‘ RIPE FOR THE PICKING’

A lament and elegy to the Cape Flats: the award-winning play Kinnes by Chase Rhys debuts

experiences from living and working in Ocean View. The play is performed in the Cape Flats vernacular (which shifts in nuance from place to place), and English.

There are five characters – three women and two men.

Fleur du Cap Theatre’s awardwinning Lee-Ann van Rooi plays the role of Aunty Mary – the mom of the gangster. She explained: “Kinnes has two meanings: ‘children’, but it is also slang that men use to describe young women who are ‘ripe for the picking’.”

Aunty Mary is vulnerable. Her son’s career as a drug merchant funds her lifestyle, so she ignores the moral issues of what he does. Without his money, she would not be able to pay for electricity, water, air time, a smoke, a flutter at gambling.

She is complicit, but is pragmatic in a situation without alternative choices.

“As the mother she gives permission, because it’s easier than going out and having to have a job working as a char, a day job,” Van Rooi said.

“All the five characters grew up without a father – whether the father was in jail or the father disappeared one day, or died or is ‘absent’… One wonders: what would have happened if the men were around – if the older men were around.

“The women are ripe for the picking: there’s no one to protect them.”

Van Rooi mused that what comes across in the play is how social media sometimes spurs people to do “something”.

She said: “One of the characters enjoys movies and he decides to make videos on his cellphone to see how many hits he will get. Social media is a prevalent theme with youngsters today.

“What I love about the play is that Chase, as a writer, has experienced a lot of what he writes – some of it personally

– and some as a writer/artist standing back, and looking around at people.

“He is exploring the life around him and he is writing it in terms of the quirkiness.

“If you are down on the ground, if you have nothing, the only thing that you can change is your point of view.

“You don’t even have change in your pocket. Sometimes the only way to survive is to poke a bit of fun at yourself; to laugh a little; just to change your perspective if it is just doom and gloom. There would be a lot more problems in those areas: on the Cape Flats.

“You try – through the struggle – to make the best of what you have got. And you try to forge through…”

● Tickets for Kinnes are R100. Book at Computicket at www.computicket.com.