repression. The political atmosphere was one of surveillance, uncertainty and fear. The state wanted to determine where people could go, how they could organise, what they could say and whether their bodies could be free.

Yet SHOCKWAVE looks beyond the familiar images of political resistance. It turns its attention to another kind of imprisonment: the restrictions placed upon private intimacy.

Larry is a gay man living in a society that already has an elaborate system for deciding who deserves dignity and who does not. Apartheid has organised human beings into racial categories and attached rights, privileges and humiliations to those classifications. Within this same society, religious and social conventions dictate which expressions of sexuality are considered acceptable. Freedom is discussed as a political ideal, but it remains frighteningly conditional when the subject is a man’s right to love another man.

The play’s historical setting is therefore not decorative. It is the pressure cooker in which its characters are forced to live.

The spectre of the so-called “gay plague” adds another layer of terror. The early AIDS crisis generated profound anxiety, misinformation and stigma, and gay men were frequently treated as symbols of a supposed moral catastrophe rather than as human beings facing a public-health crisis. Fear became a convenient weapon. It gave prejudice the appearance of public concern.

There is a particular cruelty in a society that can turn illness into an accusation and vulnerability into evidence of guilt.

Larry’s predicament is consequently larger than his individual circumstances. He is living through a period in which the country is struggling over the meaning of freedom, yet he cannot be certain that freedom will include him. The liberation of the nation and the liberation of the individual are not automatically the same thing.

That is one of the most important contributions of Stanfield’s writing. She brings South Africa’s queer history into a conversation too often dominated by the better-known narratives of political resistance. As director David Dennis has observed in discussing the production, liberation meant more than changing the political order; it also required dismantling discrimination in people’s personal lives.

History is never as simple as the photographs in our textbooks suggest. There are always people living in its margins, carrying stories that the dominant narrative has not made enough room to hear.

Trapped in the closet

Larry’s tragedy begins with the fact that he cannot safely be himself.

He is a librarian, a profession associated with knowledge, literature, learning and the preservation of stories. There is an irony in this character spending his life among books while being unable to tell the most important truth about himself. He works in a world of words, yet his own identity is governed by silence.

The closet becomes an exhausting performance. It demands vigilance. Every conversation becomes a calculation. Every friendship carries the possibility of exposure. Every expression of affection must be measured against the danger of being discovered.

What happens when a person must continually edit himself to remain acceptable to others? What happens when survival requires the suppression of joy?

The answer is that a person can become a stranger to himself.

The phrase “I can’t change who I am” is powerful because it rejects the assumption that identity is a moral defect requiring correction. Larry is not asking society for permission to become a different person. He is asking for the freedom to live as the person he already is.

And this is where the play becomes brutally relevant beyond its historical setting. The laws may change. The political climate may change. The language of public morality may change. Yet the pressure to conceal one’s identity can survive inside families, churches, workplaces and communities long after the official machinery of oppression has been dismantled.

A closet does not always have a door. Sometimes it is a congregation that makes you afraid to speak. Sometimes it is a parent whose love comes with conditions. Sometimes it is the knowledge that the people who embrace you in public would reject you if they knew the whole truth.

The most frightening thing about prejudice is not simply that it hates. It is that it can persuade its victims to participate in their own disappearance.

Sister Debbie: faith, loneliness and the human heart

Larry’s search for accommodation brings him into the home of Sister Debbie, a deeply religious widow living on the Cape Flats. Her husband, David, is dead, and his military jacket remains hanging on one of the hooks in the house.

The arrangement brings two lonely people together, but loneliness does not immediately make them understand one another.

Sister Debbie belongs to a world of religious convictions, familiar domestic routines and social expectations. Larry arrives carrying a truth that this world has taught him to hide. Each has something the other cannot fully understand: she has lost the person with whom she shared her life, while he is struggling to establish a life in which he can be loved without pretending.

It would be easy to make Sister Debbie a caricature of religious intolerance. It would also be easy to make Larry a flawless victim and everyone around him a villain. The more interesting possibility is that both characters are products of their circumstances, shaped by grief, inherited beliefs, fear and the communities to which they belong.

Religion can offer comfort, fellowship, ritual and the promise that suffering has meaning. For many people, faith is an indispensable source of strength. But faith can also become an instrument of punishment when human beings appoint themselves guardians of God’s supposed preferences.

The contradiction is glaring: a religion that preaches love can be used to justify the rejection of someone who needs love most.

When does religious conviction become cruelty? At what point does defending morality become an excuse for denying another person dignity?

These are not abstract questions for Larry. He has to live with the consequences.

The play’s strength lies in the possibility of transformation. Sister Debbie is not simply a symbol of the church or a representative of an older generation. She is a woman who has experienced loss and must confront another human being whose suffering does not fit neatly into her established understanding of the world.

Her loneliness matters because it allows us to recognise a shared vulnerability. Beneath the labels, the arguments and the fear, these are people who need companionship.

The challenge is whether companionship can survive the truth.

The military jacket: a small object carrying an enormous meaning

One of the most affecting images in SHOCKWAVE is David’s military jacket, left hanging in the house after his death.

A jacket is an ordinary object. It protects the body, carries the scent and shape of its wearer, and becomes familiar through years of use. When its owner dies, however, it can become something else entirely: a relic, a memory, a physical connection to somebody who can no longer return.

David is absent, but his jacket remains.

For Sister Debbie, the garment is tied to the life she shared with her husband and the world that existed before bereavement. It is a reminder of intimacy, companionship and the permanence of loss. For Larry, who is struggling to find a place where he can exist without fear, the possibility of receiving that jacket carries a different significance.

When Sister Debbie eventually relinquishes her husband’s military jacket to a homosexual man, the gesture becomes one of the production’s most eloquent statements.

A garment associated with a deceased husband is passed to someone whose sexuality might have made him an object of contempt in the world that garment represents.

What does it mean to inherit something from a person you never knew? What does it mean to receive a gift from someone who may not fully understand your life, but has begun to recognise your humanity?

The jacket becomes a bridge between two people whose experiences initially seem incompatible. It allows memory to move forward rather than remain locked in grief. It becomes an act of recognition: you may not be the person I expected to welcome into my home, but you are a person, and your life has value.

There is also a beautiful contradiction in the military symbolism. A military jacket evokes discipline, authority, masculinity and a world historically associated with rigid ideas about gender and sexuality. Yet here it can be offered as an expression of tenderness.

An object that might once have represented conformity becomes a gift that makes room for difference.

Perhaps this is what compassion looks like when it finally becomes practical. It is no longer a sermon delivered from a pulpit. It is something you take off a hook and place in another person’s hands.

The familiar house: old-school couches and the architecture of memory

The set design contributes significantly to the play’s emotional atmosphere. The old-school couches, familiar domestic furnishings and motherly costumes evoke a recognisable South African home, one that feels lived in rather than assembled for theatrical display.

There is nostalgia here, but it is not nostalgia without complications.

These furnishings evoke the domestic worlds many of us recognise: the sitting room where family gathers, the couch that has survived decades of conversations, the carefully maintained household in which routines provide a sense of order. They suggest a world in which respectability matters, appearances carry social meaning and the home is expected to be a sanctuary.

But what happens when the home becomes another place where a person must hide?

The domestic setting is important precisely because it is ordinary. The violence of prejudice does not always arrive with a uniform, a weapon or an official declaration. Sometimes it is expressed through a disapproving look, an uncomfortable silence or the withdrawal of affection. Sometimes it is concealed beneath the rituals of respectable family life.

The familiar furniture therefore does more than establish the period. It makes the audience feel how easily exclusion can inhabit ordinary spaces.

The home can shelter you, but it can also police you.

The motherly costumes and traditional domestic atmosphere similarly evoke a particular social order, one in which femininity, religious respectability and community belonging are intertwined. They give the characters a visual world of familiarity and social expectation, reinforcing the tension between the comfort of tradition and the harm that tradition can sometimes perpetuate.

The set is not merely a backdrop to the conflict. It is part of the conflict itself.

This is the unsettling achievement of grounding such a politically charged story in recognisable domestic surroundings. The audience is not invited to imagine prejudice as something practised only by distant, monstrous strangers. We are asked to recognise how it can live in places that feel like home.

“Moffie” and the policing of masculinity

The shadow of Moffie hangs over SHOCKWAVE, evoking the violence of a culture that equates masculinity with conformity and treats homosexuality as a threat to social order.

The term itself is loaded with humiliation. It reduces a human being to a derogatory label and suggests that his sexuality somehow disqualifies him from the respect granted to other men.

The military setting is particularly significant in this regard. The apartheid state demanded obedience and promoted a rigid social hierarchy. Within that broader system, expectations about masculinity could become another mechanism for disciplining bodies and behaviour.

To be a man was expected to mean a particular set of things. To depart from those expectations was to invite suspicion, ridicule or punishment.

Larry’s predicament exposes the absurdity of this arrangement. His sexuality does not erase his intelligence, his capacity for affection, his work or his humanity. Yet the society around him is prepared to make this one aspect of his identity the defining fact of his existence.

That is prejudice at its most destructive: it takes a person with an entire universe inside him and insists that he can be reduced to one word.

The play’s political force lies in showing how the struggle for dignity extends into these intimate definitions of who is allowed to count as a man, a believer, a citizen or a respectable member of society.

Music: the memories we share when words fail

Music is among the production’s most important emotional threads. The characters’ shared affection for the South African rock and soul band The Invaders brings warmth and humour into a story surrounded by political tension and personal anxiety. David Dennis has highlighted the music and comedy as important elements in making the production both entertaining and deeply human.

The music matters because it allows the characters to meet somewhere beyond their disagreements.

A song can take us back to a time, a place or a person with extraordinary speed. A melody heard after many years can bring an entire world back into focus: the room in which we first heard it, the people who were there, the hopes we carried and the things we did not yet know we would lose.

Music is memory made audible.

It also reminds us that people who disagree about religion, sexuality and morality can still share cultural experiences. They can remember the same songs, laugh at the same moments and recognise the same beauty. Their lives are not divided into entirely separate human universes.

This is where music becomes a quiet act of resistance. It refuses to let ideology account for everything a person is.

The music player Larry leaves behind at the end of the play is especially poignant. He leaves to pursue freedom, but he does not leave without a trace. The device remains, carrying the suggestion of a life that has occupied this home, disturbed its assumptions and changed the emotional landscape of the people who encountered him.

The object becomes a residue of presence. Larry may have departed, but the encounter cannot simply be erased.

There is something profoundly human about leaving music behind. Songs outlive particular moments, just as memories outlive the people who made them. And sometimes the things we leave behind become the only way others can understand what we meant to them.

The music player is not merely a prop. It is a small archive of connection.

Morality, sexuality and the hypocrisy of judgement

SHOCKWAVE is not afraid to place religion and sexuality in direct confrontation. Its questions are uncomfortable because they challenge the assumptions people often inherit without examining them.

Who decides what is moral? Is morality measured by conformity to social expectations, or by the way we treat other human beings? Can a person claim to defend goodness while participating in the humiliation of someone who has done nothing to deserve it?

The play does not require us to dismiss religion in order to recognise religious hypocrisy. Nor does it suggest that every religious person is prejudiced. Its more demanding proposition is that faith must be judged, at least in part, by the humanity it produces.

If a doctrine leads someone to deny another person shelter, dignity or companionship, the consequences deserve scrutiny. Good intentions cannot automatically absolve cruelty.

The same applies to society’s wider moral codes. Communities often present their expectations as natural, timeless and unquestionable. But history demonstrates that what one generation treats as an unquestionable truth may later be recognised as an injustice.

The criminalisation and stigmatisation of homosexuality in apartheid-era South Africa were not simply private opinions. They existed within a wider legal and political environment that reinforced exclusion. The shame Larry experiences is therefore not merely personal insecurity; it is produced by a society that has made his identity dangerous.

And yet the play also asks us to consider what happens when people begin to challenge the beliefs that have shaped them.

Change does not always arrive through a grand declaration. Sometimes it begins when somebody stays in a room they would previously have left, listens to a person they would previously have condemned or performs a small act of kindness that contradicts everything they have been taught to fear.

The old woman and the gay librarian are not required to have identical beliefs or histories. They are required to recognise one another as human beings.

That is a much more difficult task than simply agreeing to disagree.

The courage to leave

Larry’s eventual departure is one of the play’s most important decisions.

His elopement represents a movement towards freedom, away from a world in which his identity has been treated as a problem to be managed. It is an act of self-preservation, but also a refusal to accept that a life of permanent concealment is the only life available to him.

There is sadness in this decision because freedom comes at a cost. He cannot simply transform the society around him. He cannot guarantee that the people he leaves behind will understand him. He cannot recover the time spent living in fear.

But he can choose not to surrender the rest of his life.

This is where the play’s central ideas converge. Identity without freedom becomes a private prison. Love without acceptance becomes a conditional arrangement. Faith without compassion becomes judgement. Morality without empathy becomes punishment.

Larry’s departure does not magically resolve these contradictions. It exposes them.

And perhaps that is why the music player matters so much. He leaves an object behind, but he does not leave his entire self behind to satisfy the expectations of others. He chooses a future, however uncertain, in which he might finally live without having to apologise for existing.

There is courage in staying and attempting to change a hostile environment. There is also courage in recognising when staying means sacrificing too much of yourself.

Sometimes leaving is not an act of abandonment. Sometimes it is the first honest act of love a person can perform for himself.

The cast: bringing the human conflict to life

The production features Renate Stuurman and Trevor Lynch, with Lois du Plessis and Duane Behrens in supporting roles. Together, they bring to the stage a story that depends on the friction between private feeling and public expectation.

Stuurman’s presence is central to the production’s exploration of domestic life, grief, religious conviction and the possibility of change. The character of Sister Debbie must be more than an emblem of intolerance: she must remain a woman with a history, a home and an emotional life of her own. Her eventual gesture with David’s jacket carries its meaning because it emerges from a human relationship rather than from an abstract argument.

Lynch’s Larry embodies the exhausting contradiction of being compelled to conceal an essential part of oneself while continuing to live, work and seek companionship. His character is not simply a representative of queer suffering. He is a man with a future to imagine, music to love and a life that cannot be reduced to the prejudices surrounding him.

Du Plessis and Behrens contribute to the broader social world of the play, helping to give shape to the religious and cultural environment in which Larry’s story unfolds.

What makes the ensemble’s task particularly demanding is the need to balance the drama’s serious historical subject matter with its humour, nostalgia and moments of ordinary connection. A play like this cannot survive on misery alone. It must show us what makes life worth protecting in the first place.

That means allowing its characters to be funny, contradictory, frustrating, vulnerable and recognisably human.

The production’s creative leadership is equally important. Stanfield’s writing brings a personal and historical perspective to a subject that has too often been silenced. Dennis’s direction situates the story within the politics of the 1980s while keeping its emotional focus on the people living through that history. Greg Homann, Artistic Director of the Market Theatre Foundation, was involved in the play’s development as dramaturg during Stanfield’s work with How Now Brown Cow’s Writers Collective in 2021.

That developmental history matters. It places SHOCKWAVE within a process of South African playwriting that takes time to interrogate the stories we tell about ourselves and the stories we have neglected.

The Market Theatre has long been associated with work that confronts South Africa’s political and social realities. This production continues that tradition by expanding the frame of historical memory to include the intimate lives of people whose experiences were not always acknowledged in the dominant narrative of liberation.

Why SHOCKWAVE matters now

South Africa has travelled a considerable distance from the period depicted in the play. The country adopted a Constitution that explicitly protects equality and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. In 2006, it became the first country in Africa to legalise same-sex marriage.

These milestones matter. They represent the hard-won recognition that a person’s sexuality should not determine whether they can participate in the life of a nation with dignity.

But legislation cannot, on its own, eliminate prejudice. A constitutional right does not guarantee acceptance at the family dinner table. Legal equality does not automatically dissolve religious condemnation, social exclusion or the fear of being rejected by the people whose love matters most.

This is why historical theatre remains essential. It helps us understand that rights are not abstract privileges. They shape the everyday experiences of people trying to find somewhere to live, someone to love and a community in which they can feel safe.

It also prevents us from congratulating ourselves too easily. We cannot simply look backwards, declare the past terrible and assume that the present has resolved all its contradictions.

The question is not only whether we have changed our laws. It is whether we have changed the ways we recognise one another.

SHOCKWAVE asks us to consider the distance between tolerating somebody and accepting them. Tolerance can be an arrangement in which the powerful agree not to interfere, provided the person they dislike remains discreet. Acceptance requires something more generous: a willingness to recognise another person’s humanity without demanding that they become smaller to accommodate our comfort.

That distinction remains urgent.

Final thoughts: Love who you love

There is something beautifully ordinary about the world of SHOCKWAVE. The couches, the costumes, the music, the memories and the jacket hanging in the house all evoke the familiar details through which human beings construct their lives. This is not a story taking place in some distant, incomprehensible universe. It is a story about people trying to live in a home, find companionship, hold on to their beliefs and make sense of a world that can be cruel.

And that ordinariness is precisely what gives the play its force.

The closet is not simply Larry’s problem. It is a reflection of the society that has made honesty dangerous. The religious household is not merely a place of judgement. It is also a space where grief, loneliness and the possibility of compassion coexist. The military jacket is not merely a memory of a dead husband. It becomes a gesture towards a future in which kindness can cross the boundaries that prejudice has constructed.

The music reminds us that we are capable of sharing joy even when our beliefs differ. The ending reminds us that a person cannot spend an entire lifetime waiting for the world to give permission to be free.

And the play’s most profound challenge is directed at those who believe themselves to be on the right side of morality: what good is your righteousness if it leaves another person feeling unworthy of love?

There is no virtue in making somebody suffer for a truth they did not choose and cannot simply change. There is no greatness in demanding that another person live a lie so that the rest of us can remain comfortable. And there is no meaningful freedom in a society that celebrates liberation while leaving certain people afraid to be themselves.

We are all temporary visitors in this world. The people we love will not be here forever. The rooms in which we gather will eventually hold different memories. The music will continue playing long after some of the people who first heard it are gone.

Life is not guaranteed.

So love who you love. Give people the dignity of being known. Question the convictions that make cruelty seem respectable. Let grief soften you rather than close you off. And when somebody trusts you enough to reveal the truth of who they are, do not make them regret it.

Sometimes the most revolutionary thing we can offer another human being is a place to sit, a song to remember and the assurance that they do not have to disappear to deserve a home.

At the Market Theatre, SHOCKWAVE reminds us that the struggle for freedom is never complete while somebody is still trapped in a closet built by the fears of others.

Because the ultimate measure of our humanity is not whom we condemn, but whom we allow ourselves to love.

Catch SHOCKWAVE at the Market Theatre

Written by: Chantal Stanfield
Directed by: David Dennis
Cast: Renate Stuurman, Trevor Lynch, Lois du Plessis and Duane Behrens
Venue: Mannie Manim Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg
Dates: 15 October – 8 November 2026
Tickets: Advertised prices range from R110 to R220, subject to the available booking options.

Book through Webtickets and consult the official Market Theatre production page for production information.

SHOCKWAVE is the kind of theatre that asks us to look at the past without forgetting the people who are still living with its consequences. Go and see it. Listen to its music. Sit with its uncomfortable questions. And remember that every person deserves the freedom to live a life that is genuinely their own.

Antakalipa — Consciousness of culture.

Mr Duiker Sang the Blues

/ antakalipa

Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues: When Grief Takes the Stage

There are performances that entertain you.

There are performances that impress you.

And then there are performances that sit inside you.

They follow you out of the theatre. They occupy the silence of the drive home. They return to you when the lights are off and the world has become quiet enough for you to hear your own thoughts.

Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues is one of those performances.

At the Market Theatre, from 13 September to 4 October 2026, Dyondzo Kwinika’s award-winning short story has found a new life on stage. The work, winner of the inaugural 2025 DALRO Can Themba Merit Award, has been adapted for theatre by Kwinika and Greg Homann, with Homann directing. The production emerges from a literary tradition that places South African storytelling, memory and human complexity at the centre of the theatrical experience.

But describing Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues as simply a play about grief would be to make it smaller than it is.

This is a play about love.

It is about guilt.

It is about fathers and sons.

It is about the things people cannot say while there is still time to say them.

It is about mental health, suffering, masculinity, memory, shame and death.

And perhaps most painfully, it is about what happens when love arrives too late.

The Desmond Dube I Didn’t Know

I grew up watching Desmond Dube on Dube on 2 on SABC 2.

That Desmond Dube was funny.

He was light.

He was mischievous.

He understood the rhythm of a joke and the beautiful simplicity of making people laugh. He became familiar to generations of South Africans as an entertainer who could enter our living rooms and make the heaviness of the world disappear for a little while.

Then I sat in the Market Theatre and watched another Desmond Dube.

This Desmond Dube did not make me laugh.

He made me hurt.

He cried.

He mourned.

He felt.

He collapsed.

He sobbed uncontrollably.

And there was something almost startling about witnessing such a familiar entertainer stripped of the comedic armour through which so many of us had known him.

The actor disappears.

The character remains.

Desmond Dube becomes Ebenezer Duiker, a father carrying an unbearable weight. His performance is not built around grand theatrical declarations. It is built around emotional exposure. The body becomes an instrument of grief. The voice cracks. The face changes. The physicality deteriorates.

This is not the Desmond Dube of the television screen I grew up with.

This is a father who has been broken by loss.

And watching him break was devastating.

A Father, a Son and the Unbearable

At the heart of Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues is a family tragedy.

The story gradually brings us closer to these people until they cease being characters and become people we feel we know.

Ebenezer.

Evelyn.

Maru.

Josh.

The production allows us to understand them before it asks us to mourn them.

That distinction matters.

We are not simply told that something terrible has happened.

We are taken there.

We live inside the memories.

We encounter relationships.

We discover wounds.

We begin to understand the spaces between people.

And then the tragedy arrives with its full weight.

The father who crippled his son.

The son whose suffering becomes inseparable from the suffering of those around him.

The guilt that refuses to die.

The love that survives even when everything else has collapsed.

This is where Kwinika’s writing becomes particularly painful. The story does not make grief abstract. Grief has faces. It has names. It has history.

The people on stage are not symbols pretending to be human.

They are human beings carrying symbols of their own.

And by the time death becomes unavoidable, the audience has become invested.

We knew them.

Therefore, we mourned them.

The Cost of Silence

One of the most affecting elements of the play is its relationship with silence.

There are things that people say.

There are things that people leave unsaid.

And then there are things that become impossible to say because too much time has passed.

Kwinika’s original story was written from a place of guilt, silence and the unbearable, and the stage adaptation retains that emotional centre. The production’s official description similarly positions grief, memory, family and mental health at its core.

The silence in Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues therefore does not feel empty.

It feels occupied.

Occupied by regret.

Occupied by memory.

Occupied by everything that should have been said.

There is an uncomfortable truth buried within the play: sometimes the people closest to us are the people we understand least.

Sometimes love is present but poorly expressed.

Sometimes people hurt the people they love.

Sometimes suffering is hidden behind appearances.

Sometimes the person who appears strong is the person barely surviving.

And sometimes a family only begins to understand the full magnitude of someone’s pain after they are gone.

The Horned Animal

And then there is the animal.

The horned creature standing over the stage and looking into the performance space.

Looking at us.

Watching.

It is impossible not to notice it.

It almost feels divine.

A presence above the human drama.

An observer.

A witness.

God-like.

And yet there is something deeply significant about what this animal represents.

It is not a predator.

It eats grass.

It does not need to consume flesh to survive.

It exists in a completely different relationship with violence than the human beings whose story unfolds beneath its gaze.

That contrast becomes haunting.

Human beings carry violence within themselves.

We wound one another.

We carry resentment.

We punish.

We judge.

We misunderstand.

We destroy things we love.

And above all of this sits the animal.

Watching.

Perhaps the creature becomes a mirror.

Perhaps it becomes God.

Perhaps it becomes nature.

Perhaps it becomes the silent witness that human beings desperately want when their own lives have become too complicated to understand.

Or perhaps its meaning is deliberately left open.

That is the beauty of theatre.

A symbol does not always need to announce its answer.

Sometimes it simply needs to watch.

And the animal watches.

The stage watches.

The audience watches.

And suddenly we become aware that we too are witnesses.

Theatre Without Distance

The intimacy of the production is extraordinary.

The stage is positioned within the audience.

There is no enormous gulf separating performer from spectator.

No comfortable distance.

No great theatrical wall.

The performers are close.

They are almost eyeball to eyeball with us.

And that changes everything.

We are not merely watching these people.

We are in their space.

We are implicated in their pain.

The theatre becomes personal.

The room becomes smaller.

The story becomes closer.

Every breath matters.

Every movement matters.

Every silence becomes louder.

This is theatre stripped of unnecessary distance.

It is theatrical, poetic and deeply personal.

And because the audience is so close, performance becomes incredibly important.

There is nowhere to hide.

The actors cannot disappear behind spectacle.

The emotions have to be truthful.

The performances have to carry the room.

And they do.

Desmond Dube as Ebenezer

Desmond Dube’s Ebenezer is the emotional centre of the production.

His grief is physical.

It lives in his shoulders.

It lives in his voice.

It lives in his face.

It lives in the way his body seems to surrender to the enormity of what has happened.

There are moments when he appears to have no strength left to carry himself.

And then the tears come.

Not cinematic tears.

Not theatrical tears designed to tell the audience, this is the sad part.

These feel like tears from somewhere much deeper.

Dube allows Ebenezer to be ugly in his grief.

And that is important.

Grief is not always beautiful.

Sometimes it is embarrassing.

Sometimes it is violent.

Sometimes it is exhausting.

Sometimes it makes people behave in ways they never imagined possible.

Sometimes grief leaves a person lying on the floor because standing has become too difficult.

Dube gives us that man.

The broken man.

The father.

The human being.

And suddenly the actor I remember from comedy becomes an entirely different theatrical force.

Evelyn, Maru and Josh

Nomathamsanqa Ngoma brings Evelyn into the emotional architecture of the story with sensitivity and presence.

Tankiso Mamabolo’s Maru contributes to the complicated network of relationships through which the story unfolds, while William Harding’s Josh becomes part of the painful emotional landscape that the production gradually reveals.

Together, the four performers create something important: an ensemble.

Nobody exists merely to decorate another person’s story.

Everybody contributes to the emotional history of the room.

That is why the audience becomes invested.

We are not simply waiting for the plot to reach its conclusion.

We are discovering people.

And when you discover people, you become vulnerable to their loss.

Greg Homann and the Architecture of Grief

Greg Homann’s direction understands that this story does not need to be shouted.

The material already carries enormous weight.

The direction therefore allows the emotional power to emerge through proximity, movement, silence, music and performance.

The result is a production that feels intimate rather than excessive.

It trusts the audience.

It allows us to sit with uncomfortable moments.

It allows grief to breathe.

The adaptation by Dyondzo Kwinika and Greg Homann is particularly important because this is a story that began as literature.

The task of taking a short story from the page and placing it inside a room full of living bodies is enormous.

Words must become movement.

Memory must become theatrical action.

Description must become design.

Interior thought must become performance.

And Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues demonstrates what can happen when literature is allowed to become theatre rather than simply being transferred from one medium to another.

The Market Theatre has a long tradition of bringing significant literary works into theatrical form, and this production continues that relationship between South African writing and the stage.

The Poetry of Sound

The blues are not merely in the title.

They are in the atmosphere.

Yogin Sullaphen’s work as Sound Designer, Co-Composer and Musician, alongside Petunia Msani as Co-Composer and Chorus, gives the production an additional emotional language.

Music does not simply accompany the story.

It helps carry it.

There are moments when words cannot adequately express what the characters are experiencing.

Music enters that space.

The sound becomes memory.

The sound becomes mourning.

The sound becomes the emotional pulse underneath the dialogue.

And this is fitting for a story centred on an artist and the psychological price of artistic life.

The official production description calls the work a play-with-music and highlights its live, experimental and narrative-driven musical component.

There is something inherently blues-like about the emotional world of Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues.

The blues understands pain without requiring pain to become spectacle.

It understands longing.

It understands loss.

It understands the human need to turn suffering into sound.

Light, Space and the Living Stage

Thabo Pule’s lighting design deserves particular praise.

In an intimate production such as this, lighting cannot simply illuminate actors.

It has to sculpt emotional space.

It has to determine where our eyes go.

It has to create transitions between memory and presence.

It has to make the stage feel different even when the physical space has barely changed.

And the lighting here contributes enormously to the atmosphere.

Hailey Chisholm’s set design works in harmony with that intimacy.

There is no need for an enormous physical world when the emotional world is already enormous.

The stage becomes a psychological landscape.

Nelisiwe Xaba’s movement direction further expands that language, allowing bodies to communicate things that words cannot.

This is why the production feels poetic.

Its poetry is not only in the dialogue.

It is in the bodies.

The light.

The music.

The silence.

The space.

The gaze of the animal.

The audience sitting close enough to see everything.

Costume as Character

Noluthando “Texture” Lobese’s costume design contributes another layer to the world of the play.

Costume can tell us where people belong.

It can tell us how they see themselves.

It can establish time, identity and social context.

But more importantly, in a character-driven production, costume helps actors inhabit people.

The performers do not simply wear clothes.

They enter another emotional reality.

Every element of the production therefore feels connected.

Nothing exists entirely on its own.

Sound speaks to movement.

Movement speaks to lighting.

Lighting speaks to space.

Costume speaks to character.

And performance brings all of it to life.

Mental Health Without the Mask

Perhaps the most important conversation within Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues is the conversation about mental health.

Especially because artists are often expected to perform happiness.

The world loves the entertainer.

It loves the musician when the musician is on stage.

It loves the actor when the actor is making people laugh.

It loves the artist when the artist gives.

But what happens when the artist is suffering?

What happens when the performer goes home?

What happens when applause disappears?

What happens when the person behind the public image cannot perform anymore?

The production asks difficult questions about the cost of living with inner demons while the outside world expects talent, productivity, charisma and perfection.

The Market Theatre itself describes the play as an exploration of the psychological cost of creative talent and the ways mental-health challenges within the creative community can be hidden beneath performative joy and the pursuit of perfection.

This is an important conversation.

Because the artist is still a person.

The comedian still has sadness.

The musician still has fear.

The actor still has wounds.

The celebrated person still needs love.

And perhaps the most dangerous thing society can do is mistake someone’s ability to entertain us for evidence that they are okay.

The Audience Becomes Family

By the end, something remarkable has happened.

The audience has become emotionally involved.

We have laughed where there was laughter.

We have listened.

We have watched people struggle.

We have witnessed relationships fracture.

We have watched a father carry an almost impossible burden.

And eventually, we mourn.

Not because the production tells us to mourn.

Because it has made us care.

That is the difference between witnessing tragedy and experiencing it theatrically.

The play earns its emotional ending.

It takes us from beginning to end.

It tells us who these people are.

It allows us to understand their relationships.

It reveals the wounds.

It gives us enough time to become invested.

And then it asks us to confront the consequences.

That is storytelling.

When the Blues Become a Language for Grief

There is a reason the title stays with you.

Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues.

The blues are often understood as music born from suffering, but suffering is not the whole story.

The blues is also survival.

It is the transformation of pain into expression.

It is the decision to give suffering a voice.

That is what this production does.

It takes grief and gives it bodies.

It takes guilt and gives it language.

It takes mental anguish and gives it movement.

It takes death and gives it memory.

It takes a short story and gives it a stage.

And perhaps most importantly, it takes people who could easily become statistics in a conversation about mental health and turns them back into human beings.

People with names.

People with histories.

People who loved.

People who failed.

People who suffered.

People who hurt one another.

People who wanted to be understood.

People who deserved more time.

The Legacy of a Story

There is something fitting about Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues arriving at the Market Theatre through the Can Themba legacy.

The DALRO Can Themba Merit Award was created to nurture South African short-story writing and connect literary creation with further opportunities for writers. Kwinika’s story was selected from more than 250 submissions and published in When Water Wants To, before being developed for the stage.

That journey matters.

A story begins on a page.

Then somebody reads it.

Someone believes in it.

An award gives it another life.

A theatre gives it bodies.

Actors give it voices.

Designers give it an environment.

Musicians give it rhythm.

A director gives it shape.

And eventually an audience sits in the dark.

And listens.

This is how culture survives.

This is how stories travel.

This is how one person’s imagination becomes part of the collective memory.

A Must-See

Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues is poetic.

It is intimate.

It is beautifully performed.

It is deeply moving.

It is painful without being gratuitous.

It is theatrical without losing the humanity of its characters.

It is a story about death, but it is ultimately concerned with life: how we love, how we fail, how we suffer, how we remember and how we carry the people we have lost.

Desmond Dube gives us a performance that challenges everything I thought I knew about his range.

Nomathamsanqa Ngoma, Tankiso Mamabolo and William Harding complete an ensemble that gives the story emotional depth and humanity.

Greg Homann’s direction understands the power of intimacy.

Dyondzo Kwinika’s writing gives the production its soul.

Hailey Chisholm, Yogin Sullaphen, Petunia Msani, Noluthando “Texture” Lobese, Nelisiwe Xaba and Thabo Pule build the world around that soul through set, sound, music, costume, movement and light.

And somewhere above them all, that horned animal continues to watch.

It eats grass.

It does not eat flesh.

It watches humanity wrestle with itself.

Perhaps that is God.

Perhaps it is nature.

Perhaps it is memory.

Perhaps it is simply a witness.

But it watches.

And we watch.

And for a little while, inside the intimate darkness of the Market Theatre, four actors become a family, a story becomes a wound, music becomes mourning, and grief becomes theatre.

I walked into Mr. Duiker Sang the Blues expecting a play.

I walked out having mourned people I had never met.

That is the power of theatre.

That is the power of storytelling.

That is the blues.

Market Theatre 50th Anniversary

/ antakalipa

THE MARKET THEATRE AT 50:

A Golden Jubilee of Courage, Art and Survival

There are anniversaries, and then there are milestones so significant that they become part of a nation’s history.

The celebration of fifty years of the Market Theatre was not simply a birthday party. It was a homecoming. A reunion. A remembrance. A declaration that against every imaginable obstacle—apartheid, censorship, financial collapse, political uncertainty and economic hardship—the Market Theatre endured.

For one unforgettable evening, the Main Theatre became a living museum of South African storytelling.

Before a single speech was delivered, before a note of music was sung, before a spotlight illuminated the stage, audiences were greeted by a wonderfully theatrical surprise. Hawkers enthusiastically sold vegetables and fruit throughout the auditorium, recreating the bustling atmosphere that gave the Market Theatre its name. It was immersive, joyful and deeply nostalgic. The energy was electric. One could almost feel the ghosts of five decades of performances moving through the building.

The Market Theatre was alive.

And perhaps it has never felt more alive.

The Theatre That Refused to Bow

Founded in 1976 by the visionary partnership of Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, the Market Theatre emerged in one of the darkest periods of South African history.

The country was divided by apartheid.

The arts were censored.

Voices were silenced.

Yet in an old produce market in Newtown, Johannesburg, a radical idea took shape.

Create a theatre where stories could be told honestly.

Create a theatre where artists of all races could work together.

Create a theatre where truth mattered more than fear.

From those ideals emerged what would become known around the world as “The Theatre of the Struggle.”

The Market Theatre became one of the few spaces where South Africans could see themselves reflected honestly on stage.

Here, theatre became resistance.

Here, theatre became memory.

Here, theatre became freedom.

The Giants Who Built The House

The evening reminded everyone that great institutions are built by extraordinary people.

The names honoured throughout the celebration read like a Hall of Fame of South African theatre.

Athol Fugard.

John Kani.

Winston Ntshona.

Mannie Manim.

Barney Simon.

Janice Honeyman.

Paul Slabolepszy.

Fatima Dike.

Gcina Mhlophe.

Mbongeni Ngema.

Zakes Mda.

Gregory Maqoma.

William Kentridge.

Pieter-Dirk Uys.

Janet Suzman.

Percy Mtwa.

Lara Foot.

Ismail Mahomed.

And so many others who shaped the artistic soul of the nation.

Each name represents countless rehearsals, impossible deadlines, difficult conversations, creative breakthroughs and personal sacrifices.

Together they built far more than a theatre.

They built a legacy.

The First Fifty Honourees

The celebration paid tribute to an extraordinary group whose contributions helped shape the Market Theatre’s first fifty years:

Aletta Bezuidenhout

Vanessa Cooke

Judith Cornell

Fatima Dike

David Eppel

Jules Feiffer

Lara Foot

Athol Fugard

Bobby Heaney

Leonie Hofmeyer

Janice Honeyman

John Kani

William Kentridge

Sibongile Khumalo

Thandi Klaasen

Bruce Koch

Sue Kriel

Annabel Lebethe

Grahame Lindop

Christine McDonald

Gregory Maqoma

Motlalepule Makhate

Ismail Mahomed

Mannie Manim

Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni

Zakes Mda

Zane Meas

Gcina Mhlophe

Penny Morris

Nthati Moshesh

Percy Mtwa

Mothobi Mutloatse

Seelan Naidoo

Seipati Ncube

Sibusiso Ndumndum

Nomsa Nene

Mbongeni Ngema

Pamela Nomvete

John Oakley-Smith

Lindsay Reardon

Sarah Roberts

Minky Schlesinger

Regina Sephight

Mncedisi Shabangu

Zodwa Shongwe

Barney Simon

Mary Slack

Janet Suzman

Pieter-Dirk Uys

Together they form part of the foundation upon which generations of South African artists continue to stand.

The Plays That Changed A Nation

Throughout the evening, audiences were reminded why the Market Theatre matters.

Because of the stories.

Stories that challenged power.

Stories that preserved memory.

Stories that inspired hope.

The stage came alive once more with tributes to legendary productions that helped define South African theatre.

Marabi.

Sophiatown.

Nothing But The Truth.

Sarafina!

MANTSOPA.

The Coat.

Woza Albert!

Born in the RSA.

Asinamali!

The Island.

Coal Yard.

Rise ’76.

And many more.

These productions are not merely plays.

They are chapters in the history of South Africa.

They are archives of lived experience.

They are acts of remembrance.

To witness excerpts and celebrations of these classics was to witness history itself taking a bow.

A Standing Ovation for Mbongeni Ngema

One of the most emotional moments of the evening arrived when the original cast of Sarafina! returned to the stage.

The audience erupted.

A roar of applause filled the theatre.

For a brief moment time seemed to stand still.

The celebration became a tribute not only to the production itself but also to the extraordinary legacy of Mbongeni Ngema.

Sarafina! was more than a musical.

It became an international phenomenon.

It carried the story of South Africa’s youth into theatres across the world.

Seeing its original cast reunited was a powerful reminder of the impact South African theatre has had on global stages.

An Evening of Legends

The programme unfolded like a procession of giants.

The evening opened with a warm and inspiring address from Market Theatre Foundation Council Chairperson Florence Masebe.

Then came a parade of artistic excellence.

John Kani.

Greg Homann.

Malcolm Purkey.

Veterans and visionaries.

Artists and activists.

Storytellers and dreamers.

Every appearance was met with admiration.

Every speech carried history.

Every moment reminded audiences that the Market Theatre has always been greater than any individual.

It is a collective achievement.

A national treasure built by thousands of hands.

The Years of Survival

Yet perhaps the most remarkable story told during the evening was not artistic.

It was financial.

Because there were many moments when the Market Theatre should have disappeared.

Many moments when the doors could have closed forever.

Many moments when bankruptcy seemed inevitable.

Instead, people fought for it.

1976 – 1986

Building a Theatre Without State Support

The Market Theatre was established largely without government support.

Founders Barney Simon and Mannie Manim worked relentlessly to secure resources.

Artists accepted modest fees.

Sometimes no fees at all.

People believed in the mission.

The theatre survived because of passion.

1987

A Dedicated Fundraising Drive Begins

Financial pressures intensified.

Supporters rallied.

Fundraising became essential.

The theatre’s survival increasingly depended upon local and international friends.

1988

The Market Goes International

Global recognition attracted new supporters.

International foundations, cultural organisations and donors recognised the importance of preserving this unique artistic institution.

1994

Democracy and New Opportunities

With democracy came renewed hope.

The Market Theatre’s role in documenting and resisting apartheid was widely acknowledged.

Support expanded.

New partnerships emerged.

1998

Another Financial Crisis

Economic realities once again threatened operations.

Emergency interventions and fundraising efforts prevented collapse.

The theatre survived.

Again.

2001

A Landmark Corporate Partnership

Corporate South Africa increasingly recognised the value of supporting the arts.

Private-sector partnerships became critical to long-term sustainability.

2004

Confronting Bankruptcy

One of the most difficult periods in the institution’s history.

The possibility of closure became frighteningly real.

Yet artists, administrators, supporters and donors refused to surrender.

2005

A Turning Point

Restructuring efforts, improved governance and renewed partnerships helped stabilise the institution.

The future looked brighter.

2006 To The Present

The Market Theatre entered a new chapter.

Continued support from government agencies, the National Lottery, foundations, corporations, international cultural organisations and loyal audiences helped sustain one of South Africa’s most important cultural institutions.

The Friends Who Kept The Lights On

The celebration acknowledged countless organisations and individuals who ensured the Market Theatre survived.

The National Lottery.

The Rockefeller Foundation.

Corporate partners including Johnnie Walker.

International arts foundations.

Private philanthropists.

Foreign cultural agencies.

South African businesses.

Audience members.

Ordinary citizens.

And perhaps most importantly, artists themselves.

There were times when actors worked for little or no compensation.

Directors sacrificed personal income.

Creative teams accepted enormous hardship.

They did so because they understood what was at stake.

The survival of the Market Theatre was never simply about preserving a building.

It was about preserving a voice.

A President Among Artists

The significance of the evening was reflected in the distinguished guests in attendance.

Former President Thabo Mbeki joined the celebration.

His presence underscored the profound role the Market Theatre has played in South Africa’s democratic journey.

This was a night of glamour.

A night of elegance.

A night of national importance.

But above all it was a night of gratitude.

Fifty Years Later

As the celebrations drew toward their conclusion, one truth became impossible to ignore.

The Market Theatre has never belonged to a single generation.

Each generation inherited it.

Protected it.

Expanded it.

And passed it forward.

For fifty years it has given South Africans a place to laugh.

To cry.

To remember.

To argue.

To dream.

To heal.

To imagine a better country.

Many theatres produce shows.

Only a handful help shape a nation.

The Market Theatre is one of those rare institutions.

Fifty years after its founding, the old market still trades in something priceless.

Truth.

And on this remarkable evening, surrounded by legends, artists, presidents, dreamers and audiences, that truth stood centre stage once again.

The applause was thunderous.

The memories were eternal.

And the story of the Market Theatre continues.

Breakfast with Mugabe

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Breakfast with Mugabe

At the Market Theatre for the opening of “Breakfast with Mugabe, Standard Bank had an influence, drinks, soup, bread and general snacks on the house. Posed for pictures with distinguished people, met the director Calvin Ratladi.

Written by Fraser Grace, ‘Breakfast with Mugabe’ stars Themba Ndaba portraying Mugabe and Gontse Ntshegang as his wife, Grace. Craig Jackson plays Mugabe’s psychiatrist, Dr Peric, while Zimbabwean actor Farai Chigudu takes on the role of Mugabe’s bodyguard. The play is about Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s fictional imagining of conversations with white psychiatrist Dr Peric. Initially, Mugabe is avoidant, he misses appointments and comes late. They go deep delving into Mugabe’s psyche, the struggle is unearthed, bombings comes to the surface and love of country is elevated. The characters speak in Shona for realism, the play is in English. Exploitation happens, the white farmer loses his farm. The play explores grief, healing, faith, nationalism and legacy.

The set is in Zimbabwe’s head of state, coat of arms on the wall and a portrait of a painting on the other side of the wall. Elevated slightly by a stage in the middle is a trio of chairs and a table for juice. On the ground is soil, it features at the start and the end of the play. Themba Ndaba is brilliant as Robert Mugabe, he embodies his mannerisms, the restless energy, panting, speech and demeanor. I loved Gontse Ntshegang, she is so beautiful and amazing, she stole the show as Grace. She is after your farm white man. Craig Jackson as Dr Peric is a psychiatrist whose about learn what it means to be a white farmer in Zimbabwe, he learns the hard way, he loses. Farai Chigudu as the bodyguard beats up the white psychiatrist.

Thought-provoking piece of theatre that delves into the intricacies of human nature. I know I missed so much, it’s not something you watch once. You need multiple viewings to scratch the surface. It can completely go over your head, it needs meditation and contemplation. This is undoubtedly a masterpiece.

Congratulations Calvin Ratladi and the whole team for a great show and a deserved standing ovation.

📷: SamSays

Expelled

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Expelled

Great show, wonderful story grounded in reality. Charmaine Weir-Smith is my new favorite actress, I’ve started following her on Instagram! Her performance was awesome, she killed it! I saw my mother in her. Crazy how social media can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand you get to see pictures of your crush, on the other hand it can induce depression with the incessant comparing. Let’s not forget how a viral campaign can make or break you. It certainly destroyed this family, we have the idiot, insensitive son to thank for this misfortune. It was a stupid joke, why would they broadcast it to the world like that? It was easy to care for the characters, I think a family dynamic enforces that. The show was funny and the pacing was perfect, awesome writing and masterful acting down to the microexpressions. It was a performance show and the cast performed! I am also guilty of using Facebook as a form of escapism, it’s easier to live through the lives of others especially when your life is filled with boredom. Rape is never an easy topic, a lot of cringe moments, I was left frustrated and disappointed with the idiot son. I shared in the father’s disappointment. He deserved the expulsion and to lose his beautiful girlfriend, he gets no sympathy out of me. The marital problems of the husband and wife has me contemplating about marriage, is it viable? Is it worth it? Are all marriages like that or is it just a running gag at this point? The lighting of the show was awesome, the lights moved the show, the lighting told the story. I was watching but I didn’t feel like a bystander, I was immersed in their world, I could relate with the characters, I understood their conundrum and like them I didn’t have the answers. I love that there is no Hollywood-fairytale conclusion because life isn’t like that, the human condition is difficult and we improvise along the way, no one has the answers and we are all fated to die. No one will remember us in the grander scheme of things because time forgets. Ending the show with the sons fuck-up was a nice touch and we also saw the notorious viral video, true boys will be boys but that was the worst video I’ve ever seen in my life, deserving in the expulsion of all those who where involved. Yes, harmless fun, boys playing around, it’s a joke, it’s funny, no one was raped but the expulsion is justified, they tainted the schools image and potentially the reputation. I salute and applaud the whole team. That was a classic show, the best. I loved the social commentary, it’s fun to observe, condemn and laugh at ourselves on the stage.

Sophiatown

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Sophiatown

Wonderful story, great sets and the best Jazz music, I recognized the coal stove, worn out door and cohabitation associated with being from the township. A stadium of people can coexist and live together in a 4 room house and that’s the case in this story. Maybe not a stadium but family, extended relatives, girlfriend and close friend. Jewish girl moves in and is welcomed to the family. I love the family dynamic, makes the characters relatable as you can see yourself in their image, it forces you to care for the characters and stay engaged with the story, the conversations are hearty, free flowing and feel natural, dialogue funny, witty, serious, heartfelt and emotional. The show had everything, it was supremely entertaining. There’s a lot of range, textures and layers to the acting. For the most part the show is comedic but it does get threatening and dramatic. I cared for the characters, I saw my sister, mother, father and uncle. The gangster was humanized in a way I had not seen since “The Sopranos”, we got to see what the protagonist is usually like with his family, that made him a bit likeable despite the fact that he is a bad person with questionable morality. Like on “The Sopranos”, his family are enablers of the lifestyle. The mother welcomes a life of crime since his son gives him money. The gangster’s girlfriend, Princess is textbook Carmella Soprano with the lavish lifestyle and like Carmella, she is manipulated and bought with jewelry. She stays in the relationship despite the physical and emotional abuse. She is labeled “A princess of the slums” and as such, she has to take all the abuse, she has no other place to go, she has no other options, she’s living a good life, she’s in, she’s in! For most of the show, it feels like a sitcom, the live Jazz band controls the tempo and creates the feel, the 1954 Sophiatown jazz feel, love the costumes, the double breasted suits, cane’s and hats, it is gentlemanly and gives intellectual vibes. The actors on the stage were amazing, they were convincing, they were in sync, they had chemistry, they had a lot of enthusiasm and were animated and lively. They looked like they were having a lot of fun, they connected deeply with their characters. My favorite character is Lulu, the school girl, she’s funny and I appreciate her perspective. I enjoyed the gangsters performance, he had the crowd at the palm of his hand, he is violent, a bully, exhibits preditory behavior, manipulative and an overall bad person. Oh well, what do you expect from a gangster? Yes he is a family man but a gangster nonetheless. Great cheographed moves with wonderful melodic and harmonic singing, the band are amazing throughout, they are hidden for most part of show by the set (Shacks/Informal settlements) but they are revealed to the audience when Sophiatown is bulldozed to the ground. The depiction of the township is so accurate with the loud dogs and music, it made chuckle. In the end, everybody moves out or to be precise is forced out! Even Princess snaps out the trance she was in and figures she deserves better. Segregation and apartheid prevails and the white Jewish girl moves to Yeoville, ending the chance at romance with her black writer intellectual, the gangsters righthandman Charlie, is forced to live in pipes under a bridge because he is colored and can’t move to Meadowlands. One day gets knifed to death courtesy of a fight he was involved in. The rest of the family gets relocated to Meadowlands. Their movers are unsympathetic, insensitive Dutch men who are on a schedule and don’t negotiate with anyone, they just bring everything down! Having identified with the core characters for more than 2 hours, you feel their pain and helplessness at the situation. In the end they all lost. Amazing story with authentic characters played by actors who executed optimally.

The Fall

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The Fall

I was at the Market Theatre for the opening of “The Fall”. The place was filled to the brim and gushing onto the floor. So much so that the auditorium couldn’t accommodate everybody with seats, some people sat on the steps. The venue was exuding radiant energy and it was contagious. Excitement was in the air and everyone was beaming. I also met Bongiwe Potelwa, Yay! Thank you for the invite Bongi.

Set in 2015 at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. This piece of protest theatre explores issues of race, decolonization, social inequality, upbringing, the #rhodesmustfall movement and the #feesmustfall movement. It follows 7 students with different perspectives, backgrounds and ideals, united by one cause bringing down the statue of Cecil Rhodes. The statue is a symbol of colonization and it doesn’t reflect the current times and ideals of an African University. Instead it divides and perpetuates racism among the students and the staff. It is a symbol of oppression, privilege and the white man’s dominion. It is like a persistent dark cloud hanging over them. The students converge and discuss the possibility of bringing it down. One student suggests taking it down with a chisel and hammer, while another contemplates a truck. Ultimately, the statue is taken down with the help of a helicopter but problems still persist. It is announced that tertiary fees will increase by 12%. This enrages the students of UCT, it’s not like they could afford the fees before the increase. A lot of students are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They rely on government aids and loans to continue with their education. NSFAS is not always the answer, sometimes they don’t approve applications and when they do you have to prove to them that you are poor. Of course you are poor, that’s why you are trying to build a better life for yourself and your family but the government are making it so hard. The students get together and discuss their right to free education. This results in a protest and the #feesmustfall movement is born. Stellenbosch University students join and it spreads like a wildfire resulting in a nationwide shut-down of all universities in the country.

The show tells the story of the two movements beautifully. It also explores feminism, masculinity, racism and inequality. It’s easy to relate with the characters, they are real and the conversations between them are naturalistic. Like conversations with your friends, they are free, open, funny and silly. They are not hindered by language, instead they mash it up, communicating in a way that feels authentic to the characters. African languages are integrated because the characters are South African. You can see yourself in their image and hence relate and emphasize with them and their struggles. The actors on the stage are brilliant and captivating, it is a performers paradise. They fully inhabited the characters worlds. It was convincing, it felt as though they were telling their own personal stories. From voice intonation, usage of the stage, monologues, singing, protests – it is a masterclass.

I loved everything about the show, shout out to the cast:

Tankiso Mamabolo
Sihle Shona
Sizwesandile Mnisi
Tshepo Matlala
Mosehlana Mamaregane
Kevin Narain
Leche Tangee

Congratulations Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Billy Langa and the whole team for a superb show and a deserved standing ovation.

Pieces of me

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Pieces of me

I was at the Market Theatre for the opening of “Pieces of me” by Bo Petersen. A poignant play about family, belonging, race and identity. Set in the era of apartheid, the story world is plagued by inequality, segregation and racism. A time of the bompass, when you had to carry your identification documents at all times to gain access to parts of the country. This law severely limited the movements of black South Africans and was viciously enforced by the police with violence and jail time being norm for perpetrators who didn’t have their identification documents at hand. A time of Prohibition of mixed marriages act, an act that made it illegal for a white person to marry any other race, the immortality act, an act that barred sexual relations between whites and non-whites, transgressors could face up to 7 years in prison and the infamous Group Areas act that designated certain areas for certain races among other stringent, harsh and unfair acts.

Pieces of me explores Bo’s life, about how her father classified as “colored” marries her mother classified as “white” and the emotional toll of having to live in secrecy because of the laws imposed on them. After falling in love and having having 5 children together, her father passes off as white, a lie if discovered could send him to prison for 10 years and destroy the family.

Bo Petersen tells the story from different perspectives, her father’s, aunts and grandmother, breaking the fourth wall at times to talk to the audience to make them feel what she felt. The message is powerful and emotive. The acting unbelievable! She also enacts the roles of her aunt, father and grandmother. She is a great storyteller and inhabits all the stage. She is expressive with her body, language and overall demeanor. The set although minimalistic is effective. The hanging suit serves as a homage to her father, it has a presence, a spirit of its own and Bo interacts with it. The lighting nuanced and intimate. Christopher Petersen plays the keyboard and he sets the tone for the play, working alongside Bo to curate the story throughout.

Powerful story.
Powerful performer.

Congratulations Royston Stoffels for a great show and a deserved standing ovation.

The cry of Winnie Mandela

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The cry of Winnie Mandela

At the Market Theatre to watch “The cry of Winnie Mandela”. If you had the opportunity and honor of asking the mother of nation a couple of questions, what would they be? Stompie? TRC? Mandela FC? Her 400+ days in prison? Why her union with Nelson didn’t last and what could she have done better if anything?

The show starts off with a writer thinking out loud, watching a news bulletin about the murder of Stompie. It is alleged that the Mandela FC team kidnapped and murdered him. There’s uproar and chaos considering Mandela FC is Winnies team. “She changed, she’s not the same person. She used to be warm, empathetic and compassionate, but now I don’t recognize her” – these are some of the sentiments expressed from the screen from commentators. The writer is in a room, he is thoughtful, he wants to write Winnies story from her vantage point. Then four african women appear from his imagination. They are real women, full of personality and quirks. They are humorous, they give the show color, range and dimension. The four women share their stories with the crowd about how their husband’s left and they are still waiting. The stories are personal and emotive, they test their resilience, resolve and character. The crippling angst of loneliness, one woman explores Can Thembas “The Suit” set in Sophiatown about a woman who commits adultery. She too flirts with the idea of committing adultery. One of the women is easy prey for a young man who targets her because she is isolated and alone, they engage in casual intercourse but it stops when the rumors in the townships start circulating. One of the ladies man leaves her for a white woman after she was his backbone, supporting him and his dreams. The women call out the double standards, would he wait for her if she left? The ideas of patience, commitment and resilience are put through a microscope. The ladies want to know how Winnie was able to do it. They play a game which results in Winnie Mandela magically appearing. The ladies are awestruck and commence showering her with questions. Questions about her and Nelson, the TRC, her days in captivity and her secrets to resilience. She answers them with a lot of personality. The last image of the play is off a quote about her being happy with everything and how she would never change anything.

The show is simply wonderful. The performers are real, familiar and relatable. It was easy to connect with the characters because they made themselves vulnerable so early on. The interactions with each other on the stage felt natural. You knew the characters on the stage, they felt alive. Language was not a barrier, words from other languages was borrowed for expression and authenticity. It was not language for the sake of form but language for expression and the story world. When the performers performed, their faces lit up. They fiercely delivered their monologues and sang with a lot of passion and love. The lighting was cool, I saw one detail that blew me away. On the floor you could see the reflection of a window. The show is simply irresistible!

Les Nkosi plays Prof. Ndebele (writer) , Rami Chuene plays Mannete, Ayanda Sibisi plays Delisiwe, Pulane Rampoana plays Mamello, Siyasanga Papu plays Marara and Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo plays Winnie Mandela.

Congratulations Momo Mansunyane and the whole team for a great show and a deserved standing ovation.

The King of Broken Things

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The King of Broken Things

Sticks and stones can break bones but words alone can’t break you. I agree with the lead, that’s a false assertion. Words have the ability to cripple your soul, they matter, it’s how we create our reality. Positive words are better and lighter than the negative ones. Negative words are heavy and weigh you down. I loved the show, it’s powerful, philosophical and sheds a light on the human condition. We are all broken and that’s okay because we can be fixed and made better. Broken things have personality and scars tell a story, that’s how you know you have lived. Kintsugi, a Japanese custom that mounts together broken things with gold to show their character and resilience is central to the play’s message and tone. Broken things can be more valuable than those that don’t have a blemish, that’s the idea of art, renewal and rebirth. You don’t throw away something because it’s broken, you fix it and make it truly yours, you renew it and give it personality. That’s what the lead did when he changed his broken flask into a vase, he took the broken insides of the flask and stuck them outside, the end result is beautiful as the flask is changed into a vase that reflects like a mirror. Of course collecting broken things makes you a hoarder and there’s something psychological about being a hoarder. You can’t let go, you think you can fix, control and restore things back to the way they were or better, you trapped in a loop, you don’t want to grow up. We see this from the lead, he hasn’t been right since his father left, his mother too. He has this yearning to fix it, restore things to how they were because deep down he’s broken. This brokenness manifests as a person being a hoarder of broken things. That’s how artists are born, Kintsugi, and it’s this brokenness that makes them invaluable and beautiful because they capture the world in a way that we can feel. Life is a feeling process and broken things have felt. We are all broken, we think we can fix and control life when in actual fact the Universe is indifferent to us and our whims, but we do it anyways because it’s life and we do have a degree of control, so we create memories, moments, art, because that is what the human condition is all about. It’s easy to throw away things because it rids you off the responsibility but you fail to appreciate the beauty of that thing, everything has soul, beauty and it is in the way that your frame your words that will dictate what you see.

The show touched me, I loved it! I also learned about Japanese philosophy, Kintsugi, will stay with me beyond today, I will take it with me all my life. Amazing performer Cara Roberts is, so childlike, sweet and innocent. The cape, the flying, inquisitiveness, very realistic and believable. Loved the acting, simply put unbelievable! The facial expressions, mannerisms, how she delivered her words, how she made use of the stage, it was a complete performance. She was captivating, she had the crowds attention the whole time, we all cared what she had to say, she commanded the stage, she had real energy, she brought life and meaning to those words, enthusiasm beamed from out of her, she was amazing. A big credit to the writer and director of the show Micheal Taylor-Broderick, perfection is my humble opinion. The lighting was perfect, best suited for an intimate crowd. That was a great show, powerful, that last scene with the robot and the sleeping boy was the best ending ever! Another great one Sam, thank you. Congratulations to the whole team and a deserved standing ovation.

antakalipa – The King of Broken Things