More Market Plays, and: Mooi Street and Other Moves (review)

Una Chaudhuri’s term “geopathology . . . the problem of place—and place as problem” is particularly useful for approaching these two anthologies of South African theatre. Her tenet, “who one is and who one can be are . . . a function of where one is and how one experiences that place” (Staging Place [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995], 55) especially illuminates the plays included in these volumes, most of which were conceived in the mid-1980s, a period of great turmoil in South Africa. Reviewing these anthologies in 1996, one has to acknowledge another complicating spatio-temporal shift, since so-called post-apartheid South Africa is really only in its post-election phase. The 1994 universal suffrage elections have brought democracy and juridical equality to all South Africans; at the same time the material conditions for millions are unchanged and the devastating effects of apartheid are evident and operative in their day-to-day lives.

More Market Plays, selected by John Kani, now Artistic Director of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, follows Market Plays, edited by Stephen Gray in 1986, the first anthology of plays produced at the Market, though not always by its resident company. Kani’s brief introduction emphasizes the change in focus: while the earlier anthology attempted, “to articulate the voice of many South Africans drowned by the conspiracy of silence in our country,” the 1994 anthology showcases work that “began to examine issues that search the soul of being a South African . . . to forge a common identity and a joint responsibility to the development of South African culture” (7). Kani also places the spotlight on the Market Theatre Company and its then director, Barney Simon, whose collaborative play, Born in the RSA appears together with those whose work he encouraged. Simon’s untimely death in 1995 has left a gaping void in the theatre community, but his example and inspiration live on in the continuing productions by the company.

Four of the plays are situated in the mid-1980s during the State of Emergency, which saw an escalation of political resistance and a concomitant proliferation of state-sanctioned brutality, torture, assassination, and other covert “dirty” operations. In 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, staged in public venues throughout the country and brought into millions of homes via television, bring the stories and spectacle of these times into the present tense; this disallows amnesia in those who would rather forget and be forgiven tout court. This political milieu—the fear and suspicion caused by police hunts, interrogation sessions, tapped phones, forced confessions, and incrimination of often innocent children—is the subject of Born in the RSA. The play focuses on a university campus spy whom spectators see insinuating himself into others’ lives and relationships; this ultimately ends in gross betrayal, which the spy justifies in terms of money, power, and reactionary politics. The play is rendered in “living newspaper” mode, with the eight main characters introducing themselves by name. This repetition locates them all in the same geographic area but positions them ultimately in widely differing political stances: in denial, engaging in activism, or shoring up the apartheid system. Demonstrating that black and white characters can work for common goals and the common good, the play ends with the removal of an activist, Thenjiwe, from one site of incarceration to another, where she sees friends and sings with the joy of reconnection; this conventional comedic ending anticipates hope for a more equitable South Africa.

If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s sessions constitute a telescoping of past and present, then the play, The Native Who Caused All the Trouble, devised in 1986 by Danny Keogh, Vanessa Cooke, and Fink Haysom, points to the past in its very title: “Native,” used to refer to blacks until the 1940s, has long since dropped out of usage. This play took its inspiration from a newspaper article that describes the plight of a black man, Tselilo...