A choice piece of festival theatre
WHEN Baleka Mbete attended the reading of a new play, OoMaSisulu, at Artscape in Cape Town earlier this year, she received a mostly warm welcome.
Only the day before, though, during the state of the nation debate, Mbete, the speaker of parliament, had been given a torrid time in the house before she ordered members of the EFF and COPE to leave the National Assembly.
But not everyone attending the reading — an important part of the script development process — was feeling charitable towards the speaker.
“Am I supposed to forget the National Assembly, just forget it?” asked one member of the audience.
The question of what we remember and forget not only depends on memory. Choice has a vital role to play.
In OoMaSisulu, which premieres at the 42nd National Arts Festival in Grahamstown later this year, Sindiwe Magona has chosen to remember the life of Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu who, like many noteworthy women, has been marginalised in the history of South Africa.
Magona’s script is based on the 2002 biography Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime, written by their daughterin-law, Elinor Sisulu.
Representing the life of Albertina Sisulu — a nurse, a mother, an activist — on stage presented difficult choices.
Set in 2011, the year of her death at the age of 92, the piece moves between eras.
Director Warona Seane, who helped to shape the script as a marriage between past and present, said that deciding what to include was “challenging because she lived a long life”.
Seane added: “She saw a lot. She did a lot. She was detained and banned for a collective period of 18 years of her life.
“We are not just looking at her as an icon but who she could have been in her private life. Amid all the responsibilities that she had — her siblings, her children, her sister-in-law’s children and the children of the nation — there are things I didn’t know about her that I discovered. She was a horse rider and swimmer.”
Actress Thembi MtshaliJones, best known as Thoko on the sitcom Sgudi Snaysi, plays the lead role, supported by Indalo Stofile and Chuma Sopotela.
The resemblance between Stofile and Mtshali-Jones is uncanny.
Their hand gestures, the inflection of their heads and quiet sense of self create a striking mirror effect — the central metaphor of OoMaSisulu.
“We look at her impact on a young black female she is in contact with while living in Soweto. How do their lives mirror each other? What can the young girl learn from Albertina? said Seane.
“At the same time Indalo plays the young Albertina, mirroring herself.”
Ismail Mohamed, artistic director of the festival, said: “More than just being a political leader with an undisputed integrity, Albertina Sisulu was a remarkable family woman. Through several brutal detentions by the apartheid state that attempted to rip her apart from her children, she kept her family together with love and devotion.
“I was about 15 years old when I first heard her speak at a political rally in Lenasia. Her strength and resilience left a lifetime impression on me.”
The National Arts Festival runs in Grahamstown from June 30 to July 10