Theatre in the New South Africa

THEATRE IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA David Graver T he ironies and contradictions permeating South Africa's current social reorganization are well represented in the country's premiere cultural event: the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. With over 600 offerings of theatre, dance, music, opera, films, tours, exhibitions, and craft workshops (in 1994), the annual festival is the largest in Africa, and in the world. Started in 1974 by an organization dedicated to the hegemony of English culture and occupying a fortress-like theatre complex built with money that should have been used for a hospital, the festival was boycotted for many years while the army used its hill-side location as an observation post during township unrest. Since the release of Mandela, however, the festival has been increasing quickly in size and political correctness. Major figures in popular theatre such as Gibson Kente and Ronnie Govender have been honored in the main festival, while the fringe has burgeoned with activists and entertainers aiming at every conceivable sector of South African society. Since one ticket ($5) costs more than many Grahamstown residents earn in a day, a stage in the town square now presents free shows throughout the festival. The small university town with an infrastructure adequate for about 25,000 people and a population of over 120,000 (70% unemployed), groans under the weight of 100,000 additional visitors during the festival but makes the most of the opportunities this burden provides. Food vendors and craft merchants line the streets, creating a boisterous atmosphere that celebrates full employment as much as aesthetic delights. Shows catering to self-effacing colonial desires for a genteel English culture have been joined by gay and feminist theatre, by productions focused on the problems and experiences of South Africa's many ethnic groups and social strata, and by performances that develop a distinctly South African blend of drama, narrative, dance, and music. ART AND SOCIAL ACTION South African theatre is notable for carrying out its cultural work on two fronts: (1) disciplined, innovative performance styles and (2) community theatre projects aimed at the education, development, and cohesion of particular districts or ethnic I 103 groups more than at accolades for aesthetic refinement. Many of the strengths of South African theatre come from its blending of art and social action. The Sibikwa Community Theatre Project, for instance, aims at employing impoverished musicians , instructing school dropouts, maintaining a cultural center on the East Rand, and resuscitating the performance traditions of the fifties when township culture had not yet been smothered by the repressive machinations of apartheid. One of the musical revues created by Sibikwa and featured at Grahamstown, Kwela Bafana (direction, Phyllis Klotz and Smal Ndaba) has received critical acclaim in Europe and North America. The Sibikwa Community Theatre Project is just one of many such township cultural centers producing noteworthy theatre primarily for the sake of local involvement and audiences. Gamakhulu Diniso's Busang Thakaneng Theatre Centre in Sharpville, Boy Bangala's Zakheni Cultural Group, Peter Ngwenya's voter education skits, Bachaki Theatre's campaign against township pollution, and the Afrika Cultural Centre (headed by Benjy Francis) all have records of both vital community development and engaging theatrical performances. At Grahamstown works designed uncompromisingly for local interests were well represented by Border Youth Dance Theatre's critique of teacher-student romance and by Ishmail Mohammed's one-woman monologue (actress, Aasifah Omar) on female adolescence in fundamentalist Moslem homes (Purdah). The number ofgroups offering plays on current political problems is very impressive but the quality of these offerings both as performance and meaningful social intervention is all too often disappointing. Because career opportunities run from narrow to non-existent, theatre has become one ofthe primary occupations in which vain hopes are cherished and haphazard, ill-conceived work is produced. Nevertheless , the sheer volume of activity and the inspired quality of the best productions hold out promise for exciting future developments. The days when protest was enough to electrify the stage are gone. The simple conflicts of good against evil, oppressor against victim, rebel against state have melted into a complex, uncertain world, and the tasks open to progressive theatre have multiplied. Rather than attack the...