Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Double bill on the ball
Inthe
HEALING Self and Healing Society is the theme for Artscape’s Spiritual Festival which runs until April 2.
Through drama, poetry, dance and music, artists are using performance and storytelling to transcend pain, wounds and ruptures on our continent. Faith, hope and possibly redemption are the subjects of a powerful double bill, Mbuzeni and The Girls. Mbuzeni, directed by Koleka Putuma, is followed by the chilling The Girls, directed by Roel Twijnstra, with musical direction by Jerry Pooe.
Mbuzeni (“ask him or her” in Xhosa) is about four young orphans (aged 9, 10, 11 and 12) and their obsession with death and burials. The performers, Thumeka Mzayiya, Nolufefe Ntshunsthe, Awethu Hleli and Sisipho Mbopa, bring a playfulness which provides comic relief to a narrative which might otherwise be unflinchingly dark.
The talented Putuma not only directs but has also conjured up a nuanced design which is part playground and graveyard.
”The play deals with how, as young black girls, we observe and learn how to grieve and conduct ourselves at burials from our mothers, aunts, grandmothers/ elders/ communities and so on,” said Putuma. “The characters question the destiny of one’s spirit after they have died… There isn’t so much a transcendence but more a sense of hope that can be found in the fact that they have each other as friends/family. The healing is in the talking and confronting their circumstances.”
The text is 99 percent in Xhosa. As a non-Xhosa speaker, I was able to get the gist of the story because of the charged visual and aural imagery. I also followed the narrative by reading Mbuzeni’s synopsis. The piece was co- produced with the cast for Putuma’s 2014 graduation production at UCT. Artscape’s artistic director Mandla Mbothwe saw it and asked her to develop it further. She re-wrote and devised this production with the current cast.
The second play in the bill, The Girls, is based on the abduction in 1996 of 139 girls from a boarding school in Aboke, Uganda by rebel leader Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Liberation Army.
An Italian nun, Sister Rachele, who works at the school (but is absent during the attack), runs after the rebels to try to save her girls. She is forced to write down 30 names. The 30 girls on the list will go with the rebels and she will be allowed to take the others with her.
The narrative – interspersed with a capella bursts of song, traces the trajectory of the abducted girls through the nun’s voice, guiding them (spiritually). The superb cast features Buhle Nkomo, Philisiwe Twijnstra and Segametsi Gaobepe.
Nkomo, who plays Norman – a child soldier who was abducted and then subsequently co-opted to do the LRA’s work – said even after touring with the show for three years, the story never ceased to shock them. The Girls has won numerous awards – including an Ovation Award at last Year’s National Arts Festival.
Twijnstra is a Dutch-born theatre-maker based in Durban and with Pooe – who spent his formative years in Soweto – he runs Thambo, a theatre company in Durban. They told me that 10 days ago, more girls were abducted in Uganda. Is the play a cautionary tale? “Yes, absolutely,” said Pooe. “It is still happening and no one is doing anything about it.”
● Tickets are R50-R80; one ticket provides access to both productions. Book at Computicket or Artscape on 021 421 7695. Ticket prices vary for the Spiritual Festival and some events are free.