Job thrilled over Emerging Voice award from theatre
Market Theatre opens stage for director
ACAREER in the creative industry always ebbs and flows. This is how Lesedi Job, the 2017 recipient of the Sophie Mgcina Emerging Voice Award, describes her nine-year journey in the arts.
“You move forward and then you move backwards ... going in the next direction.”
The former Idols Top 32 finalist said it was her mom who pushed her into making a career for herself in the industry.
After high school, Job studied journalism but found herself miserable two years into the course.
“After Idols, my mom suggested I go to the Wits School of Arts and I was accepted for both music and dramatic arts degrees and that was the beginning of my journey.”
Job says this was the creative outlet she longed for.
In 2008, Job had her first professional debut in The Lion and the Jewel, a play directed by Market Theatre Artistic Director James Ngcobo. This is where the process of her becoming a director began.
“He spotted the director in me as an actress. During varsity I did a semester course of directing and thought I would one day want to do it. He (Ngcobo) constantly watched and observed how I worked as an actress and saw I was directing as I was acting.”
Last year, she went to Toronto for six weeks as part of a workshop for a new Broadway musical and assisted British theatre director Adrian Noble and was mentored by him.
“Then I got thrown in the deep end and had to direct a play by Mike van Graan (When Swallows Cry) at the beginning of this year and was mentored by Megan Wilson,” she says.
She has since worked on two more plays as a director – Itsoseng and Helen of Troyeville. She is directing Helen for the Grahamstown National Arts Festival at the end of the month.
As the recipient of the award, Job will have the opportunity to present more work on one of the stages at the Market Theatre.
She’s already starting to dream of the play she will direct as part of the award.
Job says the award meant so much to her because “you are constantly in flux with your work because at times it gets quiet”.
After Grahamstown, she will work on another Van Graan play, If We Dig, with actress Fiona Ramsay.
You are constantly in flux with your work...