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Crossing boundaries: the genesis of the township plays - Athol Fugard Issue

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1993 by Dennis Walder

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When Fugard attended the trials in Cradock, where he acted as "witness in mitigation" for Ntshinga (without effect), he took with him the man's wife Mabel Magada, a well-known blues singer who had played the leading role in Woyzeck. She was recognized by a fifty-eight-year-old man from New Brighton who had just been sentenced to three years on Robben Island for--like the others--merely belonging to the banned ANC. The man took off his coat and gave it to her, saying, "Go to my home. Give this to my wife. Tell her to use it" (Kani, personal interview).

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Ntshinga's sentence was five years (of which he served two), basically, as Fugard observed, for being black (Notebooks 126). He has never fully recovered. The shock of all this went deep. For Fugard, the issue became how to reach the "other man" (127); for the Players, how to create a play directly out of their experiences.

It was a year before the result became visible, in The Coat, "An Acting Exercise" which was presented to its first audience, a white Port Elizabeth "theatre appreciation" group who, having asked to see a sample of their work, were expecting a comedy, Wole Soyinka's Brother Jero. But since the Native Commissioner would permit performance in a "white area" only on condition the black performers did not use the toilets, and returned to the township after the show, the Players (after bitter debate) decided to do a reading of The Coat instead, using pseudonyms from their earlier roles to avoid trouble with the police, and a Brechtian actor-presenter who encouraged their white audience to think about, not merely sympathize with, what they were witnessing. Fugard's aim was to "shatter white complacency and its conspiracy of silence"; for the group, going ahead was an act of "solidarity," a testimony to their work together over the years. The collaborative procedure, with Fugard as "scribe" and provocateur, and the performers drawing on their knowledge of New Brighton, was fully vindicated by the result, which left their audience of one hundred and fifty frozen in "horror and fascination" (Notebooks 142-43) at being taken out of their safe white world into township oppression. As "Lavrenti" (Mulligan Mbikwane) announces in the opening address: 'We want to use the theatre. For what? . . . Some of us say to understand the world we live in, but we also boast a few idealists who think that Theatre might have something to do with changing it (Township Plays 123).

Six months later, the day after the BBC broadcast The Blood Knot, Fugard's passport was withdrawn. He continued his work--in private, on Boesman and Lena, testifying to the lives of two "coloured" outcasts; and in collaboration, with the Players, alternating productions of European classics with other improvisations on township issues, in which another new member had begun to show promise--Winston Ntshona, brought in by school friend Kani. John Bonisile Kani was born on 30 August 1943 in a two-room house in Port Elizabeth. The son of a policeman, he was brought up with five brothers and four sisters. Winston Zola Ntshona was born on 6 October 1941 in King William's Town in the Ciskei region, but lived for four years with an uncle in a Johannesburg township while his mother, two brothers, and a younger sister survived in a single room near Port Elizabeth, before they all moved into one of the larger New Brighton township houses. After leaving Newell High School, Ntshona was a factory janitor for eight years, his earlier family history leading to problems with the pass laws which he was to recall for his role as Sizwe Bansi. He was a laboratory assistant when Kani brought him in, Kani too having begun as a factory janitor at the Ford car plant, before going on the engine-assembly line--an experience embodied in his opening monologue as Styles in Sizwe Bansi. After being fired, Kani became a welfare assistant with the Bantu Administration in New Brighton. The effect of their arrival upon the depleted Players was soon apparent. But it was not until 1972 (by which time Fugard's passport had been returned) that the two performed together in a major production, Camus' The Just, retitled The Terrorists, at the Space Theatre Club--a production which led to their decision to give up their jobs and become full-time performers in a country which did not officially recognize black actors or their theatre (Astbury n.p.).

Crossing boundaries: the genesis of the township plays - Athol Fugard Issue

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1993 by Dennis Walder

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