Getting started with visit to the theatre
● With events thin on the ground this time of year, I slipped on my glad rags and headed to Johannesburg’s Market Theatre for the opening night of a play about food, funerals and feeding schemes.
Yes, Another One’s Bread does sound like a lot to swallow when many of us are still battling to switch into work mode.
But the dark comedy written by Mike van Graan and directed by Pamela Nomvete (whom many still remember as Generations’ superbitch Ntsiki) is a funny look at the criers who are paid to add pathos to the saddest of social occasions.
Walking into this famed “Theatre of the Struggle” in the area touted as Joburg’s cultural precinct, one of the first people I meet is a diplomat with the bounciest of bouffants. Marisa Gerards is the Netherlands ambassador to South Africa.
Marisa is with her partner, Peter Knoope. She didn’t have an easy time in the country last year when 36 of her countryfolk were robbed not long after arriving at OR Tambo International Airport in September.
How do you convince Dutch tourists to come back? I ask, to which she replies: “Don’t worry, they’re still coming.”
Then it’s a quick hello to broadcaster Michelle Constant (still sporting her takkies in the new year) before heading up the stairs where I bump into charismatic poet Lebo Mashile, who tells me she will be collaborating with classically trained singer Ann Masina in a performance about the life of Saartjie Baartman for the Design Indaba next month.
Inside, the Mannie Manim theatre is filled with the sort of board-treading faithful whom you see at these events: golden theatre oldies Des and Dawn Lindberg sit in the front while in the crowd I spot dancer Greg Maqoma and Ismail Mahomed, the
CEO of the Market Theatre Foundation.
Why not add some spice by inviting the likes of Babes Wodumo, Somizi and Bonang next time?
Enough about the audience, what about the actors on the stage? Well, the all-female cast of four sassy women – Faniswa Yisa, Chuma Asanda Sopotela, Motlatji Ditodi and Awethu Hleli – had me enthralled, watching their antics as professional mourners The Substitutes.
And as for my favourite line, which sums up how funerals have morphed from sad farewells to social occasions?
“These people live Shoprite lives, but want to go out in Woolworths coffins.”