The Interview Series #1: Dorothy Ann Gould on her Shakespeare theatre group for the homeless in Hillbrow – Johannesburg Awakening Minds (JAM)

The Interview Series is a new Shakespeare ZA initiative: a collection of conversations with contributors to Shakespeare in South Africa, posted monthly.

On Monday the 21st of August, Kirsten Dey met with South African actor, director and teacher Dorothy Ann Gould at The Hillbrow Theatre, where she attended the Monday morning rehearsal of Johannesburg Awakening Minds (JAM) – a Shakespeare theatre group for the homeless in Hillbrow, which was founded by Dorothy in July 2012.

How would you describe Johannesburg Awakening Minds (JAM) and what it entails?

I would say it is about life skills and communication skills. I started with the group in 2012 and I found incredibly quickly that through breathing exercises, creative writing …  their confidence suddenly improved. We started with Shakespeare very early on because I believe that Shakespeare’s plays, especially the tragedies, are huge receptacles for pain that can help a person heal because when you feel that powerful language passing through you, you can release your anger or your pain, or your joy. And then, of course the extremity of a person standing at the traffic lights begging for food but reciting a monologue from, say, Hamlet … people started giving them more money! So, we realised that that was a kind of shock tactic that we must use, apart from the fact that I love Shakespeare, and that it healed me at the age of 14 when I came into contact with it. And so that is what we did. And the more that powerful language flowed through them, the more their confidence grew, the more their voices came out. So, for me, the class has been about saying to them and teaching them: “You have the right to speak. Despite your circumstances, you have the right to stand on mother earth. You have the right to be a citizen here.” After that, we worked on getting them ID documents, building them up one step at a time, to try to make sure that they are not below the radar anymore.

You said JAM was founded in 2012. What was the process that led to your bringing the group together?

Well there is a lovely dancer called Cinda Eatok and she uses dance to work with the homeless, and she phoned me one day to ask if I would like to help, and at that stage I was overcommitted but it stuck in the back of my head. She said that there was a group of men in Mitchell Street in Hillbrow who met once a week, on a Monday, for tea and a sandwich at The Good Shepherd Church. They have a prayer group and a hot meal for about 80 to 90 people every Friday and they provide tea and sandwiches every Monday. They have been doing this for about 24 years now. And so I got myself there on a Monday and I met this wonderful woman called June Jardine, and she had tried all sorts of things with them, like creative writing and painting, but somehow nothing was really happening, so she said I could take over and focus on acting with them. Since then, we have been meeting every Monday morning, and we have become a theatre group. So, that is how we started – how Johannesburg Awakening Minds – the name they chose to give themselves – was founded! Within four months, we did our first concert, which was a mixture of Shakespeare and gumboot dancing! And from there it just grew every few months until we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

How do you conduct your classes? What do you focus on?

We focus on breathing … a lot of them breathe very shallowly. They don’t breathe for performance. If you breathe for performance, right down to the diaphragm, you are clearing the cobwebs out. And then we do exercises for tone; we do singing to open up the throat. Voice always has a psychological component, so of course for these men and women who didn’t feel that they had the right to speak … they were not letting their voices out and now they are. And when they stand on that stage at the end of every concert, each person says his or her name and for me, that is important, because we never are interested in the people standing at the traffic lights. We close our windows. We get nervous. And they are lovely, lovely people. And people need to be loved … So, I try to create a sense of community in each class. I really focus on that. I try to just say: “Let’s love each other, and let’s be a team. Watch each other’s backs on the street and on stage.” So, it has been about support rather than isolated defensiveness.

You spoke about the importance of Shakespeare’s works as receptacles for emotion. How do the members of JAM react to Shakespeare?

They are not that interested initially, but the sheer power of the language takes them over, and by the end they have tears running down their faces. Of course, I choose pieces like Edmund’s soliloquy from King Lear: “Why bastard? Wherefore base? … Why brand they us with base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?”… things that really touch them. Things they can relate to. They have rediscovered a passion for life through Shakespeare.

Since JAM was founded, where have they performed?

They have performed for Arts Alive, the launch luncheon, the mayor’s culinary international banquet … We have performed twice at Space.Com at the Johannesburg Theatre. We have performed at POPArt Theatre in Maboneng. And now we have our own little space at Piza é Vino in Auckland Park, and every few months, that is where we perform. There is a little open-air stage. We are waiting for summer now! We put tables and chairs and umbrellas outside; people give their donations and the guys perform. They used to perform for 20 minutes, and now it is over an hour, so it is a good, healthy performance. And they have performed four times on Classic FM. They have been recorded by the BBC, and that was out a couple of months ago. So, they are getting known, in fact, all over the world. Somebody from The Globe came to see them, to see whether they could take the whole group to The Globe because he said that they do not know of any other homeless theatre groups performing Shakespeare … But it is a tall order to take the core group to London to The Globe, and I wouldn’t want to leave any behind. But the goal is there!

So far, you have mentioned a few works of Shakespeare that they have performed. What has governed your choice of play or text?

Well, I have to be honest, you know, in saying that I am not familiar with plays like Pericles, and Cymbeline and Timon of Athens. So, first of all, it was about using the tragedies to help heal them, and then I just wanted them to have a laugh, so we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I had directed three times before. It was important that I used things that I knew well, and things I knew I could really help with, like Shakespeare’s Sonnets, for example. Of course, they have branched out into other work now. They have all been on Generations as extras. Three of them have had speaking parts on Generations. Sipho was in Akin Omotoso’s latest movie called Vaya. One of them has had two commercials and a part in a movie, as well as a lead in an SABC 1 series. But the other thing that is just as important to me is the fact that some of them have gone home to their families and are now not using acting, but because of their confidence, are able to do other jobs and are able to support their families. So, they have self-respect, and that is the thing that is important.

What have the effects of JAM been on the audiences – and on you?

Let’s leave me to last! I would really encourage your readers to see them perform. The audience usually have tears running down their faces, whether it is a comedy or not. Just to see the absolute joy on the guys’ faces … standing in front of an audience and having people clap for them. A lot of audience members have spoken to me and said: “I will never be able to look at another homeless man in the same way.” For myself, I have to admit that sometimes I feel inadequate. I wish I was a therapist … I wish I was a social worker. But I do find that if somebody needs to go to rehab to address a drug problem or an alcohol problem, I find somebody here at this wonderful Hillbrow Theatre, run by Gerard Bester. It is hard driving into Hillbrow, but I have many protectors … It is a huge commitment on my part, but it has given me great joy, and I love them. I don’t have children of my own, you see … They’re my naughty sons.

What would be your moment of pride with this initiative?

Certainly seeing them on the BBC because I have spent a lot of the last twenty years working in London. To go from where they have come from to being featured on the BBC Business page is no small feat. And then when young Michael Mazibuko translated Sonnet 25 into deep Zulu and it was featured by the BBC, my heart wanted to burst with pride. When he says: “This is the greatest moment of my life” … I think: “Well, yes, it is for me too!”

Are there any upcoming performances that you would like our readers at Shakespeare ZA to know about?

Yes! We are working on The Taming of the Shrew, and we are hoping that we will be able to perform that at the end of November at Piza é Vino in Auckland Park. We will keep you updated!

What are your aspirations for the group going forward?

If you had asked me three years ago, I would have said to get them to the Grahamstown Festival. That is still one of my aspirations but for that, we would need sufficient funding. I would say that there are 16 core members, and to do something like that in Grahamstown requires money for accommodation, food, a lot of things. More than that, I just wish high schools would say: “Come, we will give you R1000. Perform to inspire our Grade 10s and 12s.” If those kids who have a much more protected environment can see what these men are capable of, I think they would be incredibly inspired. I think these men are inspiring … they have been inspired, are being inspired, and can now inspire. And that gives them purpose.

Throughout the morning, a few members of JAM were asked how theatre and Shakespeare makes them feel:

Lwazi: Shakespeare makes me feel good, because it is an outlet … getting into that moment and telling somebody else’s story. Some of the things we talk about have something to do with us. We can relate to them.

Siphukazi: Theatre heals souls … and that is why I want to be an actress because I want to be able to reach out to people in that close space and setting.

Gift: We feel like we are special because all those years you grow up in the street and you don’t know what you’re going to do. You think about stealing, staying alive. But now, we have something else – something to do – something that makes us feel special. I feel proud – very proud.

Michael: Theatre allows me to breathe … It is life-giving. Shakespeare and theatre make me feel alive.

Voilà! Viola and Olivia Upstaged by Malvolia

Guest writers for the Shakespeare ZA blog, Carole Godfrey and Adriaan Venter, review National Theatre Live's recent production of Twelfth Night.

Tamsin Greig in National Theatre Live's Twelfth Night. Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Tamsin Greig in National Theatre Live's Twelfth Night. Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Simon Godwin’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night opens with a devastating scene of shipwreck. The twins Viola (Tamara Lawrance) and Sebastian (Daniel Ezra) clutch at each other’s hands through the railings until they are eventually torn away from one another, and the stage itself splits in two (credit for this clever design goes to the stage designer, Soutra Gilmour). From this point until the final scene of the play, each twin believes the other dead. The stage continues to divide and revolve throughout the rest of the performance, showing how the broken relationship between the two grieving siblings is the catalyst for the multitude of confusions that abound throughout the rest of the drama.

However, those who know the play will not be surprised to hear that the action soon returns to a more comedic bent. And quite a bend it is, with Tamsin Greig playing a gender-swapped Malvolia (Malvolio in the original) who gets the audience laughing with her take on this Puritan narcissist. Another favourite of ours and the rest of the audience was Daniel Rigby as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whose adorable stupidity and entertaining dance moves (which we are still attempting, unsuccessfully, to emulate) kept us chuckling until well after the play’s end.

One criticism of the production is that there are perhaps too many chuckles and not enough tears. The play itself ends with the sound of the clown, Feste (Doon Mackichan), singing the refrain ‘the rain it happens every day’, but when the curtains closed, most of the audience were still crying with laughter. In the beginning of the play the Lady Olivia (Phoebe Fox) is supposedly grieving for her recently deceased brother. This grief is clearly exaggerated a bit to keep her unwelcome suitors at bay. Yet when Olivia meets a potential mate whom she is actually attracted to, Cesario (who is actually Viola dressed up as a man), this grief dissolves so quickly that one might question whether Olivia ever cared for her brother at all. These are not the only instances of fickle affection in the play. At the end of the play, another major character, Duke Orsino (Oliver Chris), swiftly drops his supposedly deep devotion to Olivia in order to marry Viola, at the moment of discovering that Viola is really a lady and not Cesario, the young page. Olivia accepts Sebastian as a husband, despite having been desperately in love with Cesario/Viola moments before. The fact that Sebastian looks like Cesario seems to be enough to satisfy her. Many of the characters seem to exist in a happy whirlwind of shallow devotion which can easily be transferred.

A notable exception is Greig’s Malvolia. After a scene of cruel (but hilarious) deception, she is fooled into believing that her mistress has a romantic interest in her. She blooms at this unexpected news and screams ‘I AM HAPPY!’ while her face splits into a painfully awkward grimace, her best attempt at a smile. As funny as this moment is, it is also a tender scene that shows the awakening of a Sapphic love that is unfortunately doomed. Other reviews of the production have sometimes complained that the lengths to which Malvolia goes to woo her mistress stretch the limits of plausibility (and yes, the rotating nipple tassels might have been a bit much), but the achingly sincere exuberance that Greig brings to the role left us convinced that an individual so repressed might very well be gulled into behaving the fool when she is shown the love she has not dared let herself hope for.

The deception exercised on Malvolia is made all the more terrible by the fact that the modern audience can empathise so well with Greig’s portrayal. In Malvolia, the off-putting pride and condescension of Malvolio become necessary defence mechanisms against those who would mock Malvolia for her unconventional sexuality. One can also empathise with Malvolia’s dislike for Sir Toby Belch (Tim McMullan), a man born with all the privilege of high class and heterosexuality, and who has no idea how difficult life for Malvolia may be and never pauses his revels and cruel jokes long enough to think about it.

At the end of the production, Viola and Sebastian are reunited, the various misunderstandings of the play are resolved, and the brokenness caused by the shipwreck appears to have been healed. However, one might wonder if the ending of this production deliberately questions the play’s alternative title, ‘What You Will’. Few of the characters seem to get what they really want, and the audience do not necessarily get what they want either. We would certainly have liked Olivia and Viola, who have by far the most convincing chemistry in the production, to end up together. We were also rooting for Antonio (Adam Best), who serves Sebastian loyally and is clearly besotted with him, to win his young friend’s heart. Instead, Viola ends up with the rather uninteresting Duke Orsino, while Olivia marries Sebastian.

The character with the most dissatisfying and troubling ending is undoubtedly Malvolia. The production ends with the image of her sobbing on the split steps of the shipwreck. Malvolio is usually portrayed as a character who is opposed to everyone else’s happiness. However, in this adaptation Malvolia is far more the victim of malice than a malevolent character herself. This final image of a woman broken because she dared to allow herself to love leads us to question whether Olivia and Viola are in fact more deserving of having their love returned. Are these two characters’ fates happier simply due to society’s willingness to approve of their choices? Though Malvolia does not win Olivia’s affections, her character tugs at our heartstrings much more than those of the traditional heroines.

 

Experiencing Think Theatre’s Othello: a production for South African students

Think Theatre, a production company which stages set-works (including prescribed Shakespeare plays) for South African school students has, over the last few months, upheld its firmly established reputation, taking on the monumental task of performing Hamlet and Othello to thousands of learners all over the country. Last week, two new members of the Shakespeare ZA team, Marguerite de Waal and Kirsten Dey, attended the last performance of the company’s highly-acclaimed production of Othello at the Brooklyn Theatre in Pretoria.

As students, amateur scholars and teachers of Shakespeare in South Africa, we have found ourselves in a contentious field of study and interest. Considering the stir caused by the latest controversy as to Shakespeare’s place on the curriculum at South African high schools, we were enthusiastic and somewhat apprehensive upon venturing out of the University grounds on a week day at noon to see Think Theatre’s production of Othello – looking forward to engaging with Shakespeare performed as opposed to read, but apprehensive about the way the rest of the audience would respond to the play. Would their perception of the bard be tainted before they had had a chance to experience his work performed?

As we arrived at Brooklyn theatre and found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of high school students, we realised that we, along with the bustling, bubbling group, found ourselves excited at the prospect of escaping our various personal realities. Once we were escorted to the back of the theatre and took our seats, the lights dimmed, narrowing to a single spotlight on the director of Think Theatre’s Othello and Hamlet, Claire Mortimer. She addressed the students (us included – one is always a student of Shakespeare’s!) with sass and grace, welcoming us to her home – the theatre – and told us that we were about to engage with the work of the master of the human condition, encouraging us to receive the play in that light. Her introduction framed the experience of watching the play not as an escape from reality, but rather as a journey into its depths. One is confronted with the ultimate, charismatic, psychopathic villain in Iago; the weak and dupe-able minion in Roderigo; the naïve and earnest beloved in Desdemona; the intensely human, idealistic, flawed hero in Othello. And thus, one is reminded of the various faces of human character and the ways in which it responds to its varying contexts.

Mortimer was already in the costume she would wear as Emilia, identified herself as an actor in the play and engaged with the audience in a way that was personal, which further dispelled the illusion that what would appear before us was a world and reality unlike and apart from our own. Thus, as the lights refocused on the confabulating Iago and Roderigo in the first scene of the play, we were left to perceive them not as isolated entities but as representations of aspects of our own character.

This post is designed as more of a reflection on the production than a review of it. To this end, we have each identified three factors of the performance which we felt were particularly effective or interesting within the context of a Shakespearean play staged for South African learners:

Marguerite:

Ø  The actors’ awareness of and responsiveness to their audience was commendable. As I chatted to Claire Mortimer after the show, she enthused about the reactions of the students, drawing the connection between the ‘groundlings’ of Shakespeare’s day and the clear involvement of the students in the play as it is performed to them in 2017. The kind of cold-blooded reverence sometimes expected of audiences (as evidence of their right to such high-brow pursuits as playgoing) would only serve to entrench a view of Shakespeare and Shakespearean theatre as a distant, elitist, and monolithic institution. The Think Theatre team avoided any such error: the actors in this were able to read and respond to the reactions of their audience, and the audience was given space to respond to the actors.

Ø  A good example of this positive actor-audience dynamic which deserves a special mention is the character of Iago, portrayed by Chris van Rensburg. Iago’s numerous monologues verge on dialogues with the audience: spectators are given fairly direct access to his scheming thoughts, and are almost always aware of how he will steer the plot onwards. Van Rensburg uses this opportunity to elicit reactions from the audience, in a skilful performance which seems to understand that the more the audience can be brought to react to the character, the greater their emotional investment will be in the final outcome for him and the victims of his villainous machinations. Iago is a demanding role, and Van Rensburg manages to make the character as fascinating as he is detestable: one student went so far as to run to the foot of the stage to applaud him as the actors took a bow at the end.

Ø  Lastly, I think the treatment of the text, especially in terms of pacing, was done well. It is quite possible for a production of a Shakespeare play to run for three hours or longer: too long for an average spectator (never mind a distractible school student) to remain focused. Think Theatre’s Othello managed to make any shortening of the play quite unnoticeable and keep the running time to less than two and a half hours, all while maintaining a steady pace which kept the performance moving forward without losing essential depth or detail. The production therefore encapsulated the elements of the play necessary to a matriculant’s study of it, and it did so without compromising on an engaged, high-quality performance.   

Kirsten:

Ø  Cara Roberts is a fascinatingly human Desdemona alongside the engaging Nhlakanipho Manqele as Othello. I can imagine that it would be difficult to portray Desdemona, a character who is viewed as a spiritual envoy and metonymically comes to represent perfection itself when she is simply a young woman, perhaps still a girl, who is naïve, headstrong and who certainly experiences desire. As such, Desdemonas may be inclined to teeter on the edge of angelic melodrama. Roberts, however, has the fraught, captivating energy necessary to make the character human and believable. This could be one of the reasons the audience reacted to her with such vigorous applause: they could identify with her. Similarly, Manqele is also able to avoid the temptation of portraying Othello as a one-sided, demonic counterpart to Desdemona’s potentially beatific character. Rather, Manqele ensures that Othello is relatable and human in his anguish – thus enabling the audience to retain sympathy for him as a complex character, which is essential in provoking the necessary cathartic response to his violent, jealous madness.

Ø  The set is simple, the stage fairly bare, and little is made of references which might contextualise the play, heightening the sense that the narrative of Othello could take place in any milieu. Furthermore, the actors do not foreground Shakespeare’s English in a way that distances the audience from the characters but rather engage with the dialogue in a naturalistic manner. Hence, the production appears to be focused on the timelessness of the narrative, which is important when most of the members of a South African student audience are approaching the play as second language speakers, which is certainly a significant barrier. As such, it is important to portray the play as a text which while requiring effort is, in essence, accessible.

Ø  The final aspect of Think Theatre’s Othello to which I want to draw attention is the reaction of the audience to the production. About half way through Othello, I realised that I was watching two performances: that of the actors on the stage before me and that of the students engaging with the play. I came to be as fascinated by the one as I was by the other – perhaps because I am no longer just a student myself, but a teacher too. I like to know what makes the minds with which I work tick. Students from various schools, various backgrounds, were on the edge of their seats, clicking their tongues at the devious Iago, gasping in horror at Othello’s self-destruction, cringing at Desdemona’s naïve pursuit of Cassio’s defence in the face of Othello’s increasing suspicion, and quietly covering their mouths as Othello strangled Desdemona in their bed. And when the actors emerged from the wings to bow for the audience, they were met by an uproar of applause, indicating, perhaps, that the relevance of a playwright who has been perceived as outdated, colonial and abstruse may lie in the fact that his work is fundamentally relatable in its attempts to explore, understand and problematise what it means to be human.

After the show, the students from each school headed back to their respective buses in the wintry afternoon sunlight. Many had travelled quite a way to get there, and it was time for the long journey back. We sat down in the now-empty theatre restaurant to reflect on the show over a cup of coffee with Mortimer and her colleague, Margie Coppen – the company’s publicist and booking agent.

As we discussed the logistics of a travelling production such as theirs, the size and scale of their undertaking became increasingly evident. When staged at set venues in Gauteng, for example, both Othello and Hamlet were performed every weekday. In KwaZulu-Natal, the plays were performed in a variety of venues, to a total of more than 22 000 students. The tour is wide-reaching, and wildly differing staging spaces and access to resources come with the territory. The entire crew’s adaptability to their varying environments attests to their practised skill as well as their determination to reach as many learners from as many backgrounds as possible.

This determination seems to be driven by a deep understanding of the necessity of experiencing the plays in performance, especially for students studying Shakespeare’s texts at a high school level in a context where performances (and experiences) of Shakespeare outside of schools are highly localised. Performance is essential to the understanding of dramatic form. Plays can be studied and enjoyed through reading, certainly, but without an awareness of the purpose and character of different forms of literary expression, too much of the richness of a text might be lost. This poses a massive challenge in the South African context: if dramatic texts such as (but not limited to) Shakespeare’s are to be studied effectively, then students must have access not only to static knowledge about such texts, but also to experiences of them as artworks designed for interpretation and immediacy through performance.

Reflecting on Think Theatre’s achievements, two things become clear. Firstly, there are talented, passionate theatre-makers who are able to respond to an essential need in the education of South African learners. Secondly, this need has not been met fully yet: much more support is needed for projects such as Think Theatre, which provide professional, consistent, and mobile productions of plays for school students.