Getting Creative in Johannesburg

Richard Hahlo, Hydrocracker’s Associate, reflects on his return to South Africa after a gap of 20 years as a guest of the Market Theatre Johannesburg.

October 2014 and South Africa celebrates 20 years of freedom; and I'm enjoying 20 years since I first came to Johannesburg. In 1994 I was part of a group of practitioners from the National Theatre invited by the Market Theatre (which included the illustrious company of Richard Eyre, Ian McKellan, Antony Sher and others). The legendary Market Theatre that had exploited a loophole in the draconian apartheid laws whereby different races could meet together on the site of the old fruit  & veg market - to make theatre that walked a very tense tightrope of protest against the state while endeavouring to stay open. 

Twenty years ago we worked with many South African writers, actors, directors, designers, producers, fieldworkers to exchange practice and to mark the end of the cultural boycott that British Equity had put in place during the apartheid years. I have been privileged to maintain many of those working friendships and have been back a number of times to work at the Market Theatre Laboratory - which among other activities runs a two-year acting course for students from the poorer backgrounds of the Townships.

I am now back again to run some workshops with the first-year students on Shakespeare.

Shakespeare?!

Is this more cultural imperialism?!

Many of these students have little or no experience of Shakespeare - and on day one they are understandably nervous and hesitant. For most English is not their first language.  We start with some warm-ups and physical and vocal exercises. Then I introduce the first lines of Act 1 Scene 1 of Hamlet - not by handing out scripts but we learn them by repetition...

Immediately their imaginations are caught by the language and the situation - a country at war and in the old King is dead; soldiers are on watch and after midnight is the time when Ghosts start to walk...It is fascinating to me that unlike perhaps many British drama students they bring almost no baggage to Shakespeare. They let the language and situations work directly upon their imaginations and are fired by the brilliance of the raw material. The sight of one of the student’s delightful instinctive physical interpretation of the Ghost will stay with me for a very long time.

Next, we start to explore by repetition "To be or not to be..."  - and like almost everyone else they know the first line and nothing after that...

Again they love the language and the raw nature of the subject matter.

I reflect once again on how much more their daily lives are like the world of Elizabethan England than ours. The extremes of wealth and poverty, the cruel hand of fate, the battle for survival and the everyday reality of death in your community.

In pairs I ask them to explore physically and vocally the lines:

                                                 "To die, to sleep--

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come."

They come up with a series of wonderful improvisations full of life, pain and imagination.

We watch them with much enjoyment, and then listen to them as a 'radio play' and I am struck by how much expression and feeling they pour into the language.

And this is the point. As an actor, if you can make your way around Shakespeare you can manage anything. It is heightened language full of clues and information for the actor. It is your job to release the language, to own it, and to play with it. When you can grasp it - it will do the work for you. Later we work with the whole speech and I get them in pairs to play with it like an argument between Hamlet's conflicted mind. Once more their imaginations are released and they take ownership of the speech.

I take great pleasure in watching these young people from such varied and sometimes extremely tough backgrounds pick up the most famous speech in western drama - they play with it, wrestle with it, chew it up and make it their own.

They leave for their long journeys that night home pushing each other, laughing and the words of Shakespeare echoing into the Johannesburg skyline.

I see several shows while I'm in Johannesburg. At the Wits Theatre, they are having a festival of one-person shows called So Solo - surely a response to the hard economics of theatre, and also a wonderful celebration of the long tradition of South African storytelling. In this country, almost everyone has a story to tell of how they came to be here. I see a wonderful show What the Water Gave Me which explores different lives being lived in the Cape Town flats. Another Searching for Somebody is set in a Jo'burg dry cleaners run by a member of the Greek community and combines humour, warmth and the endless everyday implications of your race and the colour of your skin. At the Market Theatre, I see the revival of a modern classic Have You Seen Zandile? - performed with amazing energy and virtuosity by two female actors. In typical South African fashion the audience enthusiastically jump to their feet and cheer and stamp in response at the end. Also just arriving in town is War Horse - the National Theatre hit making its debut in South Africa featuring the famous manipulated horses created by Handspring Puppets, who were originally from Johannesburg and are now based in Cape Town.

One of my contacts in Johannesburg that has kept live over twenty years is actor / sometime TV star/director/playwright /visual artist Sue Pam Grant. Just that description of her is so wonderfully South African - here you can do what you like, and, in fact, you need to do many things to keep going in what is a much smaller cultural industry; this has the great advantage that unlike in British society, people are much less likely to categorise and pigeon-hole you as only being able to do one thing.  Sue greets me in a cafe and tells me about a new play she has written. Previous plays of hers have been on at the Market Theatre, have won awards and have been seen in the UK. She is frustrated about how and where this new play of hers might find a home…

Next door to the café where we are enjoying freshly squeezed African juices for a mere fraction of the cost I would be paying in Brighton is a book shop. Sue tells me it has been packed out for three events which have just been presented there:

William Kentridge, world renowned Johannesburg artist and sometime collaborator with Handspring Puppets, has been talking about a new book of his work. Geoff Dyer, British author, has been reading from his various books. And the previous night they had the bright idea to have actors read the first page of the shortlisted Booker prize novels - and based on only this to get the audience to vote for the winner; this 24 hours before the real winner was announced in London. Each event was sold out and created that elusive cultural buzz that everybody would like and is not sure how to get...?

Sue reflects that in the current Theatre climate in Johannesburg, were her new play to be put on at The Market, it would probably struggle to find an audience; it would have a short run and would most probably quietly disappear with depressingly little impact. Likewise, the director of the Theatre On the Square in the upmarket suburb of Sandton; told Sue she really liked her play but could not see it working with her core audience.

So Sue has made the brave decision to put her own play on in her own Artist's studio which happens to be opposite the cafe and bookshop where we are currently sitting. It is a wonderful and interesting working space and it can fit x25 people, plus the three actors. Invites are going out and Sue and her cast will make an immersive event. People will arrive. They will be offered a drink - and the play will happen in the space. Once the play is over the audience can leave, or stay and chat and the event may continue...

For Hydrocracker, we aim for more than for our audience to sit in the dark and watch. We want to make an event. Sometimes sitting in the back of some theatre somewhere while the play relentlessly goes on irrespective of your engagement or not is a limiting experience. Theatre can be made in many places and what is important is that it feels unique each time, that it is memorable and exciting. You don't go because like medicine it might somehow do you good - you go because you don't want to miss out, it is compelling, it is alive and you feel for that event part of a community that enriches the lives we lead.

South Africa is a place of great hardship and amazing creativity. To be a small part of it and to be welcomed back each time with such generosity of spirit is an incredible privilege and I always feel wonderfully enriched by it.

Richard Hahlo October 2014