Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Breaking the core boundaries of identity
Taking a drive through history Page 17 Honouring our heroes: The big renaming debate Page 19 Theatre production smashes the conventional working-class depiction of coloured people, writes YAZEED KAMALDIEN
WHILE post-apartheid conversations about coloured identity are perennial, a current amplification is under way via social media, community activists and cultural commentators.
Protagonists in various spaces are talking about their challenges, including the sentiment that coloureds often feel sidelined in the black and white identity offered as South African.
Cape Town theatre director Jade Bowers is determined to challenge stereotypes about coloureds with her latest play scheduled to debut at two festivals this month. It will debut at the Festival Theaterformen in Germany and then immediately head to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
The play, JungFrau, is based on a story written by Cape Town author Mary Watson. This story was part of Watson’s collection of stories in Moss, which won the prestigious Caine literature prize after its publication in 2004.
Bowers is working in a space that has presented coloureds for a long time as either singing or dancing and almost always with a happy-go-lucky smile.
Coloureds on theatre stages have also often been portrayed as one-dimensional, hardly ever fully realised in the breadth of this community’s diversity.
It could be argued that the likes of comedian Marc Lottering, the Joe Barber series and the District Six musicals have all offered a narrow perspective on coloured identity.
While these stage productions were meant to entertain – which they did very well – they did not intend to advance a broader representation of coloureds beyond the laughing-singing stereotype.
Characters in these productions are also always located in the working-class narrative, cementing notions of what it means to be coloured.
Bowers wants to be a different kind of storyteller and this has already gained her awards. Last year she won the Naledi Award for best theatre director and she was named Young Artist for Theatre in the annual Standard Bank arts award in 2016.
She walks in the footsteps of a number of Cape Town women who have used the stage to present stories that have enriched the range of theatre experiences about coloureds.
About a decade ago, Cape Town playwright Nadia Davids produced a stage play on the life of late anti-apartheid activist Cissie Gool, which remains strides ahead of most other depictions of coloured women on stage.
Davids also wrote At Her Feet, a celebration of Cape Town Muslim women in all their variations. Another writeractress, Chantal Stanfield, recently portrayed her personal journey as a coloured woman marrying a Jewish man.
And the evergreen actress Denise Newman – well-known for her stage, film and TV roles – brought to life the struggle activist Dulcie September with dignity.
It is unlikely that Bowers will suddenly change theatregoers’ expectations or perceptions of coloured characters on stage, but she and her cast are exploring a story she says is about presenting the “human” instead of caricature.
JungFrau is set in Redhill in the 1950s, before coloureds were forcibly removed from this area in Simon’s Town during apartheid. It depicts the unravelling of a family’s secrets.
Bowers was born in Grassy Park, not too far from Redhill, and says JungFrau is a “political statement” while “finding nuances of the coloured identity”.
“For us, it’s important to go beyond stereotypes. There has been a lot of stereotypical representation on stage of being coloured. You have to sing or be funny,” says Bowers.
“The actors in our play do sing and dance and there are moments of comedy. But we are finding the human beyond the stereotype.”
She adds: “In terms of coloured stories, even in South Africa, what it means to be coloured is still contested. For me, it’s important to tell stories from within the coloured spectrum.
“South Africa’s identity is not only about being black or white. There is so much more that we are not talking about and that we are not pushing into the mainstream. We are about seeing a representation of who we might be as a (coloured) community on stage.
“We are also not yet at that point where people are casting just for talent or a specific type of person for a role. We are still getting castings for coloured female roles that are for a fisher’s wife. TV is even worse, although it is slowly starting to change.”
Theaterformen’s artistic director Martine Dennewald commissioned Bowers to stage her play at their festival. She says an ordinary German theatregoer who has never been to South Africa would be surprised to see a story about coloureds.
“I think most people in Germany are unaware that there is a coloured community. This will be new to them,” she says.
“People have an awareness of the apartheid system. They have an awareness of the change in 1994 and the current political situation. That’s the stuff that gets in the news. But there are many nuances they don’t know about.
“Most artists who have travelled to Germany have been either black or white and have told those stories. This is different and it is important to add this voice. It shows a particular narrative of the coloured community.”
Coloured Mentality is another platform where coloureds are sharing their experiences with a global audience via the video publishing website YouTube.
This online project, run by locals Kelly-Eve Koopman and Sarah Summers, has its second season launch online this week with a trailer that includes edited interviews with coloured singers, actors, writers and activists.
Coloured Mentality’s creators aim to curate “conversations around coloured identity in post-apartheid South Africa”.
They want to “spark respectful but invigorating dialogue across the community and around coloured identity”.
Their trailer features interviewees depicting racism they have experienced in Cape Town, where they were born and live.
Koopman and Summers make works that seemingly speak primarily to Cape Town coloureds who feel “marginalised” in a city where they are ironically the majority.
The video series is scheduled for publication online over the next few weeks. It appears as the voice of a victim in Cape Town, a city that makes coloureds feel unwelcome, the same sentiment that has given rise recently to a group called Gatvol Capetonian.
The latter claims to represent coloureds who are victims of a political system that allegedly favours black South Africans over coloureds when it comes to service delivery. This group claims to speak for “minorities”.
Coloured Mentality would likely be more than a complaint about walking around in brown or mixed-race skin though. This season will “address the running of the city of Cape Town, racism, gender, institutional and generational violence, colourism and mental health”.
Its synopsis offers: “For anyone who has felt unwelcome in the enclaves of the city’s infinite coffee shops and restaurants, this is for you. For those facing eviction, being thrown out of the homes they’ve lived their whole lives to make room for holidaymakers or artisinal whatevers, this is for you.
“For our fellow South African and Africans who are made to feel foreign in this city, who are consistently made to feel the colour of their skin in a city that so vehemently rejects blackness, this is for you.”
Cape Town hip-hop musician Emile Jansen, also known as Emile YX?, is a coloured voice who has used social media platforms such as Facebook to curate alternative representations of coloureds.
His So-called Coloured/Mixed Heritage Appreciation group on Facebook is aimed at showcasing community role models instead of gangsters who often grab news headlines. It takes a more pro-active approach than Coloured Mentality.
Likewise, the Instagram page Coloureds of Cape Town posts photos of ordinary people and their aspirations while celebrating coloureds who have achieved accolades in their field.
Collectively, these coloured voices seem to raise the same need – to be recognised for what they are and not what they have been told they should be. It is within a post-apartheid context, where economic and racial differences still divide South Africans, that their voices are finding an audience and hitting home.