NO FEAR OF CAUSING A SCENE
HERE is lots to love about Maboneng Precinct on the east side of Joburg. It’s turned Main and Fox streets in downtown Joburg into the trendiest places to be. This creative hub is where artistic minds work, live and meet. And with the developments of Arts on Main and Main Street Life, there’s a lot of culture to go by.
Arts on Main houses gallery spaces, retail outlets and artist studios where the likes of William Kentridge and Black Coffee, the fashion design label, are residents.
Main Street Life at 286 Fox Street boasts commercial, workshop, exhibition and event venues and it is here that I discovered the alternative theatre and performing arts space, Popart.
On the last Friday of January I checked out an improvisation show called Causing a Scene. It’s put together by a group of actors, some familiar and others not, such as Toni Morkel, Claudine Ullman, Lindiwe Matshikiza and Mongi Mthombeni, to name a few.
They have an amazing shorthand with each other and do fun and hilarious improvisations, playing their acting games on stage. Audience participation is very much part of the show. The intimacy of the space lets you take it in as real as possible, with the action magnified.
It’s a fulfilling theatre experience that’s light, different and very necessary. The more variety we have the better.
Explaining what they’re all about, Claudine Ullman says : “We are an improv group of professional actors constantly working on our skills. There is not enough improv in South Africa. It’s an uplifting, hilarious form of comedy that is lacking in the country and it’s our job as improvisers to change that.”
Her passion for this genre is evident and she excels at it. She had a show called Curled Up at Wits last year and when she’s not on stage she teaches improvisation for corporates. She studied it in the US and hopes to go back to continue her studies at the New York Film Academy for a year.
“I’m raising funds to help me get to New York later in the year. I hope to come back and incorporate a long form of improv, which is about storytelling. It’s inherent in us as South Africans to tell stories. We need another outlet to tell these stories,” says Ullman.
Causing a Scene happens every last Friday of the month at Popart, so it is on this Friday. And it is one of a lot of features at this lovable performance spot.
Popart was started and is owned by three 20-somethings, Hayleigh Evans, 26, Shoki Mokgapa, 28, and Orly Shapiro, 26.
All three trained at Afda together and since graduating, they have been doing work behind the scenes and in the spotlight.
But they all expressed their frustrations at the amount of “downtime” they had between different jobs in the industry and that’s how the idea for Popart was conceived.
“We wanted to provide a space where we could keep our acting muscles ‘tight’ in between jobs. It was also about creating a space where we could present pieces we had created ourselves and offering a space that could really become a
Tmundane to the poignant.”
“It’s slice-of-life theatre, be it in the form of straight theatre, physical performance or musicals,” Shapiro says. “There are so many voices in Joburg and they all deserve a platform from which to be heard. We want to be that platform.”
The space has been running for about a year now. It opened with a 24-hour play festival last March and runs with a show almost every week.
The team keeps shows to a oneweek run (Thursday to Sunday). This year, they’ll be celebrating their birthday with another 24 hours in the city in April.
“It was such great fun and such a positive way to start in the space. With it we get writers, directors, stage designers and actors to come together on a Friday night (most guys don’t know each other, although some might).
“They are divided into six teams and are given 24 hours to put together six 10-minute plays that are showcased to a paying and very critical audience on the Saturday evening.
“It’s the craziest, most intense 24 hours, but it’s absolutely amazing to see what 50 creative minds can produce when under that kind of pressure,” says Evans.
They’re targeting a wide range of audiences and these include your traditional theatre-going crowd who appreciate the magic of a live performance. The three are passionate about changing the way people think about theatre and therefore want to get in new audiences who aren’t necessarily into theatre. They’re also hoping to attract drama students and are setting up relationships with theatre practitioners who might be able to give performers opportunities to take their work abroad or across the country.
Previous productions have included James Cairns’s one-man show Dirt, written by Nick Warren and directed by Janine Collocott Warren, and top-class physical theatre by Untouchable Productions (Craig Morris, Athena Mazarakis, Rayzelle Sham, Gerard Bester and Roslynn Wood Morris) with a retrospective of their work in Reruns.
The Popart team has put on a wide range of pieces from Shadow Puppetry, Black Light explorations to new and zany physical theatre pieces and premieres of new works such as Emphasis on Hopeless written by and starring Charles Bougenon, who was recently seen in Somewhere on the Border at the Market Theatre.
They have now expanded their content to include music, comedy, dance and poetry with regular slots. There’s A Night With a Songwriter feature which takes place every last Thursday of the month and it’s Laurie Levine’s night this Thursday. This is an intimate unplugged session with a local singersongwriter.
There’s also the return of Jozi House of Poetry happening on the last Sunday of every month. Started by Myesha Jenkins and her girls including Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, six years ago, Jozi House of Poetry has found a new home at Popart.
This is a place to discuss different social issues, as well as the aesthetics of poetry, looking at what works and what doesn’t. But most importantly, it provides a noncompetitive space that is womanfriendly.
“There are more poetry sessions now and it’s a good thing. But they are more for slam poetry, they’re more competitive and the participation of women is still marginalised.
“The new Jozi House of Poetry is a place where women are free to bring their kids and a place where new writers can be encouraged. I call it a place between the bedroom and the stage,” Jenkins says.
With February being the month of love, Jenkins and her female poets will present a session of love, romance and erotica in poetry this Sunday from 2pm to 5pm. And a discussion on love, sex and erotica will follow.
Jenkins and fellow poet, Natalia Molebatsi, are editing a South African collection of erotic poetry coming out later in the year.
Jozi House of Poetry and Popart have joined the Pledge a Pad Foundation, which assists in providing sanitary towels to girls in rural areas. Patrons are encouraged to bring pads to the sessions in exchange for a reduced rate at the door, which is R50, and R40 with a pack of pads.
Popart is an alternative to what Gauteng stages offer when it comes to theatre and the performing arts. And it’s a much-needed platform.