Harrowing plight of refugees is lit up with humour
DIRECTOR Jessica Lejowa and two actresses, Cherae Halley and Bongile Lecoge-Zulu, co-wrote Dear Mr Government after an 18-month residency at the University of Johannesburg Arts and Culture – and it’s an absolute gem.
They based Dear Mr Government on the actual words of children from Lesotho and South Africa who have suffered through poverty, gender issues and xenophobia.
It can grate to watch adults pretend to be children but fortunately LecogeZulu and Halley are skilled actresses and Lejowa guides them with sensitivity. It does not take long to suspend disbelief and be under the spell of good, live theatre.
The play reveals how African refugees often live in a world where the childhood nursery rhyme is changed to “one two buckle my shoe, three four lock the door”.
But why doesn’t Mr Government help them? “He doesn’t see what we see,” says one child in an obvious truth.
This little play – only an hour long – helps us to see through its imaginative staging – an upturned bucket for example becomes a metaphor for faceless bureaucracy with its incessant demands of “where are your papers” while a little red backpack signals a child.
None of the characters have names. Instead they go by their role of mother, father, daughter, brother and the like. This highlights the lack of identity of a refugee because until they have papers they are invisible to the system.
They are also extremely vulnerable and child trafficking, missing relatives, poverty and unemployment are a just few of their challenges.
Dear Mr Government also captures the resilience and sadness of many mothers. The scene where a mother goes looking for her husband’s body – burnt in an attack on a foreign spaza shop – is lump-in-the-throat.
Then there is the sickening realisation that it was not money in the jar which mother was taking to pay the landlord.
Despite these harrowing scenes though, the production does have lighter moments and shots of humour which leaven the piece.
The script conveys the simplistic world view of children, where heaven is a river of milk and a mountain of chocolate, and being able to eat chicken and rice instead of cabbage, in a most delightful way.
One child asks if Mr Government will go to heaven. Another suggests he stopped eating cabbage – the food of the poor – when he became Mr Government.
Now he eats goat meat spaghetti and has four toilets. They want to be his children. Dear Mr Government is a moving piece of theatre, and has deservedly won a 2017 Ovation award.
● Dear Mr Government, may i have a meeting with you even though i’m six years old? at Vicky’s, today at 6pm and Friday at 8.30pm. and