Powerful play asks questions
Ameera Conrad is the final recipient of the Emerging Theatre Director’s Bursary for 2016. This accolade is awarded to four directors every year by the Theatre Arts Admin Collective. Through this bursary, Conrad presents Reparation, a fast-paced, cutting and decisive play that does not allow anyone to get away with anything.
Written and directed by Conrad, Reparation is a strong and no-holds barred examination of post-apartheid South Africa.
Debt is owed, and this production defiantly asks and demands: “How will it be repaid?”
Reparation comes close on the heels of the production Conrad performed in and co-directed at the Baxter Theatre; The Fall. This new work is in many ways The Fall’s sequel and its nemesis.
The Fall was well received by critics and played to packed houses throughout its run. As theatre critic Tracey Saunders noted in the Cape Times: “The Fall epitomises the vital role that the arts can play in building a society and recording history in the making.”
Reparation interrogates two key questions prevalent to the contemporary South African #feesmustfall context: “what debt is owed?” and “how is this debt repaid?” It looks very closely at this issue in its three major forms– land, economy and blood, within the sociopolitical context of a postapartheid-apartheid South Africa.
Black South Africans, since the end of apartheid, have not demanded reparations for the human rights violations inflicted upon them during both the colonial and apartheid eras.
It could be argued that this compromise of reconciliation, as opposed to retribution, is what saved our country from civil war in the 90s.
However, it can also be argued that it failed the population who were most affected by the atrocities of the past.
This play brings forward the issue of what debt people of colour in this country are owed for what has been done to them since 1652.
A quote in the play reads: “The people demand reparations for the atrocities committed against them for hundreds of years by white settlers in South Africa.”
This is, in essence, at the heart of the play. What do white people owe black people for the sins of their ancestors, and how will they settle the score?
This intense and highly relevant theatre piece prophesies the potential outcome of a power shift, and what extreme measures some are willing to take to gain and maintain power, using “justice” as a shield.
Reparation also looks at the role that young people and social media hold in social justice movements and how popular culture can be used as a post-modern propaganda tool.
• Ameera Conrad graduated with distinction from UCT’s Drama Department last year as a Theatre Maker (Honours).