Our day started with a mini-workshop with Dr. Rohr to help us process our feelings about our experiences thus far and to help orient our perspectives towards theatre and the arts, our theme for the day. In small groups we were assigned to creatively respond to the prompt, “Having just arrived in South Africa…”. Each group then performed their response. Some performances were hilarious, like Casey and Allaire demonstrating the way a mother baboon carries her baby across the road (a common sight in South Africa), or Kory and Katherine demonstrating the difficulties many of us have faced learning to barter for goods for the first time. Others were more introspective or critical of the new things we were being exposed to. Many talked about the disparity that exists between the rich and the poor here, and in most cases between black and white. For me, having just arrived in South Africa, I have been completely captivated by the gorgeous scenery and once in a lifetime sights, but I am quickly becoming tired of feeling like a tourist here. I am looking forward to our visits to the townships and our work immersion days, where perhaps the façade of a perfect and wealthy integrated society will disappear, exposing us to the less-than-perfect daily life of many who are still suffering, results of apartheid that we know exists.
After our session with Dr. Rohr, Dr. Charlyn Dyers came to speak to our class. Dr. Dyers is an actress and a professor of linguistics at the University of the Western Cape. During apartheid, blacks could not sit in the same theatres or see the same plays as whites, and this gave rise to a signature South African dramatic tradition called resistance theatre. Dr. Dyers told us about her role in resistance theatre, which makes injustices and a common struggle known to the masses. In the 1970’s, she played a leading role in the play “Kanaa” by Adam Small, the most famous play written in Afrikaans. She gave us a brief synopsis of the play, which dealt with themes such as crime, race, rape, murder and poverty- all issues, of course, caused by the racist apartheid regime of the time. The play is still wildly popular today, nearly twenty years after apartheid ended, and we discussed reasons why this might be so. Many in our class believe that these issues of justice and suffering and inequality are still present in the country today. People will remain loyal to a story as long as it is relevant to their lives.
We learned from Dr. Dyers that after the fall of apartheid in the ‘90’s, theatre in South Africa moved became more satirical and funny. Theatrical satire became a popular way to criticize the African National Congress (ANC) in the beginning years of its leadership after Nelson Mandela was elected president. The ANC was prone to corruption, both on the national and local level. South Africa has one of the highest AIDS rates in the world, yet Thabo Mbeki, the country’s president until 2009, has been publicly quoted many times doubting the causation of AIDS from HIV. While we’ve been here, South Africa has announced its matriculation results- 67%. This has been headline news, and greeted with a lot of excitement and joy. I think it’s safe to say, however, that that number is way too low to be remotely acceptable.
Our conversation on satirical commentary on South Africa’s sub-par education system continued in the evening when we saw the show “Joe Barber”. Unbeknownst to us, the play was approximately 95% in Afrikaans, which of course we couldn’t understand. As far as I could tell, the play was about two men running a barber shop in a township near Cape Town, filled with lots of jokes and sarcasm, especially when it came to the local high schools in the different townships. We only stayed for the first half of the play, leaving after intermission, and many in our group were frustrated that the play was not in English. Even though I could not understand most of the words being spoken by the actors, personally I really enjoyed the play and wished we could have stayed longer. In learning about and trying to understand a new culture, I am learning that there are universal ways we all communicate with each other, ways that span verbal language. I could understand many of the jokes in the play, and our whole class was laughing along with the Afrikaans speaking audience.
I have never considered myself a very “artsy” person or one with a vested interest in the theatre. After our experiences in South Africa, however, I feel I am being exposed to the worth of the dramatic arts from a new perspective. Theatre is a way for people to express their life, their joys and their frustration so that other people who are experiencing the same things can share. Theatre is a way to understand the culture of the audience. Theatre is something people of all languages and all perspectives can (and should) appreciate.