Pass Over: A call to action
Playwright Antoinette Nwandu’s response to Godot is a crystal-clear directive: stop killing us
The setting is now: a ghetto street. Night. But also 1855: a plantation. Day. But also 13th century BCE: Egypt, built by slaves. Night. But also Alexandra: Collins Khoza. Night. But also 25 May 2020: George Floyd. Day. But also Mthokozisi Ntumba Street, Braamfontein: Fees Must Fall. Day. This is where and when playwright Antoinette Nwandu raises her pistol of a script like a staff and ushers us through our Pass Over.
Inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, an absurd classic described as “a play where nothing happens — twice,” Pass Over echoes the structure — two men waiting for deliverance from their squalid paralysis — but then advances the story.
Nwandu melds Waiting for Godot with the Passover in Exodus, stretching the theme from a waiting for salvation to a taking thereof, as if to say life affords two white men the privilege of waiting, whiling away time over philosophies of existence, while black bodies bear such resemblance to a bull’s-eye that a bullet may stray and cease their waiting.
While Nwandu borrows Beckett’s blend of cutting, crackling comedy and gloom, there is one crucial difference. Beckett’s vagrants exist in an anywhere, anytime vacuum; Nwandu’s young men are grounded in an horrific reality.
The first protagonist is Moses (Khathu Ramabulana), a black young man from the ghetto. Brokenhearted. Courageous. Alpha. Angry. Sad. But also a slave driver. But also the prophesied leader of God’s chosen. But also a human rights activist. But also a political party leader.
The second is Kitch (Hungani Ndlovu), a young black man from the ghetto and Moses’ best friend. Jovial. Loyal. Kind. Naïve. A lovely friend. But also a slave. But also one of God’s chosen. But also a rally foot soldier. But also a political party vice.
The play is concerned with how systems of violence and oppression have operated throughout human history. A play about the epidemic of police killing unarmed black men, it is just as much about how the powerful seek to keep the oppressed contained, face flat on the pavement.
The cynosure of the play is a game called “promised land top ten,” where Moses and Kitch conjure their wish list on the other side of the Passover: collard greens and pinto beans, a drawer full of clean socks, a beloved brother back from the dead. Meanwhile the Red Sea of whitejiggered society’s permission keeps them locked to the block.
Ramabulana and Ndlovu ricochet from mirthful clowning to urgent, existential despair and back again. There’s an arresting tenderness to their exchanges, the way there often is just below the bantering, backchatting surface of men’s friendships. The bond of love between the two is acutely alive. They vividly convey an intriguing combination of strength and desperation, as well as the dark humour to which they resort to cope with their existence.
While the play dumps contemporary US racism on the sidewalk, it also filters through timeless, bedrock questions of how people wrestle with the idea of dignity and freedom when they’re trapped by power, both hard (police) and soft (elites who think themselves saviours).
The antagonist is “The Man” (Charlie Bouguenon), who arrives as “Master”, an off-course white male clad in an all-white suit. Out of his element. Earnest. Wholesome. Terrified. But also a plantation owner. But also Pharaoh’s son. But also a government official. But also a corporate executive. He again arrives as “Ossifer”, a white policeman. A law enforcer. Not from around here, but always around. Pragmatic. Intimidating. Also terrified. But also a patroller. But also a soldier in Pharaoh’s army. But also from around here. But also a black policeman.
The performances of the three actors resemble gunshots, the text akin to their bodies, and the American accent has lost its weight from the four weeks’ exercise, and is now light on their tongues.
The play feels overlong, with the Biblical references, in particular, jutting out awkwardly from Nwandu’s script and the voices of the characters. It is more effective thematically than as drama. The dialogue at times feels aimless and repetitive, Godotesque, I suppose. The narrative lurches confusingly, and some of the symbolism proves elusive.
Still, this is an agonising, intense and clever piece of theatre that, unlike the “nothing to be done” motif in Godot, provides a crystal-clear directive: “Stop killing us!” — making this a play where a shift happens.
Pass Over was part of the Market Theatre’s Black History Month