The mighty Woza Albert is back on stage

Joburg Theatre will present Woza Albert by Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Barney Simon at The Fringe Theatre next month.

From June 1 to 17 the show, one of the most vibrant examples of satirical anti-apartheid South African theatre, demonstrates the innovation and creativity during a seminal period of theatre in the country.

Segomotso Modise and Hamilton Dlamini play the roles of various black South Africans – a vendor, barber, domestic worker, manual labourer and soldier – receiving the news that Christ (Morena) has arrived in South Africa, where a Calvinist white elite imposes apartheid.

Dlamini, this year’s Safta Award-winner for Best Actor in TV Soap/Telenovela, has been a popular actor in SA.

Modise started his theatre career in 2005 starring in a production titled Question Mark. In 2014, he made his musical debut when he starred in Marikana: The Musical by Aubrey Sekhabi, which walked away with six Naledi Awards in 2015.

The parts played by Segomotso and Hamilton show off their acting, mime, singing and dance skills. They also create images using a few words and actions.

The play is a political satire that imagines the second-coming of Christ in apartheid-era South Africa. It looks at a wide range of characters in South Africa at the beginning of the 1980s and attacks the pass laws that prevented black people from moving freely at the time.

It uses the metaphor of Morena to show what would happen if he came back to South Africa during apartheid. Would He like what he saw? And if He saw the atrocities of the time, then why would He not do anything about them? – Citizen reporter