Theatre provides community a voice
An unusual and insightful theatrical event is happening in Bertrams. spoke to the participants and ventured out on their site-specific performance tonight theatre
WHEN you have the names Toni Morkel and Lindiwe Matshikiza combined with a site-specific play, you know you can expect theatrical fireworks.
Izithombe (pictures of) 2094 is a sitespecific play performed in Bertrams until September 7, and based on the stories of its residents.
It all began when director Alex Halligey’s doctoral research through the African Centre for Cities and UCT’s drama department focused on how drama and theatre can work with the knowledge of the everyday in city spaces. After much research, she decided to settle on Bertrams (next to the Johannesburg Stadium).
“I was attracted to the mixed use and the mixed demographic of the area,” says Halligey who wanted to test the impact of an artistic intervention by targeting the street life of the area, viewing it as a public art space.
She explains that this kind of intervention has happened before, with theatre used as a way to engage the community.
Her choice of Matshikiza and Morkel as the two theatre participants was about their long histories with the area, and they are used as tour-guide anchors for the play. Market Theatre Laboratory graduate, theatre maker and storyteller, Baeletsi Tsatsi, is the assistant director with cameo performances.
Morkel describes her experience in the streets on their first day. They were tasked to go out for 90 minutes and return with stories from the residents and a perception of the area for example. “I found it difficult to talk to strangers on the street. I felt I was intruding and they wouldn’t want to tell their stories.”
Starting and finishing at Twilsharp Studios, 40/42 Gordon Road (which has been turned into art studios and where Morkel previously lived for nine years), the play takes the form of a walking tour with live performances (mainly Morkel and Matshikiza, but also inhabitants of the area) and installations along the way. With this walkabout performance, Matshikiza could revisit her childhood home and look at those memories and imagine the family living there now and the similarity of their lives.
The stories, characters and vignettes woven together in the production have been drawn from work with Bertrams Junior School, Bienvenu Refugee Shelter for Women and Children (where Matshikiza got close to a French-speaking Congolese woman who has been an performance activist in her own right), Gerald Fitzpatrick House (for senior citizens), Bambanani Organic Vegetable Garden and countless conversations with people who have or are living and working in this area at the head of the Bezuidenhout Valley, postal code 2094.
“I had to pick nodes which would offer lenses of how they were seen and how they see themselves,” says Halligey of the people living there and they needed the buy-in of the inhabitants to create dialogue which a smaller audience group and the entire tour will be conducted by car rather than foot. Booking for these performances is particularly essential and spaces are reserved for anyone for whom walking up hills at a fast-paced clip is challenging. would have impact in the long run, to discover what is happening on the ground and what infrastructures are starting to form in the community.
“I’m a theatre maker, but this kind of information could influence city planning, for example,” she says. It’s also about giving a community that might feel sidelined a voice, a chance to feel that they are participating.
In a sense, Morkel believes, everything we do is performance. “It’s about being seen,” she says, understanding that it might add value to a life.
What they all agree is that this is an exciting theatre space which allows people to shift from reality into make-believe, and back again. It’s about storytelling, some personal, some perhaps not, and for those making the walk, perhaps not part of this community, it could lead to similar projects in their area, and why not? It’s also just another way of making theatre which will be viewed differently from the audience/participants living there and those of us coming in from the outside.
The play is accompanied by an exhibition at Twilsharp Studios of art objects and found objects, sound installations and short video pieces from the playmaking process.
The research and development phase of the playmaking process is supported by the National Arts Council and the generosity of the people of Bertrams. The primary research was done with grants from the National Research Foundation and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.