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…