Tackling the marginalised in society
LIKE any theatre maker, when something really freaks him out, Wessel Pretorius ends up working through his feelings on the stage. Approached by the Innibos Festival in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, to create a one-man show, he was keen to work through what his thoughts are on mass shootings.
Die Ontelbare 48 debuted earlier this year at Innibos and he also performed it at Aardklop, where it was nominated for Best Afrikaans Performance, Best Upcoming Artist and Best Actor.
Inspired by the reportage around mass shootings in the US, Pretorius was intrigued and horrified by “the terror of the unknown… the randomness”.
“When I read all this stuff in the newspaper – apart from the fact that it terrified me, the statistic of, let’s say, 48 people having died – I realised that, behind that number, so much of the personal narrative would never be explored by anyone reading the paper,” said Pretorius.
“You are the lead character in your own life, your own protagonist, and you live this life filled with connections and people and neurosis and everything and that just… dies in a random act of violence, that doesn’t care who you are.
“That number, to me, was so terrifying. I clear this up in the first two minutes of the play – that that is what happened. There was a tragedy, 48 people died, and then we explore four people who were present that night and their day up until the tragedy,” he explained.
Pretorius grew up in Nelspruit, which was much smaller in the 1990s, and wanted to explore the concept of an insular, small town Afrikaner mentality where everyone knows each other and supports the same ideas and ideals.
He is quick to point out that the town has been good to him in providing money and space to try out new theatre works through the festival, but he remains fascinated by how insular small towns shape entire cultures.
Die Ontelbare 48’s satirical style is inspired by the work of writers such as Hennie Aucamp, Jean Goosen and David Sedaris: “It is sort of light comedy, but probing the smaller things about being human. Those small moments that resonate on a bigger level.”
Specifically, he delves into the lives of four characters who are marginal in some ways to the norms of Afrikaner culture.
“They all stand a bit on the outside. There’s the gay teenager who doesn’t know he’s gay yet. There’s a housewife who is starting to come to terms with the fact that she is maybe not living her best life. There’s a drama teacher who used to be an old theatre legend… a sort of a has-been who has moved to a small town to teach drama.
“Then the fourth character is a 5-year-old girl. All these people are dealing with a form of being on the fringe of that environment, looking in and coming to terms with who they are in this environment. It all sounds very serious, but it isn’t quite as heavy as that.
“I am using satire to explore the vulnerability of these people, but also to explore the ridiculous aspects of any constructed environment,” explained Pretorius.
Die Ontelbare 48 plays on the Baxter’s Flipside stage from until Saturday at 8pm, with a Saturday matinee performance at 2pm.