Theatre of the bold and the new
• A new play at the Market Theatre tells of an imaginary meeting between two of the most prominent activists in the US civil rights movement
Market Theatre artistic director James Ngcobo is directing an American play, The Meeting, to mark Black History Month. The theatre is collaborating with the US embassy to mark this cultural event.
Ngcobo believes Africa and the US are eternally intertwined as their struggles for freedom — to emancipate slaves and build an economy that allows their people to thrive — have led to the formation of an “umbilical connection” between African Americans and this continent.
“When I came to the Market Theatre as its artistic director, the first thing I did was to introduce plays that mark Black History Month, an event that is even more pertinent given the #BlackLivesMatter campaign currently sweeping through American cities,” he says.
“Fortunately, Patrick Gaspard, former US ambassador to SA, liked the proposal and agreed that the embassy would co-produce these plays.
“We are grateful for that partnership, especially because raising funds for theatre in the country has become harder by the day,” says Ngcobo.
He says he continuously engages with international partners to leverage the theatre’s funding from the Department of Arts and Culture.
In March, he will deliver a paper at Georgia University in the US as part of a panel of artistic directors from Sweden, the US, the Netherlands and SA. He also plans to use the trip as an opportunity to network.
“As South Africans, we have to abandon the notion that we exist in isolation from what is happening globally, because we don’t,” Ngcobo says.
“With 39 international awards behind its name, the Market Theatre may geographically be situated in Johannesburg, but as a concept, it is a travelling theatre with a presence in many places nationally and internationally. It should leave its footprints everywhere in order to be relevant today.”
The 1987 play The Meeting, by Jeff Stetson, tells the story of an imaginary meeting between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in 1965 in a Harlem hotel during the height of the civil rights movement.
The two leaders never met and both were assassinated in the 1960s.
Ngcobo says the themes remind him of great African minds such as Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Oliver Tambo and Albert Luthuli.
“In the play, I reference these leaders through screening, for example, a poster that was put up at Heathrow Airport in the 1960s, welcoming Chief Albert Luthuli after he was declared the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace — the first African to achieve this feat. I added it so the play can have local relevance as well,” he says.
King and Malcolm X were prominent activists who wanted freedom for African Americans, but their methods for achieving it were different and so were their ideas, creating tensions between their followers.
King, a Baptist minister, spurred people into acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Malcolm X once observed that “nobody ever got their freedom by singing” and exhorted African Americans to cast off the shackles of racism “by any means necessary”.
Ngcobo has directed several American plays including The Colored Museum, The Amen Corner, A Tribute to Maya Angelou and A Raisin in the Sun. He has picked seasoned actors Aubrey Poo and Brendon Daniels to play Malcolm X and King, respectively. New talent Litha Bam plays Rashad, Malcolm X’s bodyguard.
‘OUR DUTY IS TO ATTRACT NEW AUDIENCES WHO, IN SOME CASES, HAVE NEVER BEEN TO A THEATRE BEFORE’
Ngcobo says the Market Theatre is healthy and had two recent sold-out seasons with When Swallows Cry, written by Mike van Graan, and The House of Truth by Siphiwo Mahala.
“I always tell my team that we are now the custodians of the legacy of the Market Theatre, as the old generation did very well,” he says.
“We must remember that our duty is to attract new audiences who, in some cases, have never been to a theatre before, especially given the fact the old audience are either ageing or have left Johannesburg. And without sounding like I am bragging, we have so far done very well.”
The Market Theatre is also devising a programme for the newly renovated Windybrow Theatre in Hillbrow. A director is being appointed — applications for the post closed last week — who will work closely with Ngcobo to stage shows that will attract the suburb’s diverse immigrant audience who have varying artistic tastes.
“The first thing I will do is to sit down with whoever is appointed and suggest that we
kick-start the programme at the Windybrow with a French show to attract the Francophone communities that live in Hillbrow. There are many people there from Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example,” Ngcobo says.
“But because we are in Southern Africa, and we are an Anglophone country surrounded by mainly Anglophone countries, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will become a priority.
“We are going to be bold and innovative by partnering, say, South African playwrights with
a cast that is made up of both South Africans and Zimbabwean actors.
“We will also explore the idea of commissioning classics from Zimbabwe and other SADC countries that will be directed by a South African playwright.”
In the three-and-a-half years he has been at the helm of programmes for the Market Theatre, Ngcobo has drawn criticism, particularly about opening the stage to new talent.
“I have experienced animosity, especially from friends who have known me for years and who think I should now do them a favour,” he says.
“But when it comes to programming, I do not do friendship at all. Quality matters to me, because if I do not watch that, audiences will abandon us and go elsewhere.”
He has also been criticised for looking forward and not staging enough politically themed plays dealing with issues affecting SA’s leadership.
During apartheid, the Market Theatre staged shows critical of the regime, but now it seems to shy away from talking truth to power in democratic SA.
“The truth is, we still do political work that is relevant to contemporary life in SA,” he
responds. “What can in fact destroy the Market Theatre is nostalgia, and not wanting to move forward. For example, the plays we put up are quite relevant with regards to today’s politics. Last year we put up Tau, a show that deals with homosexuality in black communities.
“In the past, people did not kill lesbians, and now they do. In the past, we did not have the issue of xenophobia in society and now we do. That is why, for example, we programmed When Swallows Cry.” The Meeting is at the Market Theatre until February 26.