Variety, adventure for Daniel
WHEN you are fitting in a performance of Pay Back the Curry in between a dress rehearsal of Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and the performance itself, you will know just how busy Daniel Mpilo Richards is. And that time management is really important to him!
For Richards, who is not only writing a new script but narrating it as well as part of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra fundraiser for the Darling Trust and the CP Youth Orchestra, sitting still isn’t an option. The fundraiser is conducted by Carlo Ponti, conductor and long-time friend of Pieter Dirk Uys, whose beloved Evita Bezuidenhout is narrating Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf at the same concert and is taking place on November 13.
Asked what his favourite role is and he is nonplussed. “I love variety and get bored so easily so I have developed different aspects to my life … acting, writing, dancing, singing.I pride myself on my versatility.”
He’s a baritone. He also plays guitar and didgeridoo, which he also collects in abundance and is yet to go to Australia in case the jumbo isn’t big enough to bring back his purchases!
He got into acting while in Grade 9 in Johannesburg, when a director from the Market Theatre went to his school play and asked him to audition for Lord of the Flies. He went through the thorough audition process and was selected, and the eight weeks of rehearsals and six weeks of performance were amongst the happiest of his life. “I loved every second, because acting gave me a reason to ignore school and not have to do well”, he said with a twinkle!. Naturally he not only passed but excelled in passing matric at Westerford High School with distinction to enter the Drama School at UCT from where he graduated. He is deeply concerned about what is currently happening at UCT, not least because his sister is a second year MBChB student there.
Since those early days he has become a fixture on the South African entertainment scene.
Pay Back the Curry, the one man show is undergoing a national tour, will be in Johannesburg for some weeks and at the Kalk Bay Theatre late in October. Then, he says, it will probably undergo an update and start the rounds again!
He is looking forward to the Britten piece very much.
“It is like a breath of fresh air. I can concentrate on writing the script and its delivery because Pay Back the Curry is so deeply entrenched in my psyche that I have capacity for an altogether new challenge.
“The Britten piece allows me to be in touch with all forms of creating, from music and physical theatre to serious and comedic acting. Taking over an orchestra is a fantastic opportunity, just thrilling. So many instruments at once and I have to be heard over them all!”
What he plans to do is give a contemporary feel to music, allowing him the opportunity to interpret the music. His angle, well his angle today, is that each instrument can represent a different culture, so don’t be surprised if he characterizes the city of Chicago and its smoky, sultry nightclubs with the trumpet or trombone, or that the violins symbolize the refined English aristocracy.
“When I observe the way in which the orchestra works, I liken it to the act of getting up in the morning, gathering up all the bits and pieces i need, the different aspects of myself included, to get ready for the day. There’s a routine that needs to be harmoniously or sometimes non-harmoniously (!) completed in order to feel ready to leave home and conquer the world, face a different orchestra, a full one – where maybe some are in tune and others not.”
Richards was born in Switzerland, lived a year in the US then migrated from Cape Town to Joburg and back until he finally settled in Cape Town 10 years ago. He runs his own company called DMR Productions, which is based in Cape Town.
High points in his life include performing in the Tennesse Williams Theatre Festival last year in Provincetown, where he got to act in two plays, one with an American director (David Kaplan) and one with a South African (Fred Abrahamse). In addition to performing in America, he has performed in the Czech Republic and Zimbabwe.
He has participated in plays and musicals as diverse as Shakespeare and West Side Story.
He has also co-written a play Die Glas ennie Draad, with fellow-actor Gantane Kusch which won a Standard Bank Silver Ovation at the 2016 National Arts Festival.
And since he likes being adventurous, you can bet his script and narration will be an adventure. You can also bet that his whole supportive family will be there. The concert at the Cape Town City Hall on November 13 at 6pm includes the CPYO playing Star Wars and Pirate of the Caribbean arrangements. Some CPYO musicians will join the CPO for Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The dress rehearsal is at 10am.
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