Pacific Theatre reboots poignant apartheid drama
South African playwright gently mulls how system affected relationships
It’s not often that an actor gets to revisit a play, notes David Adams. But in an upcoming Pacific Theatre production, he’s coming back to a role he played in 2014.
Valley Song is a remount of a Gateway Theatre production, returning with the same cast (Adams and Sereana Malani) and director, Jovanni Sy.
“What I’m finding fascinating is that we’re able to use the previous production as a starting point,” Adams said.
“Now we can go even deeper and find new things. Words that you were saying before take on new meaning or you kind of go, ‘How come I didn’t think about this before?’ It’s really a great treat to get to do it again.”
Valley Song takes place shortly after the fall of apartheid.
Abraam “Buks” Jonkers (Adams) is a mixed-race pumpkin farmer who works land he doesn’t own. His only family left is a granddaughter, Veronica (Malani), who dreams of going to Johannesburg to become a singer. Added into the mix is The Playwright (also played by Adams), a white man who wants to buy the land where Abraam lives and works, potentially leaving him homeless. Adams, who was born in South Africa during apartheid, was born to a family classified as coloured, or “klerllnge” — this means his birth certificate was marked with a red “k.”
He says he has loosely based his performance as 70-year-old Jonkers on a relative, an uncle who was a bricklayer.
“Our family kind of teased him, because he’s not that well-educated and his accent was really thick, because he spoke half-English and half-Afrikaans,” Adams said.
“In the interior of South Africa, a lot of the coloured people, or so-called coloured people, were people who were mixed European and African, sort of like the Metis, in Canada. That’s the parallel I always draw. Metis people were very similar to coloured people, especially in the interior. Where I come from in Cape Town, there was a little more Indian influence, because there were a lot more Indian people who moved there to work.”
The play dates back to 1996 and is written by South African playwright Athol Fugard. (In fact, Valley Song is one of two Fugard plays being mounted almost simultaneously; over at Jericho Arts Centre, the United Players are presenting Fugard’s 2010 play The Train Driver March 24-April 16.)
“He’s a wonderful writer, he’s very poetic,” Adams said of Fugard.
“Yet he has a firm understanding of dramatic arc. I find his work always very gentle.
“I think sometimes people expect plays about race and apartheid in South Africa to be bold and full of anger. But he’s more interested in personal relationships, and how the system of apartheid affected people.”
Pacific Theatre artistic director Ron Reed is also a fan, which is one reason he approached Jovanni Sy, Gateway’s artistic director, about doing the remount. Reed also “fell in love with their (Gateway’s) beautiful production, as well as the performances” of Adams and Malani, according to Andrea Loewen, director of marketing and communications for Pacific Theatre.
Adams says he’s “very comfortable” returning to the role(s).
“I’m surprised how much came back, how much was in my sense memory, how much was in my body,” the actor said.
“That just gave me a great starting place, so that now I can go even further.”