Director makes history with all-white cast
FORTY years ago he was throwing stones against the imposition of Afrikaans in schools by the apartheid regime.
This year, the Performing Arts Centre of the Free State’s artistic director, Jerry Mofokeng, made history when he became the first African to direct an all-white Afrikaans cast at the citadel of Afrikaans culture — the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn.
And not with a small production, either.
Instead, Mofokeng chose a translation of one of the most taxing scripts imaginable — Bertolt Brecht’s alienating antiwar play, Mother Courage and her Children. It was last performed in Afrikaans in 1972.
Oudsthoorn’s audiences have hailed Mofokeng’s direction as masterful and the production NATIVE TONGUE: Director Jerry Mofokeng says Afrikaans is part of his cultural identity has played to rave reviews.
How the production came about is an unlikely story of truly South African cross-pollination.
“I met [Afrikaans playwright] Saartjie Botha at a conference in Cape Town,” Mofokeng said. “We discussed why it was that no black director directs white actors in this country. I decided that it would be great to direct a true classic in Afrikaans, and a dream was born.
“I had studied Brecht and I thought I understood what he was about, so Saartjie and I collaborated on the Afrikaans text throughout 2013. I read the text in conjunction with the English, which I know well.”
He was aware that a black man directing an experienced white cast confronted a centuries-old power dynamic.
“When we decided to use Aletta Bezuidenhout as the main character, I wanted her to respect me as a director. I mean, when she was performing in the Market Theatre 40 years ago, I was throwing stones. A production is not a democracy. In the end, the final vision is in the director’s head.
“She had to crawl and cry if I directed her to do so. She gave me that. I said: ‘You’re on.’ ”
The power relationship between director and cast did not cause any problems and neither did the language barrier.
“I drew inspiration from a version of Hamlet, done in Swedish by Ingmar Bergman, which I saw in New York. I could not understand a word, but it was masterful. I used that. I thought: ‘Let’s close their ears.’
“In fact, I think the language issue strengthened our production. When the line reads, ‘ Is sy vermink?’ [Is she mutilated?] I would not know what vermink means. And the fact that they had to explain the word, meant they had to really think about the meaning.
“I learnt Afrikaans in New York, from my friend Pat van Heerden. That is where I realised that this language I had protested against was a part of my South African identity.”
Mofokeng, heartened by the response to the production, has vowed to direct in Afrikaans again. BIG HIT IN THE KLEIN KAROO: Four members of the cast of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Moeder Moed en haar Kinders’ — from the left, Deon Lotz, Aletta Bezuidenhout, Nicole Holm and Andre Roothman