The Interview Series #4: Guy de Lancey on Performing Shakespeare in South Africa

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

Guy de Lancey

South African theatre maker

Can you tell us a bit about your interest in Shakespeare and what prompts it?

I think Shakespeare is contemporary performance. The notion that it is old English, or the way it is advocated for as ‘heightened speech’, is misleading. The point is: Shakespearean English is a young language. Approached with that in mind, staging Shakespeare becomes a fascinating contemporary experience. Being a foreigner in one’s own language is the starting point of discovery. Shakespeare for me is very much about discovery. It is layered thought and articulation about human behaviour that transcends a particular time and place, yet transmits something of that time and place, as any time, or any place.

There are many ready-made, pre-packaged notions of what Shakespeare is, or ought to be, particularly in English, or theatre academia, and the Anglo world of Shakespeare performance, even to the point of ‘innovation’ in Shakespeare performance looking and smelling like an ineffectual ‘rebranding of the same old thing’ – the received Shakespearean canon – that is as manufactured as any attempt to dress it up on the surface as contemporaneous. Strained stylistic augmentations have more to do with reheated ‘directorial vision’ than discovery or illumination. Shakespeare himself makes a mockery of all this. When you get past all the pretension about the canon, heightened speech, old English, fashionable or unfashionable critical reverence for the text, you see a living, breathing thing.

---

Shakespeare ... is layered thought and articulation about human behaviour that transcends a particular time and place, yet transmits something of that time and place, as any time, or any place.

---

A Midsummer Night's Dream, staged by The Mechanicals in 2011. Photo credit: Jesse Kramer.

You have produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2011) and King Lear (2012) with your theatre group, The Mechanicals. Were those attempts from your side to do it differently, to respond to other productions you’d seen and been involved in?

Yes. Other productions were being done, on rote, by the same people with the same mediocre interpretive insights – either drama department academics or old hacks who had tenure in a system of patronage that had suffocated itself of any real inspiration into what could be done with Shakespeare. That hasn’t changed – other than they have truly ruined it for any intelligible paths of discovery from those who may have the proclivity for real risk in Shakespeare. Quite understandably so. Be that as it may, we will probably now enter a phase of ridiculously timid stylistic political correctness when it comes to the appointing of practitioners in the allocating of resources for Shakespeare staging, particularly at Maynardville, which to date is the largest resource. Doing Shakespeare ‘differently’ still seems to be configured either as a conceptual surface jig with the material or as being ‘representative’ in stupid costumes in interpreting the work. Diversity, for the sake for appeasement. Rather than real Difference. Risk.

The Shakespeare I had been involved in prior to attempting an alternative operated as idiotic summer school boot-camps, with questionable ‘drama school' techniques of interpretation, voice training, and a total lack of critical engagement with the text toward uncovering more than than the obvious, one-dimensional, cardboard cut-outs of character and motivation.  A sort of off-the-peg, second-hand, watered down version of new historicism was pedalled. The insights seemed to come from SparkNotes, or Shakespeare for Dummies.

There is an article in the Daily Maverick by Marianne Thamm (link) in which she quotes Tom Lanoye, who says an interesting thing: that Anglo countries should be banned from doing Shakespeare for twenty years so that they can rediscover what it is. I kind of get that – I think banning it is a bit much – but yes.

What were the principles that informed the staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear?

The first ‘principle’, if one can call it that, was to be aware that most of what we had been taught or seen in Shakespeare performance was ‘received’, that is, passed down from decades of Shakespeare referenced to the ‘cosmopolitan centre’. Even British Shakespeare now seems to ‘receive’ its own tradition of Shakespeare performance. The idea was to immediately look for opportunities to invert these received ideas, as a rehearsal tool, as an interpretative strategy, and an attempt to uncover character and motivation from an angle other than the obvious, other than the historical weight of stock references these characters carry. A variety of counterintuitive responses were sought to see what that might uncover for performance and insight into the deeper layers within the text – the text being a blue-print for the performance, not a canonical treatise. It was about breaking the scar tissue down of those received ideas, to get people to mean what they say: to speak to each other, and to react honestly to what happens.  

The attitude that Shakespeare could possibly have been one of the earliest ‘screenwriters’ was adopted. So ‘Exeunt’ became ‘cut’, and ‘contemporary time’ itself, not historical time, played an important part in interpreting rhythm, character, motivation, subtext, context, style, design, and use of language.   

---

It was about breaking the scar tissue down of those received ideas, to get people to mean what they say: to speak to each other, and to react honestly to what happens.

---

So we found the right actors, we found the right rehearsal techniques to find the characters, and from that we could see moves and styles develop. The group of people involved in The Mechanicals were willing to put their time and exploration into something that grew organically. I think a director is just an immune system – you’re not an authority figure. With King Lear, our Edgar ended up strangling the fool. He said, ‘I want to strangle the fool’, and I said, ‘why do you want to do that?’, and he said, ‘because I want his clothes’. It was an actor choice, and he justified it in a way that was interesting, so that’s how we did it.

King Lear, 2012. Photo credit: Guy de Lancey.

---

I think a director is just an immune system – you're not an authority figure.

---

How have you experienced the engagement of South African audiences with Shakespeare, to your own productions of Shakespeare?

The audiences that engaged with our productions of Shakespeare were very positive and affirming in stating that they had never seen Shakespeare interpreted in that way. Whatever that meant. They were also highly encouraging in requesting to see more of it in the same vein. 

However, without the resources to continue doing so, it became increasingly difficult. The resources for Shakespeare production, particularly in Cape Town, kept going to the same people doing the same thing. That has not changed with the reshuffling of executive management that has stewardship of those resources, other than an attempt to window dress a form of politically correct ‘representative’ mediocrity in Shakespeare interpretation for the stage.

Apart from quite a broad range of appreciation from theatre goers, our own productions were basically ignored by the theatre establishments, and some of the best Shakespeare performances I have seen from actors, delivered through their own initiative and commitment to the idea of inverting everything they had been ‘taught’, are ignored by the discerning awards system in Cape Town. So a mixture of engaged appreciation, and insecure threat would characterize audience engagement to the work done.   

If you were to think about plays you’d want to do in future, which ones appeal to you?

I could just latch on to any one of them. I’ve realised now you can dive into any one of them, and you will find something - something will be uncovered from the reading, the experience of the actors. I think we deserve a Hamlet that hasn’t been done in a certain way before.

Thinking about the future –  ideally – what would Shakespeare’s place be in the South African performance landscape?

I am not sure of Shakespeare in the South African performance landscape. The big thing now is decolonisation, and you’ve got to get past that first before you get to how you’re going to put it in place. Shakespeare should be demythologized, as should most theatre training, because in most cases those doing the ‘educating’ are faking it and have no idea what they are talking about.

---

Shakespeare should be demythologized, as should most theatre training.

---

I have witnessed school children come alive to Shakespeare when they discover that speaking Shakespeare is not unlike doing rap, something close to their experience and understanding in how language can function poetically and contemporaneously at the same time. Perhaps it’s as simple as that. Get it out of the clutches of comfortable, salaried drama school academics, and into the schools as plastic material that can be shaped by one's own hand without the ‘guidance’ of ‘those in the know’.

Do you have a personal favourite moment or piece of dialogue in Shakespeare?

The first line of Hamlet:

‘Who’s there?’

The Interview Series #3: Clara Vaughan on The Market Laboratory, UShakes and Shakespeare in South Africa

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

Could you tell us a bit about The Market Theatre Laboratory and your role there?

I am the head of The Market Theatre Laboratory. I would say that it is an incubator space – in a lot of ways. Its primary aim is to support and enable emerging artists to make professional careers in the performing arts. So, one of the main elements of The Market Lab is a theatre and performance school. We offer full-time and part-time courses for young people, usually from marginalised backgrounds, to get really high-quality, practical training to become actors, theatre-makers, directors, writers, story-tellers. We also have a theatre that programmes a particular kind of work, in that it focuses on supporting the emergence of exciting, innovative, and new interdisciplinary ways of working. Our programmes are also quite process orientated; we look at how we make theatre, and not just a good product … We like to experiment and push the boundaries a bit.

It sounds like The Market Laboratory is devoted to the development of the arts particularly in the South African context.

Yes, and I think who tells stories about a particular space and place at a particular time is a political question, and so it also allows voices to be heard that don’t have access to a university space … So it is also about the role of artists in shaping South Africa’s narrative – who is telling that story?

Does The Market Laboratory involve Shakespeare in its syllabus and, if so, in what way?

We do teach Shakespeare, and we do sometimes do Shakespeare productions. But I think the key thing we focus on is adaptation … Shakespeare adapted a lot of his story lines from other, older stories, and I think it’s really important to keep that spirit alive. Every Shakespeare adaptation that we have ever explored has been very much about locating it in a South African context and looking at how it can comment on and become meaningful in that context, rather than recreating a nostalgic period piece. The wonderful thing about Shakespeare is that because his language is so strong, it can be pushed and stretched in so many directions, and interpreted in so many ways without it losing its power. And I suppose I am interested in working with Shakespeare in a contemporary context … to see how far it can stretch, and be pushed, and become current, although I am also a huge fan of not losing the language. So, I have never done a production that contemporises the language, because part of what is special about Shakespeare is that his language is … poetry, so to keep the poetry, but create a new context, is meaningful, I think.

Is that what you did with your production of UShakes in Johannesburg last year? Could you tell us a bit more about that?

UShakes was the product of selecting scenes and monologues from ten Shakespeare plays and knitting them together to create an entirely new narrative. So, one character in UShakes might be composed of excerpts from Ophelia in Hamlet, Rosalind in As You Like It, and Desdemona in Othello, for example. But it’s telling a new, South African story. So that was the idea that we explored in that production, and we looked particularly at the texts that we felt resonated with and spoke to young people in the South African context. So, there was no Antony and Cleopatra or King Lear … but rather plays in which the youth are central characters, and from which we could draw effective tropes such as the girl dressing as a boy and going on an adventure in the world … It was really interesting to find that journey that thematically involved young people being in love and wondering what real love actually is. We also drew on Hamlet’s relationship with his mother – especially in the closet scene – as well as Ophelia’s relationship with her father to explore how young people negotiate their relationships with their parents … Shakespeare often had women dressing as men to escape the risks of being a woman, and so we also had a female character in the play make that choice because women are still very much at risk in public spaces. Particularly South African realities were also prominent … For example, we placed the Henry V speech: ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…’ into the mouths of miners speaking about going under the ground … We referenced Marikana, as well as student protests – in fact, we had a monologue from Coriolanus delivered by a young woman who represented the head of the SRC of a university during the Fees Must Fall movement. The focus was on finding those universal human relationships and experiences Shakespeare depicts so well and on drawing them out into our context to contribute to and create a narrative of these young people falling in love and dealing with their parents in a political landscape of Fees Must Fall, and Marikana.

Have you done any other Shakespeare-related productions since you have been at The Market Lab?

We have done two other Shakespearean productions since I have been there – both of them were directed by Dorothy Ann Gould, and they were both adaptations. The first one was called iOphelia, which looked at Ophelia’s story within Hamlet, as opposed to Ophelia in the service of Hamlet’s tragedy. Her story itself is very tragic, and again, for me, what that production spoke to in a South African context was male control over women’s bodies … And then we also did a very fun adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, called Bottom’s Dream, which was based on the scenes of the players as representing a South African community theatre group.

Do you have any upcoming engagements with Shakespeare?

Not at the moment; however, we are looking at some possibilities … I would love to do uShakes again. We performed it at the Sanaa Africa Festival at St Stithians last year, and the Head of Drama did comment that she thought it would be a really lovely way to introduce Grade 9s to Shakespeare because it is a contemporary interpretation. There are South African characters who are jamming in this poetry, but because of the context, the meaning is clear, which is an accessible and relatable way of approaching Shakespeare. So, I would love to do that but we have no concrete plans at the moment.

Finally, do you have any final comments on Shakespeare that you would like to share with our readers?

From a personal perspective, working with Shakespeare was one of my most formative experiences in terms of understanding performance. What he allows actors to do, in terms of the powerful poetry of his work, is liberating because his words are so open to multiple kinds of performance, and interpretation. And that is why I am passionate about having it at The Market Lab, because for me, personally, it was a real door opening into a new understanding of how to approach performance.

The Interview Series #2: Sean Redpath on Umoya Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare in South Africa, and Macbeth

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

Marguerite de Waal recently met with the director of Umoya Shakespeare Company, Sean Redpath, to talk about the theatre group and its vision for staging Shakespeare in South Africa, as well as its upcoming production of Macbeth (September – October 2017).

Can you tell us a bit more about Umoya Shakespeare Company?

The name firstly – Umoya – I chose because it’s a Zulu word which means ‘spirit’ or breath – ‘breath of life’ – and that I chose specifically because it embodies what the company is about for me, and that is bringing life, that spirit of life. Shakespeare – it’s on the page, but as actors, we have to make that a living experience. That’s what it is about for me, a company that is able to turn Shakespearean texts into dynamic, real experiences for people to watch. So yes, you’ve got the verse, you’ve got all these poetic devices, but for the person watching it, it has to be a drama. You have to have the conflicts, that fire, that passion, all of those elements which are so deeply present in his works … to me it’s all about capturing that on stage, that’s why I chose the name Umoya. What I’m also looking at is the return to the idea of the repertoire theatre – the Royal Shakespeare Company is that, in the sense that they will have a production which is showing at the moment, while the actors are rehearsing for the next production, and then the shows are rotated, according to their performance schedule. Also, you’ve got actors being trained from within the company, which is something we don’t have in South Africa. We have actors who join a production for the duration of the show, rehearsing for a few weeks, and then the show will run for perhaps 4 weeks, and then that’s it. With each new show a new cast is put together, and although there are actors who carry over into subsequent productions, there isn’t a progression from one show to the next in terms of the training of the actor, and to me that’s essential, especially to creating the standard of performance needed to play Shakespeare. The idea is that with each production you take it up and up a level, and that’s what the repertoire companies have to offer: this ability to take an actor through that process, as well as give them the opportunity to work opposite more experienced professional actors.

So the idea is the education of other actors in a similar style, similar vein?

Yes. So what we have now is the university model, which never used to be the way actors trained. Before the days of actors studying acting at universities, actors trained in repertoire theatre companies, so you said, “I want to be an actor,” and they said, “Well we’ll let you join the company, we’ll train you as you go, and we’ll give you some small part … see how you do.” That’s how you learned your trade – from other actors, from people who are doing it all the time. The danger with learning acting in an academic environment is that it can so easily become theoretical or simply book knowledge. The idea for me is to go back to the old model of training actors on the job. This is not to say that I don’t see value in training academies. I would very much like to, at some point, establish a training academy. However, this would be tied with the company, in the same way that a ballet company and their trainee and aspirant dancers are tied together, and very often they will bring those trainee dancers into the performances. For me that’s the most important thing, that the younger actors need to be working constantly alongside the master actors, if you want to call them that.

---

I see it as an actor’s script, and I think it should always be understood as such whenever one approaches it, whether you are approaching it as an English student or as an actor.

---

Then it becomes a very direct learning experience.

Exactly, from the master to the apprentice. There are simply too many grey areas these days. Too many theories. It’s got to be a lot more practical, you know, especially with Shakespeare. I don’t read Shakespeare in my head, I read it out loud, because that’s the only way it works. You’ve got to say it to be able to get it, to understand its rhythms. So whenever I’m reading a play at home I read it out loud. Ultimately, you want to see it performed. I guess you can – you can study it as a piece of literature, you can – but I see it as an actor’s script, and I think it should always be understood as such whenever one approaches it, whether you are approaching it as an English student or as an actor.

Breathing life into Shakespeare, then, is about performing it and performing it well?

Yes. And understanding how to do that. You know, you’ve got the iambic pentameter – this underlying pulse … in those passionate moments, Shakespeare often switches to iambic pentameter, and for the actor that’s a wonderful tool, because it drives the emotion. That itself is not enough, because you have these breaks in the rhythm, the caesuras. There’s got to be a lot of understanding about that, an understanding of the antithesis too. I do also bring in elements of acting technique: you see, firstly there’s dealing with the text, how to work with it. Then there’s also examining the conflicts, what conflicts are going on, what’s happening with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the power struggles between the two of them – it’s about looking at those conflicts and bringing them up to the surface. It’s essentially having an eye on the text while simultaneously looking at what’s going on behind the text.  

Why Shakespeare?

Because nothing else grabs me as much as he does. I trained in various aspects of the performing arts – acting, dance, singing – and when I went over to London shortly after finishing my training, my focus was actually on musical theatre, but soon found I didn’t quite fit with musical theatre. I remember walking past a tube station and seeing a poster advertising workshops run by an actress named Barbara Kinghorn, who had worked for some years with the RSC, and I remember thinking, “I want to do that.” So I gleaned what I could from the various workshops I attended in London, and it just kept growing within me, and as I went on I thought, “Why can’t we do this in South Africa?” I just kept working on the material myself, and I thought, “I want to do this. I want to work with this." Why Shakespeare? Because there’s a tremendous depth in it for me. He touches on issues that are universal – you’ve got people who are in love, jealous, who are passionate, and ambitious, like Macbeth. Who can’t relate to ambition? Who can’t relate to love, or unrequited love? You know, all these various themes that play out – they are universal and the particular way that he has worked them has stood the test of time with people around the world in English, and not only in English – there have been translations into many other languages. So he’s definitely onto something, and it got to a point for me that I thought, "Well, if I don’t do anything else except this, I’ll be fine."

What is your experience of South African audiences, their reaction to and engagement with performed Shakespeare?

That’s a very good question, and it’s a difficult one to answer. We haven’t been exposed to it an awful lot on the one hand, and the exposure that people have had to it … very often we have productions where people are doing the best they can with what they know, and I think very often that just doesn’t result in something that is enough to engage the audiences and to excite them and to make them go, “Wow, I love Shakespeare. I want to go watch another one.” We often make excuses that “oh, the audiences don’t like Shakespeare. They’re not interested in Shakespeare. They’ll find it boring. The audiences won’t get it. They’re not intelligent enough." I don’t buy that at all. I think it’s our job as producers, directors, and creatives to do it in such a way it that makes people say “wow!” In a small way that’s what I’m trying to do, to establish a standard and quality of performance. So that’s the challenge and that’s what I’m working towards, but I do think that if it is done well, the audiences will come.

What made you decide to perform Macbeth specifically?

I didn’t – it chose me in a sense. I was working on some of the scenes that we were looking at with a couple of actors, just filming some of the scenes, then it came to a point where I needed to choose something to do as a first production, and there were a couple of factors that played into choosing Macbeth: the size of the cast – I was able to cut it down to just four of us doing it, which I was able to do by keeping Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo and Macduff, and the main characters in the story arc in terms of Macbeth’s journey. Also, for me it’s a very accessible story … you know we live in a culture that is very ambitious in a sense that we’re driven to achieve, to be achievers. It plays into that, as well as gender roles – you know, who’s the “man” in this relationship, here – and how Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth from thinking that a real man wouldn’t kill Duncan – he’s a noble, virtuous king – to thinking that a real man would kill him. Also, the action is very quick in Macbeth. From the time they decide to kill Duncan, there are a few scenes and then they’ve done it and then the remainder of the play takes us with him on his journey of self destruction, and I think you can easily cut out a lot of the background action … on many levels, it seemed like a good choice.

It is a truism that every engagement with Shakespeare has the potential to uncover some new element or layer of meaning. Were there any surprises or lessons or moments of insight in your preparation for this production?

You find those things in the playing it. There are places where you think, “Oh, when I come to that line, I’ll approach it like this”, and then one day you’ll be doing it and it’ll come out a different way and you’ll go, “Oh, that’s what it means” – you discover those things in the moment of doing them. Take for example when Lady Macbeth, after hearing that Duncan is coming to visit, basically says to Macbeth, “You just leave it all to me. I’ll go and sort it out”, and Macbeth’s line is, “We will speak further”. Now that can just mean, “We will speak further”, but there’s so much more behind it. Depending on where the stress falls on the line there, it tells you very much about how he’s reacting to her. One day you’ll suddenly flip the line and you’ll say it in a different way, and you’ll realise that that changes the relationship with Lady Macbeth. When Macbeth says, “If it were done when 'tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly” – that one line, the amount of times I went over that one line … so, yeah, it happens all the time, more often than I can point out.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Top: Sean Redpath and Sarah Richard. Bottom from left: Guy Trask and Miles Petzer.  

You are playing Macbeth – could you tell us a little bit more about the rest of the cast, their roles, and your dynamic?

So there’s Sarah Richard, who is playing Lady Macbeth. Miles Petzer plays about five different characters: he plays Duncan, Macduff, most of the servant roles and one of the witches as well. We’ve got two witches who somehow become three – there’s an interesting bit of physical play that we use to do that. Then we’ve got Guy Trask, who is the youngest of the performers, who plays Banquo, and the doctor who comes in at the end. Although all of the actors have worked with Shakespeare before, there’s still been a lot of training in the rehearsals where I have endeavoured to pass on whatever knowledge I have gained. It’s been a challenging rehearsal process, with large gaps in between rehearsals and actors having other jobs, but yeah, I’ve worked a lot on getting everyone understanding how the characters fit together, what their relationships are with each other, and what conflicts are going on between them in the various scenes.

Do you have a personal favourite moment or piece of dialogue from the text?

I think the one just before Macbeth determines to kill Macduff’s family, and Macbeth builds himself up into this rage. He is a person who continually builds himself up, even as everything keeps falling away before him. Prophecy after prophecy comes true to show him that he’s not going to be king forever.

"Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits. / The flighty purpose never is o'ertook / Unless the deed go with it.  From this moment / The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand. And even now, / To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done …"

The most challenging one is of course the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech, because there are so many ways of doing it … we’ll have to see what happens on the particular night.

Umoya Shakespeare Company’s production of Macbeth will be showing at:

·       POPArt Theatre, Maboneng Precinct, Johannesburg, from 5-8 October.

        5-7 October at 8pm.

        8 October at 3:30pm.

       Tickets are R100 at the door, R80 if booked in advance.

       Bookings: www.popartcentre.co.za.

·       RedFest and Redhill School, 20 Summit Road, Morningside, Sandton, Johannesburg, 23-24 September.

       23 September at 3:30pm.

      24 September at 5:00pm.

     Bookings: www.webtickets.co.za.

There will also be special schools performances at POPArt from 5-7 October at 10am or 12:30pm.

R80, or R195 with lunch and neighbourhood tour. Email Nikki at info.popartjhb@gmail.com for more information.

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.

---

In Memoriam: Priscilla Hall

Priscilla Hall of Grahamstown

1939 – 2017

Priscilla Hall, who has died aged 78 in the city where she lived her entire adult life, was a wise, vivid and humane presence who will be sorely missed by the many, many who loved her. Her combination of civic commitment and irrepressible enthusiasm made her a dynamic contributor to the social, political and cultural spheres of this town – including the Shakespeare Society.

From the days of its founding by their close friend and colleague Guy Butler, Priscilla and her husband Ron were leading spirits in the Shakespeare Society. Together with a few friends they also founded the Shakespeare Reading Group, an off-shoot whose independence and informal character Priscilla jealously guarded. She herself always read her roles with wisdom and care, and she had high expectations of her fellow cast members, whom she firmly urged to rehearse their parts!

Priscilla had a genius for the incisive word, the telling protest, the creative response. She was also a person of warmth and great empathy, but above all moral honesty and courage. These are not all qualities required in the Shakespeare Society, but as a reader, writer and life-long student, Priscilla would have been the first to say that – to the extent that she would acknowledge these qualities in herself – her relationship with Shakespeare deepened them within her. Her life-long marriage to a truly sensitive Shakespeare scholar also did its bit!

Priscilla was an effervescent combination of the delightful Rosalind, the irreverent Fallstaff and the searingly intelligent Hamlet – a wonderful presence to be in.

LYNETTE PATERSON

Chair: SSoSA Grahamstown