When Woza Albert! first appeared in Edinburgh during the Festival
Fringe of 1982, apartheid was still firmly in place, and black
contemporary South African theatre was largely unknown in Europe. As a
major revival of Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon's devised
play arrives in Edinburgh in a production by the Market Theatre of
Johannesburg, who first presented it more than thirty years ago, the
major season of new South African work that follows in its wake
suggests things have changed for the better. But have they? Prince
Lamla, director of this new production of the trio's satire about what
happens when a born again Christ turns up in apartheid-era South Africa
is as pertinent as ever, if not more so.
“South Africa is a very complex country,” Lamla says. “Post-apartheid,
we've experienced so much, and there is change happening very slowly,
but it is not always good. The education system is getting messed up
and so on, so I never see Woza Albert! as a political story. I see it
as a very human story. It's about people trying to survive very simple
things.”
To put the play's arrival in Britain in context, when Woza Albert!
arrived in Edinburgh and London, the UK was in a schizophrenic state,
whereby on one hand Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's rabble-rousing
initiation of the Falklands War would catapult her to a landslide
second term, on the other, a radical alternative protest movement,
forged in the 1970s, was very much alive and kicking.
Along with CND and the anti nuclear demonstrations at Greenham Common
led by the women's movement, the anti-apartheid movement was a crucial
cause of the era's radical left. In some ways, Woza Albert!'s mixture
of politics, comedy and a poor theatre aesthetic reflected the UK's
burgeoning alternative theatre scene, albeit with a far realer sense of
political oppression. The play became a cause celebre, and was
filmed and broadcast on national television.
“The play changed the whole face of theatre in South Africa,” says
Lamla. “To do a play with black actors, and then executing it in such a
way that the government couldn't stop it, it had the voice of the
entire country. It also had a hand in letting the international
community and the entire world know about apartheid.”
As well as Woza Albert!, the South African season will feature a second
Market Theatre production. And The Girls In Their Sunday Dresses is a piece of black, female
absurdist comedy set in a Lesotho rice queue. Another highlight should
be Mies Julie, a post-apartheid take on Strindberg's classic play of
forbidden love. Where the original usually focusses on the class
divide, Baxter Theatre and State Theatre's new production looks at a
still taboo inter-racial erotic clash. A 1985 production saw actress
Sandra Prinsloo, who appears in Edinburgh in The Sewing Machine, a play
about loss and ageing, receive death threats when she took part in the
first ever cross-colour kiss onstage when apartheid was still in place.
Another one-woman play is Mother To Mother, based on the true story of
a mob killing of American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl, in Cape Town
during violent uprisings in 1993. If many of these shows demonstrate
the legacy of apartheid that remains in South Africa, a revival of
Athol Fugard's angry 1972 play, Statements After An Arrest Under The
Immorality Act., gets right back to the roots of modern South African
theatre. Like Mies Julie, Fugard's piece looks at the all too real
dangers of cross-colour love under the apartheid regime.
The backdrop to all this is a South African government led by the
African National Congress, who were once outlawed as terrorists. Woza
Albert!, meanwhile, is a set text in high schools. A political
volatility remains in the country, however, and, in Lamla's eyes, at
least, Woza Albert! is far from a period piece.
“I can see how that might happen,” he says, “but really, not much has
changed in South Africa. The challenge with doing the play now was to
make it fresh, so people can feel something. Woza Albert! isn't just a
play about South Africa. It is a global play. If you look at some of
the things going on in Syria and elsewhere, it’s easy to see how
relevant it is to the rest of the world.”
Even with his claims for Woza Albert!'s universality, Lamla
acknowledges that it might still strike a chord close to home, where
more grassroots artistic developments are ongoing beyond what has now
become the mainstream.
“In South Africa, it feels sometimes like something is missing,” Lamla
says, “but there are new plays that are coming out of the country, and
some of the most important of them are coming out of community
developments. That is where the future of South African theatre will
develop out of, and that is what is so exciting here right now.”
Woza Albert!, Assembly Hall, 2-27, 4pm
www.assemblyfestival.com
The Herald, August 14th 2012
ends
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