Actors’ youthful passion is encha
With the young cast bubbling over, artistic director James Ngcobo is hoping that will bring all ages to the revamped main theatre at Jozi’s Market. DIANE DE BEER talks to him about a production that introduces a little known team. But watch out for these
ELECTING George C Wolfe’s The Colored Museum as his first play for The Market’s main stage this year, artistic director James Ngcobo had a few things in mind.
“I wanted to offer a large young cast the opportunity to play in this kind of celebrated work,” he said.
While keeping in the AfroAmerican genre, Ngcobo also wanted to counteract the realism of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, which he’d staged earlier, with the wildness and satire of Wolfe who was seen as the natural replacement of the older playwright. “The one is the flip side of the other,” says Ngcobo.
The Colored Museum was performed at The Market 20 years ago and Ngcobo fretted that it might have dated, but then realised history doesn’t date.
“We speak about South Africa that is finally part of the world. This play represents our curiosity about the diaspora, the history of those who ended up in faraway places and had to evolve to take on board the
Snew soul that they called home. I wonder about people who have to abandon their language,” he says. It’s all of this that encouraged him to tackle a play that he has been scratching his head about. “It’s so sketchy,” he says. And he exacerbated that problem by using a much bigger cast which by its very make-up means the episodic nature shifts up a few notches. We don’t identify with any of the characters specifically.
But when Ngcobo put some of his young cast through their paces, my excitement grew. It is the raw talent of the young, their versatility that is going to be explored and hopefully explode in this one. One of the biggest headaches from the start was how to link the different sketches.
But with his musical ear, the answer was an obvious one.
And dealing with the stories of African-Americans through their history, he wanted to find the sound or at least the lyrics that would capture a certain mood.
Think of great voices like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday or a genre that fills an auditorium with soul like the blues or negro spirituals. All of this allows his cast to shine. With his ear always to the ground and being someone who eats, breathes and sleeps theatre, he only had to scour his memory bank to know where he could find the talent deserving of this kind of production.
Leading his team, he needed a bit of experience but, as is his wont, he turned left field to secure a man more familiar for his melodious voice and musical theatre, Aubrey Poo. But he’s up for the challenge.
“He plays the part of the court jester,” says the director, “the link between the audience and the author. I wanted youth to be part of the enchantment of the production,” he underlines, and he wanted names and faces outside the expected crowd. On occasion, he picks the big names as he did with Nongogo and its all-star cast including Desmond