As you most certainly don’t like it: Maynardville’s latest blunder
MAYNARDVILLE recently blundered into the national rape atrocity. And then tried to blunder its way out again by not sticking to its convictions.
“I am keenly aware of how women are abused, and abominate it. But I will never distort a play to fit some contemporary commitment which has no bearing on an artistic work conceived and set in a period over 400 years ago,” said Cardenio director Roy Sargeant.
It then restaged a controversial rape scene after articulate critical response, to gain traction in the “debate” by attempting to place itself on the side of creative artistic ambivalence by readjusting the “context”.
“I’ve just made it clearer for the audience. It depicts the context clearer,” added Sargeant.
But then Maynardville tends to blunder itself into most things, not least audience approval for its annual Shakespeare festival.
The rape “controversy” surrounding Maynardville’s current production of Cardenio uncovers more than just a complete lack of sensitivity to a serious social problem or its stage prop “context”, but reveals a managerial ecosystem of nepotism, arrogance and artistic mediocrity that echoes its insensitivity and squanders the potential of what in many respects is a public resource.
Maynardville is governed by a trust. A trust serves the needs of beneficiaries. It is generally established for the good of others. In this case the list of beneficiaries is extremely narrow. The roll call of those presiding over the annual production is publicly available and one can see at a glance it has been the same heavy rotation of white male “directors” with similar interpretive insights since 1956, longevity willing. With a count of three women in total. Why?
This season, the tender process, “to encourage originality and to provide new, younger directors with the opportunity…” was completely ignored. Someone is making a decision to keep things this way. Who?
Is critical examination of this fact and its deleterious effects on engaging Shakespeare in South Africa not long overdue?
The other beneficiary, the audience, is by default being served the same interpretive quality and processed Shakespearean diet year in and year out. Illustrated in the absurdly frequent description of the event as a “romp” in the arts press. And, lacking alternatives, they are becoming accustomed to it. They no longer know what intelligent Shakespeare is. School audi- ences in particular are in danger of being dulled into Shakespeare appreciation as colonial populist posturing.
Consider the Old Vic in London. With artistic leadership of the stature of Kevin Spacey and directors of integrity like Sam Mendes, you get a sense of where the entropy at Maynardville is taking us.
Despite the “marketing, marketing, marketing”, to quote the so-called “independent” producer of Maynardville when asked how “it” is done – what sort of blind alley does this unreflective corporate-speak lead down? Does it require a proctologist?
Make no mistake, the stock announcement that schools love the Maynardville production is “marketing, marketing, marketing”. A night out in a school group is a rock concert, no matter who is making a fool of themselves in front of you. It is not necessarily world-class, or even intelligible Shakespeare.
We in this country have artists with the potential of international Shakespeare practitioners, but they would of necessity be critical thinkers. And those, with tedious regularity, are sidelined for the comfort of being snug and safe in one’s own inferiority.
Skilled dissenting local theatre-makers are being alienated by Maynardville’s wil- ful dumbing down in their glib approach to Shakespeare, in which actors are cast for being “pretty”, shout and scream at each other, or use a high-camp style of performance in which language is underlined by gestures. That went out in the 1950s.
If Maynardville represents a public resource, then it is being squandered through self-interest and mendacity. It behaves like a colonial relic, not only in the facile interpretive choices it stumbles into, or the roster of “directors” it ordains with predictability, but in its casting choices that exclude the critically engaged or “noncompliant”, and in which actors of colour with regularity end up playing servants without so much as a nod to, nor recognition of, the sick irony in the fact.
What would be the benefit of actually seizing on the opportunities presented by Maynardville to present a production of international standard or level of interpretive intelligence that would elevate the event into something worth aspiring to and flexing critical engagement at the same time?
Is Maynardville not in some small way a reflection of the many exclusions, chauvinist acts of power abuse, corruption, self-interest and denial that characterise the landscape of frustration felt widely in South Africa? A landscape that breeds violence and aggression in outrageous excess as the only means to articulate the absence at the heart of such chauvinism and denial.
Returning to the “context” of rape. In 15th century Russia, occupied by Mongols, a farmer and his wife walk along a dusty country road. A Mongol warrior on a horse stops at their side and tells the farmer that he will now rape his wife.
But since there is a lot of dust on the ground, he should hold his testicles while he rapes his wife so that they do not get dusty. The Mongol finishes his job and rides away, the farmer starts to laugh and jump with joy.
Surprised, the wife asks him: “How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped?” The farmer answers: “But I got him! His balls were full of dust.”
This sad joke tells of the predicament of dissension to the disproportionate appropriation of power. Instead of getting dust on the balls of the arrogant and abusive, consideration should be given to chopping them off. It is a metaphor.
De Lancey is an actor, cinematographer and director, and member of the Mechanicals collective.