Life Esidimeni stage production brings darkness to light

OWN CORRESPONDENT

What inspired you to do this piece? My friend and colleague, Sylvaine Strike, one of South Africa’s finest directors, asked me to join her in the creation of what she had already named, Eclipsed. I said yes instantly. First, we had been wanting to work together for a while, and second, I’m always attracted to work that speaks to the human condition.

Describe the Market Theatre Laboratory and the work you do there. My only previous experience with laboratory was when I co-produced Eve Ensler’s Emotional Creature in South Africa.

This is the first time I have worked with the students who study theatre training there, and I’m beyond impressed with the way the lab runs. It’s intensive theatre training with a deep respect for the craft.

How did the students feel about doing this? They were apprehensive when we presented them with the reading pack which formed the research of the play. I remember one student saying to me, “This is very dark.” I answered, “It will be up to you to find the light.”

What did your students want to say to the audience through this work? The beauty of creating work in a lab setting with students is that you don’t have to cater to a specific audience. You create to tell the story as best as you can. From day one of rehearsal, I used a scripting technique which I call “tracking”. It’s like journaling. One or two sentences in response to a question or thought or feeling. This often becomes a part of the script, which gives the actors their voice within the text, capturing an authentic response to the work.

In your press release, you ask the question: has unaccountability become our new culture? What do you and your students believe? Yes, absolutely. Aside from nobody being criminally charged for the massive negligence – or as one of the students coined it, “strategic mass murder” – the response from government during the 44 days of arbitration hearings was, and I quote, “It was an instruction from above … it is the actions of the collective.”

What was the response from the audience? Audiences have been very moved and in some ways shattered after witnessing Eclipsed. A common response from young and old has been that the work has to be seen at schools and in theatres across the country. The conversation needs to keep going.

What did you and your students learn from this process? Some of the students were 15 years old when Life Esidemeni happened, so they were unaware of the event. Aside from gaining knowledge and dealing with the complexity of the tragedy, I learnt that irrespective of age, our response to the state of our country is the same or similar – we love it, and we need things to change. We need people to be held accountable so the cycle of negligence is broken. To quote one of my favourite lines in the play, “Everyone involved forms a piece in the puzzle in their own way. From the government officials, to the NGOs [non-governmental organisations], to the men and women who drove the trucks.” This speaks to all those involved being held accountable top to bottom! And for most of the cast, accountability means imprisonment.