A Maynardville Midsummer Night's Dream

Capetonians are celebrating the return of the Maynardville Open Air Theatre Festival after a three-year hiatus. VR Theatrical’s six-week programme of classical music, ballet, opera and - you guessed it - Shakespeare has brought a venerable arts venue back to life. The main feature, a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, opens in February.

The Festival launched earlier this month with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra performing Mendelssohn’s overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Then it was the turn of Cape Town Opera, with their double-bill of Songs of Shakespeare and Spirituals.

Now the cast of an innovative new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, starring Chi Mhende and Mark Elderkin, takes to the stage. Director Geoff Hyland is well-known to Maynardville audiences, having previously directed Macbeth (2004), Twelfth Night (2006 and 2017), As You Like It (2009) and Richard III (2019).

The festival will close in the first week of March with Cape Town City Ballet’s SummerSnow - a programme of two works “contrasting the heat of summer with performances inspired by sharp, icy winter themes”.*

*A little Shakespeare ZA footnote: do you know about the interesting - and largely forgotten - early history of ballet at Maynardville, which laid the groundwork for the venue’s much-vaunted Shakespearean tradition? Check out Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 34 to learn more in an article by Sheila Chisholm and Temple Hauptflesich.

If you’re in Cape Town in February, support South African theatre and make sure you get to Maynardville!

Tickets are available from Quicket.

Koning Richard III - vertaal deur Deryck Uys

The Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa is proud to support an exciting initiative by the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre at Wits University: the launch of TCC Press and the publication of new translations of Shakespeare’s plays into Afrikaans (soon to be followed by other African languages).

Last year we posted a blog about Deryck Uys, who has achieved - in his retirement - the astonishing feat of translating all of Shakespeare’s work into Afrikaans! Now, the first title in the TCC Press series of Deryck Uys translations has been published: it is Koning Richard III, soon to be followed by Macbeth, Koning Lear and Romeo en Juliet. Copies can be ordered via the TCC Press online store.

The Deryck Uys Afrikaans Shakespeare translations are made possible by the generosity of TCC partners and sponsors, Legacy Underwriting Managers.

Deryck Uys signs a copy of his Koning Richard III, the first in the TCC Press series of Afrikaans Shakespeare translations.

TCC Director Chris Thurman (front left) with Uys and, behind them, Legacy CEO Christo Crafford.

Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 35

Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 35 (2022) will be published in December. We are sharing the editorial to give Shakespeare ZA readers a sneak peek at the contents!

The cover of Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 35 features a production image from Janni Younge’s Hamlet.

Picture credit: Bronwyn Lloyd

South Africa’s theatre makers continue to operate in an embattled sector. It was hard enough before Covid-19. In 2020, the reopening of theatres was almost unimaginable; during the course of 2021, actors and audiences braved the awkward, on-off, makeshift circumstances of a halting return to live theatre. It is tempting to say that 2022 has brought something of a ‘return to normal’ – but that would be both to forget the pre-2020 precarity and to ignore the social, economic and technological shifts that have had what now seems a permanent impact on the performing arts: on artists, spaces, funding, audiences. What this means for Shakespeare in performance in South Africa remains to be seen. It must be noted, however, that there has been very little in the way of ‘new’ Shakespeare on South African stages over the past two years.

A Midsummer Ice Cream

This does not mean that there have been no new Shakespeare productions – merely that they have tended to be viewable on screens rather than stages. The cover of volume 34 (2021) of Shakespeare in Southern Africa gestured toward this with its collage of screenshots from an online Hamlet. Other filmic Shakespearean adventures include the Johannesburg Awakening Minds ensemble’s JAM at the Windybrow series (2021) and its short film A Midsummer Ice Cream (2022).

Shakespeare in Southern Africa 34

JAM at the Windybrow

The cover of the present volume gestures towards new stage prospects: it carries an image of a very different production of Hamlet, created by Janni Younge and featuring life-size puppets. An extract from this production was previewed at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre in March 2022 before it was staged in full for a handful of performances at the National Arts Festival in June. A longer run in 2023 is eagerly anticipated – and hopefully Younge’s Hamlet will be joined by other new, innovative, widely-publicised Shakespeares.

The outline I have just offered overlooks at least one significant Covid-era South African Shakespeare: a production of Macbeth at the Joburg Theatre that benefited from a brief window between Covid waves (and concomitant lockdowns / closures) in April 2021. This multilingual Macbeth was performed by the young cast of the Joburg Theatre’s actor training programme, with Jeremiah Mntonga, Michael Mazibuko and Sarah Roberts as director-facilitators. It is very pleasing, then, that volume 35 opens with an article by Roberts reflecting on the collaborative process through which this production developed, attending to “the interplay of spoken word and non-semantic avian and animal calls” – specifically, the ways in which the cast’s playfulness in generating birdcalls during the rehearsal process “was instrumental in building performers’ confidence in transposition and spontaneous translation” of the Shakespeare text into South African languages.

In a serendipitous coincidence, while Roberts’ article was undergoing the review process, a second article was submitted that also focuses on birds in Macbeth: Anya Heise-von der Lippe’s analysis of avian imagery in Joel Coen’s recent film version. The opportunity to place these articles ‘in conversation’ with one another could not, I felt, be passed up. So it was that we initiated a new format for Shakespeare in Southern Africa, twinning articles and inviting an interlocutor to facilitate a kind of roundtable-in-print. Here I must convey my sincere thanks to Anston Bosman, who engaged extensively with these two articles and whose questions – as you will agree upon reading the “Roundtable: Macbeth and birds, on stage and screen” – elicit clarifying, complicating and gratifying answers from the authors. These are more than just prompts for further discussion; indeed, they may be considered an extension of the usual peer review process (suggesting future possibilities for hybrid ‘open’ and ‘blind’ forms of review).

[Above: images from rehearsals of the Joburg Theatre Macbeth]

The mutually-informing relationship between Shakespearean theatre and film is also a key aspect of Raphael d’Abdon’s article, which follows the Roundtable. Reassessing Carmelo Bene’s “misreadings” of Hamlet and Macbeth, d’Abdon emphasises Bene’s antagonistic response to Western theatre tradition and, in particular, his refining of idiosyncratic conceptual tools – as well as strategies or methods of performance – such as la scrittura di scena (scenic writing) and la macchina attoriale (the actorial machine). Sadly Bene remains relatively unknown outside Italy despite his celebrated oeuvre, so it is fitting that d’Abdon should place the spotlight squarely upon him. Moreover, for Shakespeare scholars, teachers and creative practitioners wishing to explore decolonial practices, d’Abdon suggests that Bene’s work is a stimulating and simpatico point of reference.

In the fourth article in this volume, Peter Titlestad returns us to the cultural, religious, political and material circumstances under which Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived, wrote and performed. Titlestad revisits Shakespeare’s literary-dramatic responses to Philip Sidney, reminding us of how Shakespeare “gave Sidney’s fruitful arguments unexpected expression” even as Sidney “gave Shakespeare fruitful irritation”. Crucially, the article also counters the conventional (mis)representation of the Puritans in scholarly and popular accounts of their connections – for better or for worse – to Shakespeare’s work. It turns out that there are no easy answers to the question, “Who were the Puritans?”

Volume 35 also carries two book reviews: Carel Nolte appraises Antjie Krog’s Afrikaans translation of Tom Lanoye’s Koningin Lear, and Linda Ritchie writes about Robin Malan’s A Sillie Shakspur Quizze. Nolte ponders the various “contributors” to (and the voices in) Krog’s palimpsestic text, recognising their collective challenge to various assumptions about how capitalism ‘works’, as well as about gender roles and linguistic propriety. Ritchie discusses the Quizze as a book that presents itself as edutainment – something for “the lounge” as well as “the classroom” – by embracing its silliness while keeping in mind its potential use to teachers and learners.

I cannot conclude this editorial without issuing my customary acknowledgements and thanks: firstly, to the reviewers and editorial advisers who ensure that Shakespeare in Southern Africa maintains rigorous scholarly standards; secondly, to Carol Leff, the secretary of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, for attending to various practical considerations in pricing, printing and distributing the journal; thirdly, and most especially, to my partner-in-publishing-crime, Liz Gowans, for her expert ministrations as typesetter and designer.

The Hamlet Poems

As regular visitors to Shakespeare ZA will know, on this platform we publish Shakespearean news, reviews, interviews, features, educational resources, digital texts, film material, conference announcements and more.

Every now and then, we also have the opportunity to share with our readers poetry that responds to, or is inspired by, Shakespeare’s plays. This poetic sequence was penned by South African author, academic and arts critic ROBERT GREIG. The poems first appeared in his 2005 collection, Rule of Cadence (UKZN Press, 2005).

THE HAMLET POEMS

AFTER THE BARBARIANS

 

And now, what will become of us without barbarians?

They were a kind of solution.

(“Waiting for the Barbarians” by CP Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven)

 

It seems now

the Norwegians are not barbarians.

They laugh a lot,

are fond of dancing,

of vibrant colours:

unlike us, the Norwegians

are an earthy people

with a sense of community,

of family.

 

For so long

they waited for what was theirs.

Now they are here

they inspect our streets,

admire our shops, our houses –

such things dazzle the Norwegians –

they pick up delicate ornaments

with spatulate fingers, even

master our vowels.

 

And we – the wise at least –

believe we should follow their steps,

praise their rhythm, their harmonies.

 

We resolve to take fruit

to the old in their homes

twice a month, weather permitting,

to not shout at our children,

to learn how to drum.

 

Our new rulers have taught us

to celebrate Life.

 

As for those allegedly missing

and rumours of screams from cellars

it is true

we were far more discreet.

The Norwegians will learn, too, from us.

 

If we dress like them,

shout their slogans, adopt their dancing,

there will soon be no Norwegians

and none of us, just one nation

world without end.

THE NORWEGIAN PLOT

 

If you believe in gods and ghosts;

if you hope for a calm afterlife

and expect to die

soothed by the susurrus of sea

at castle walls

asleep in an orchard

breathing appleblossom;

if you believe in remaking the world

and happy endings

you're for us.

 

All it took

was an actor in old-time armour

mooing by moonlight;

a wicked stepfather;

an intellectual

seduced by action;

a prince who believed in happy endings:

theatre.

OPHELIA

 

Love was all that mattered:

lemony days in willow light,

the quaint cemetery toured

by moonlight and talk –

so much talk – of relationships.

Love, prayer and obedience would do,

and later, children.

 

Though it might take years,

the exemplary private life

would redeem the body politic.

 

The way, perhaps, a pill

quiets the turbulent mind or

more to the point, the rope

judiciously used

will still a midnight street.

OSRIC

 

Now he bears swords,

a serviceable man

found near the powerful,

smelling blood.

 

Before, life was pretty boys studying drama,

posters of Nureyev in the bathroom,

first nights at the Coward revival

(a moue for Fugard).

 

When everything was black and white

one could always invent,

ornament.

 

Now it's time to be relevant –

wearing dark clothes,

applauding the style

of an AK-47.

THE TESTAMENT OF POLONIUS

 

I ordered the castle walls

to be shrouded.

The climate was cruel.

Cells sweated silver and green.

You could smell

the waves trying to enter.

Outside, salt grained the air.

 

No edifice can last:

corrosion without, erosion within:

we try to preserve what we can,

to comfort, to muffle echoes.

 

My job was to mirror: smile

when they smiled, to cleave a brow

if they frowned, making no fuss,

to transmit intelligence, scrupulous

in using the passive tense.

 

I secured what was theirs.

Power, I learned, is doing nothing,

is lost when used.

They will use it, they will lose it.

THE SUPPORTERS OF CLAUDIUS

 

No-one ever actually voted for Claudius.

In the bad times

We were dissidents all

protecting the flame of freedom

from others. We were such secret rebels

no-one knew, not even Claudius.

 

Even the secret police –

they were really working from within

to destroy the system. To maintain their cover

they drowned the odd prisoner

taught others to leap and fly from battlements,

but these were criminals

and rapists, not to be missed.

Others, mainly the little men, took orders

Had little sense of the larger picture.

They cheer parades,

Agree with the politicians:

These must have been

The bad old days.

THE MERCHANTS PETITION FORTIBRAS

 

He will not see them, having other things to do.

Instead he sends Horatio:

his task is to hear petitions

from those who now

have so much to say.

 

Horatio learns of their loyalty,

In a sermon on the virtue of trade,

And veiled pleas for concessions.

 

He has heard it before, knows them,

the faces of those who vied

for favours of Claudius, delivered

gems to Gertrude, paid

for the hunting weekend in the wild, for carousing

at fires, who secured contracts for jails,

supplying maggots for detainees in food.

 

He thanks them for offers not made

he reports to Fortinbras:

“They’re shit-scared of new taxes,

of losing their bushveld villas,

being asked to explain.

For the sake of the economy . . .

We might reassure them?”

 

But Fortinbras, planning another campaign,

says nothing, having factored in

certain yields of uncertainty.

FORTINBRAS’S NOTES FOR A THREE-HOUR SPEECH

 

Our world is all that is the case:

we have no use for illusions:

there must be no theatre. When axes

fell the cherry trees, the previously cold

will be warmed; ghosts are silent.

 

As for mummers and all their crew

they will advance teaching

cadres of ruling substructures

to deploy the appropriate lines

from our Oslo bard, Shakespeare.

 

In addressing theatre, funerals follow –

those subversive rallies of the bad old days.

Now mourning is past. We may laud

the dead and the dying as pavestones

to our glorious dawning.

 

I commend to our orators the Romantics

whose cadences lull the populace,

who knew this world was a sign

only of immanent termination.

History is marble that bloodstains can’t mar.

 

Which brings me to Hamlet, a thinker.

Our age requires waste engineers.

We may recall his devotion to sparrows,

and, not least, love of the military drum:

the rest lies and must be silenced.

 

Since it transcends troubling thought

Music must rule our land.

You should con the caper, leaping

at Sunday rallies; and I benign will be seen

with a smile and discreet foot-tapping.

 

We will invent entrancing tribal traditions

For our popular singers to use

to teach the adroit unrolling of condoms,

for corporate choirs to hymn the collective good.

Even rapists will dance – at the tug of a noose.

 

Cadence, not words, will rule and be all.

HAMLET WATCHES

 

The assignation in Wittenberg:

I waited and waited long after our time.

Enter Fortinbras, bisecting the square.

Military boots compact the snow,

Haloed by starving sparrows.

Straight from Elsinore.

 

I kept my bargain.

Late again by design, with fanfare

He scooped up the crown

Lost no blood:

Tactician, strategist, victor.

 

I gape into space

Join the stars.

All around is bustle.

So many heroes of the struggle

Cleaning blood,

Hoisting bodies,

Buffing memory,

Inventing history,

Designs for the future.

Ruling.

 

They erect a statue –

A man reading a book, disengaged

Gaze averted. The intellectual.

They rename a small town

Where you can buy curios.

 

I have become the formal language of oratory –

Providence of sparrows cast down

In the tracks of history,

Warnings about paralysis of thinking,

the madness of those who see ghosts

To chasten the sceptical,

Quell the resistive.

 

I am a play that bores

Children who’d rather play rugby.

Like the face on a coin fingered by commerce

Tossed into ocean, I blur and vanish.

 

I kept my bargain

My dying choice alighted on Fortinbras:

A man of action who waited, let others act

But did nothing:

Still amid a flurry of sparrows.

 

After ideals

Come principles

Come decisions

Come policies

Come programmes and plans

Come well-paid carpetbaggers.

 

The gusty corridors of Elsinore privatised now

commemorate heroes against Claudius

With a popular bar called Ophelia’s

Heroes bulging in suits

Carousing

 

I observe from the battlements.

Baked Shakespeare?

Sir Toby Belch:

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

(Twelfth Night, 2.3,97-98)

In 2021, as South African theatre stepped tentatively (or perhaps staggered) out of the era of Covid-19 lockdowns, a group of young actors came up with a bold idea to bring audiences back.

Baked Shakespeare was launched with a production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Olympia Cafe in Kalk Bay. The famous Cape Town eatery provided baguettes for an audience participation gimmick, but that’s not the kind of baking to which the ensemble’s playful title refers. Instead, the premise is that some of the actors onstage will get “baked” - stoned, high, loaded - during the course of the performance.

Baked Shakespeare (photo: Reuben Goldblum / Die Matie)

This year, Baked Shakespeare is back with a production of Twelfth Night. Having completed short runs in Cape Town and Stellenbosch, the show now moves to Johannesburg for a once-off performance at The Baked Market in Troyeville.

Billed as “a platform for celebrating diversity and sub-cultures”, this event will take place every Saturday in October at Troyeville House (21-23 Clarence Street). Tickets are available via Quicket.