A Confession…

A Confession…

I got more than I bargained for.

I have bitten off more than I can chew.

I’m way in over my head.

I signed up to write and direct a play. That, at least, I thought I could do. It is a process that I am familiar with and with which I have experience. The lack of talent, so I’ve always believed can be overcome with hard work.

Over time the theme of the play became “Restorative Justice” and all the amazing things it stands for. It excited me. It was meaningful. It had all the depth, color and nuances that could provide the foundation of a beautiful story.

Even when Ida suggested that I cast Bongani as the male lead, I thought it was perfect. It added all the right dramatic elements to the story and the project: an ex-inmate on parole, with a lower level of education playing the lead in a professional play. It sounds very marketable, doesn’t it?

O my word! I just love how life will not be prescribed to.

I signed up to write and direct a play. A month has passed since we’ve started with rehearsals. I am not directing…

There is no place for a conventional director when you are working with unconventional actors. What was I thinking? Once again I have fallen pray to my own naivety.

Restorative Justice can not be understood by hearing or reading about it. It is an incredible, indescribable, sometimes long and agonizing process. Thus it remains the road less traveled.

It is a road where the risk is nerve-wrenchingly high and the outcome completely uncertain.

It is the road that I now find myself treading on in wonder.

In every small, slow step, whether forward or backward is exactly where I want to be.

The show must, will and can go on.

The Murderer in Me.

"The Murderer in Me."

I wrote this line down in my notes during a long discussion with Ida (our leading lady) when the script was still in progress. I thought of using it in the context of the play.

I didn’t… and yet all I could think off yesterday, as I drove back from Eshowe to Richards Bay, was about the murderer in me.

Yes, there is a killer on the loose and it threatens to destroy me. It won’t be its first threat and it won’t be my last defeat.

One minute I think I’m still in control, the next minute it pounces on me out of the shadows, completely unexpected. There is a quick but brutal attack, very little defense and then the awkward, ruffled silence that follows…

It was only our 3rd rehearsal.

I am impatient; I have very high expectations. I threw a tantrum and left the rehearsal. I justified it and felt good about it - it needed to be done.

I completely forgot who I was working with and in which context…

The murderer in me killed again today.

Coming to grips with the script

Better I die here!

What a week it was!

I finally finished the script.

We started with rehearsals.

Richard Aitken from the Phoenix Restorative Justice Programme agreed to a full collaboration and put his money where his mouth was.

Jonathan Erasmus, journalist from the Zululand Fever, our local newspaper, finally made contact to give us some media coverage

and

Bongani asks “Why this tree?” on the same day that Eugene Terre’Blanche is murdered.

Choosing the Coast Coral Tree, also known as the “Kafferboom”, as the metaphor for this play was so incredibly obvious to me from the start - that his question actually startled me.

I mean, isn’t it obvious? Obviously not! Bongani wanted to know why I chose this tree, beyond what was obvious. He allowed me to explain and then told us (Ida and myself) something so beautiful and significant, that once again it affirmed everything I am hoping for and believe in for this production.

Yes, the Kafferboom is indigenous to South Africa and contains a name that amounts to hate speech in the context of a post-apartheid society committed to reconciliation. That’s the obvious part of course. What I didn’t know, was that the Zulu’s use this tree’s name… yes… THIS tree’s name; not any other indigenous tree; but THIS tree to proclaim: that they are inhabitants, residents, citizens of South Africa. In Bongani’s own words:

Ngingumsinsi Okuzimilela! I was grown here! No one can move me! Better I die here!

Umsinsi is the direct translation for the Kafferboom in Zulu.

Even as I write this; the joy bubbles up in my chest and want to escape my throat with a scream: then I think of ET, who was also grown here, who wouldn’t be moved and who now died here.

I desperately want to hold these two boys to my chest, I want to wipe their faces and bandage their scars. I want to tell them how much I love them and send them off together to play with their assegais and guns, with their passions and their pride – alive and together…

We lit the fire!

A couple of weeks ago I gave Bongani the “opening scene” of the script. I explained to him that we need to start spending time together to work on his understanding of the dialogue, before we officially start rehearsals in April.

MY sole purpose, of course was to get him “up to a standard” so that his shortcomings, in terms of language and comprehension, does not delay our; already “very tight”, rehearsal schedule. He listened to my explanations for a while, the way he does with his eyes cast down and his right ear cocked towards me, until his face broke into a beautiful smile, the way it does every time he grasps a concept. “Yes”, he says “I understand now” and he tells me that we need to get the fire started before we can throw logs on and make the fire big enough for other people to sit around and enjoy the heat and the light…

Bongani speaks and makes sense of the world in images… he listens to conversations and foreign concepts attentively until he can find an associated image in his mind… only then does the comprehension visibly rise over his face and will he smile and nod in acknowledgement. From there on, his contribution leaves all other participants gob-smacked at his sincerity and the effectiveness with which he communicates.

So, I guess, today we lit the fire, Bongani and I.

In a coffee shop in Empangeni, we dissect the opening scene together. With every step Bongani understood more… more of the characters, more of the story, more of the irony, suspense and intrigue. Eventually I could see his brain work overtime as he threw his hands up in the air and exclaimed: “things are happening at the bottom, the middle and the top!”

For every concept or sentence I explained, he responded with an image to prove to me that he understood, an image so strong and symbolic that no other words were needed.

I found myself looking at him in amazement thinking: All I wanted was an actor…

In the end...

My home constantly looks like a dumping place for old newspapers. I keep on fighting the urge to pick them all up and dumping them in the closest skip. I collect them from family and friends, or I pick them up in driveways.

I fool myself into believing that I will read every single article on every single page eventually. Sometimes I sit into the wee hours of the morning devouring them… looking for clues… looking for the answers… looking for the “it” factor.

Those articles, I believe, might lead me to greater enlightenment, I cut out and paste into my “Cage Research” book with all the other phrases, thoughts, ideas and triggers that have been a part of this scripts journey.

I don’t do this because I don’t know what to say… I do this because I hope that I will come across that one line expressing what it is that I am feeling when I have not found the words to articulate it…

Everything is there, but it feels like the centre is out of focus.

Then I go and see HA!Man last week… Francois le Roux, an incredible musician, composer and entertainer, who love and embrace art in himself. A dedicated artist, devouring life. Somewhere in between the brilliance of it all I hear the words “In the end there is nothing left that you could describe with words.”

I dug a little piece of paper out of my handbag and scribbled it down… I knew it was beautiful. The more I marinaded on it this week, the more I realized that I don’t have a clue what it means… and then I finally went into an uncontrollable panic, coming to all kinds of wild conclusions and assumptions of what I think it means and how lost I really am in my mission to “describe with words”.

The panic and the clueless ness remains. So does the pile of newspapers.

All that I am hoping for is that they will be creating the roots through which this play will be nourished.

I salute you Brett Bailey!

Well now, isn’t that ironic… another incredible book found me in a small little charity bookshop in Durban. I was just browsing, not particularly looking for anything and definitely not hoping to find a rich source of inspiration to guide the writing of this play.

Yes, I am still writing… No, the play is not finished, yet… Yes, I am very aware of the fact that Grahamstown is in 128 days and that rehearsals will start in 48 days!!!

I perform under pressure! I perform under pressure! I perform under pressure! (I constantly remind myself...)

Back to this incredible book that found me… The Plays of Miracle and Wonder by Brett Bailey, published in 2003, about groundbreaking work he did in the previous 7 years.

I could just copy and paste the whole book right here… I could dedicate this blogg to the “miracle and wonder” of Brett’s work, but alas, I have my own journey and even with the deadlines drawing close, it is not the destination that is ultimately important here.

“During the creation process I rarely know what a play is about. The process of making it takes everybody involved on an intense journey: we are not social scientists who watch things unfold with detached interest; we are artists who have to dive right in and head for the whirlpools. We push deeper and deeper into the material and something forms itself out of our work; something is revealed; sometimes amorphous and shifting and awkward. Sometimes the difficulty of the subject matter and the struggle of our process are manifest in the knots and splinters of the product.” Pg 153

Brett , in my opinion, was always way ahead of his time. Which is why I follow in his footsteps, hoping to learn from him, more than 10 years after he did the work that I could only dream of one day doing.

The Photo Shoot

The photographer: me with a borrowed camera
The studio: a property just around the corner from my flat, which happened to be unoccupied and with a fence that happens to look like prison bars
The backdrop: an old red blanket that I grew up with… those really woolly ones with the satin lining, so popular in South African homes in the 70’s and 80’s; held up by my boyfriend who’s standing on a ladder.

Incredibly glamorous! We almost had a real studio set-up, with professional lighting to boot. Unfortunately we had to relocate the shoot to my flat when the sun disappeared behind the clouds with no inclination to be seen again.

I took about a hundred photos over two hours and though I am no professional I was really hoping that in the end of the day we would have some options to choose from, but as it turns out there really was only one… “Bongani rattling the cage.”

Bongani… calm, soft spoken, confident Bongani who looked at me from the other side of the fence and trusted me completely. Bongani who walked into my flat without seeing it and took a seat behind the piano to play the beautiful songs he taught himself…

The Emperors New Clothes

I often try and imagine a world in which separate cultures stayed separate.

A world of which the past leaders and civilizations they lead, had the vision not to educate and convert other smaller cultures into their own. So that every cultures heritage could remain pure in its traditional ways for the world and the rest of humanity to experience in its truest, most beautiful form. The indigenous people carry the secrets of the land… and in the end everything is about the land. When culture and heritage dies, the knowledge of the land dies.

There is no sense in lingering on the past, even if it holds the map to the future, especially if no one else seems to be bothered! It’s all there, written down, re-written and analyzed in the archives of history.

Reality and the truth is that - even if everybody pretends they can see the Emperors clothes and you join them because you are scared of the emperor or because you think you might be the only one who can see he is naked, the truth and reality is: He is naked.

I agree with Frederik van Zyl Slabbert when he writes: “If you make yourself and others hostage to a racist past, you can budget generously for a racist future.” The Other Side of History (Published 2006)

This Saturday, 30 January we will be taking our very first publicity photographs. The idea brooding in my mind is: stark black and white close-ups of the two actors, both with incredibly expressive faces, behind bars.

The story found me

I have always been of the opinion that a book finds me, when I am ready to read it. It has been proven over and over again in my life. Sometimes I will buy a book and it will sit in my bookshelf for years, until one day I’ll pick it up to read, realizing how significantly it co-insides with a current journey I am on or how it supports or compliments certain current issues or experiences in my life.

It’s the same with stories. Stories find their writers when they are ready to be told.

This story found me one winters evening last year around my grandparents dinner table, where the best part of the evening always seems to be where Father and Grandfather start remembering “the good old days”. The passion and enthusiasm with which these stories and the Afrikaner’s history are being told, discussed and remembered is always heartwarming and beautiful.

This particular evening’s agenda included the folktale of Dirkie Uys, a Voortrekker hero during the Great Trek. During the Battle of Italeni (1838), Piet Uys was mortally wounded by an assegai while riding to the rescue of two of his cornered men.

Seeing the Zulus closing in on his father, 15 year old Dirkie Uys turned around his horse, shouting "I will die with my father", and charged. He shot three Zulu warriors, briefly forcing them to retreat, but they rushed at him and stabbed him off his horse. Dirkie Uys fell beside his father, where they were both stabbed to death. This version of events is depicted on one of the historical friezes of the Voortrekker Monument. After the Battle of Blood River, Piet Uys' remains were found by a detachment, but Dirkie Uys' never were.

Every Afrikaans child grew up with this story and knew it off by heart. Like most folktales it summarized the bravery of the blood that ran through our vanes and made us proud. My Grandfather added something to the story that I have never heard before. Apparently, the story told amongst the Zulu people, is that Dirkie was captured alive and taken back to Dingaan’s kraal where he ordered his impi’s to remove the boy’s heart and eat it while he was still alive so that they could become as brave as he was.

Today I met Bongani… he is 44 years old, on parole after serving 9 years of a 15 year sentence and also the male lead actor of this production.

Finally

And so it is done! Finally!

I have submitted the registration form for the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. I really feel like somehow the rest of my life has finally started... a bit dramatic, I know, but so true.

I have heard people refer to a human being's 33rd year on this earth as "their watershed year". This could not have been more true. I am only half way through mine and boy have I reached some turning-points in my life. The biggest one undeniably finally getting my act together and submerging myself with what I really love doing... It took me such an incredible long time to muster the courage.

Finally... finally I am writing, directing and acting! It is early days, but I am convinced that the renewal of old desires will not leave me wanting this time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you (a huge drumroll) : Rattling the Cage!

Not only the name of my very first Grahamstown Production, but also what I continuously intend doing :-)

I've been working on the play since July last year, but here is a 50 word description for now.

Offenders are pronounced enemies of the people, and consigned to institutional confinement, then they are dumped back on society, with every assurance that changes have taken place in them for the worse.

We are keeping our future hostage and we have imprisoned the memory of our national past by not asking "Why?"

Restorative Justice rattling the cage!

Inspired by the movie: "Julie and Julia", I will blog the progress over 159 days, as we count down to the Grahamstown Festival!