January Conference 1999
THEATRE
: ANCIENT & MODERN
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Ancient
Greek Drama in the New South Africa [*]
Margaret
R. Mezzabotta
University of Cape Town, South Africa
The first South African
election based on a full franchise took place in April, 1994,
followed by a second election in June, 1999. In this five-year
period, concerted efforts have been made to redress the imbalances
resulting from more than four decades of White minority rule.
The process of taking steps to overcome the legacy of apartheid
has been aided by the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[1]
This was set up by the new government to investigate the human
rights violations committed both by proponents and by opponents
of the apartheid regime, to restore the dignity of victims by
enabling them to relate their personal accounts of the injustices
they suffered, and to evaluate applications for amnesty presented
to it by the perpetrators of offences associated with political
objectives.
The twin topics of
human rights abuses and of applications for amnesty have been
the subject of intense public scrutiny and debate, arising from
the many cases which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has
heard. They have also inspired two innovative theatrical presentations,
Medea and In the City of Paradise, both of which
drew on Greek tragedy to reflect on South African political concerns
in the late 1990s, the one exploring the consequences of racial
oppression and the other the relationship between justice and
revenge.
Presentations of Greek
dramas and of original works inspired by Greek prototypes are,
of course, not new in the theatrical experience of South Africans
but form an important if small part of their cultural heritage.
One result of the colonisation by the British in the early nineteenth
century of the southern part of Africa (following on the migration
to the region of settlers of primarily Dutch origin, which had
commenced in the middle of the seventeenth century), was the introduction
of educational systems and curricula based on British models.
The country's Afrikaans universities, which maintained close links
with institutions in Holland, echoed the Eurocentric focus of
English-medium South African education. As in Europe and North
America, the study of Greek drama, whether in the original Greek
or in translation, formed part of the curricula of South African
university departments of Classics and of Drama. By the 1960s,
theatre audiences - predominantly White - could expect to see
occasional productions of Greek tragedies, whether in English
or in Afrikaans, along with plays from the repertoire of modern
European and American classics. Many were performed by students
in Speech and Drama Departments, to test and display the techniques
and skills they had acquired. Others, however, were mounted by
the State-subsidised provincial theatre companies, such as CAPAB
(the Cape Performing Arts Board), PACT (the Performing Arts Council
of the Transvaal) and NAPAC (the Natal Performing Arts Council).
They constituted part of the Eurocentric theatrical canon of the
White establishment, which enjoyed privileges denied to theatrical
groups performing for the oppressed masses of South African society.[2]
Performances of Greek tragedies were not, however, confined to
theatre practitioners from the ruling classes.
I propose to discuss
some of the pre-1994 productions of Greek drama created and performed
by groups and individuals hostile to the National Party with the
intention of undermining its apartheid ideology. Prominent among
these were productions of Greek tragedies performed in the 1960s
by the Serpent Players, a group of Black actors based in New Brighton,
a township outside Port Elizabeth, with whom Athol Fugard, the
South African actor, poet and playwright, enjoyed a fruitful association.[3]
In July 1965, the Serpent Players put on Sophocles' Antigone.
Shortly before its opening, Norman Ntshinga, the actor taking
the role of Haemon, was arrested for political offences and sent
to Robben Island, where he arranged a two-man performance of the
play. [4] This incident provided
part of the inspiration for The Island, first performed
at the Space Theatre in Cape Town in July 1973. The Island[5] was devised collaboratively by Fugard, Winston Ntshona
and John Kani, the actor who had replaced the imprisoned Ntshinga
in the Serpent Players' production of Antigone. The play
opens with a mimed representation of the labours of two
political prisoners on Robben Island and concludes with their
enactment at the camp concert of a version of the 'trial' scene
between Antigone and Creon which occurs in the second episode
of Sophocles' play. The whole piece is a vivid denunciation of
the tyranny of the apartheid regime and its dehumanising
treatment of the prisoners on Robben Island. Runs of the play
in London (December 1973) and New York (1974)[6]introduced The Island to an international
audience and made it the best-known South African example of a
politically motivated reworking of a Greek tragedy.[7]
Apartheid and Greek
tragedy had supplied the material for an earlier Fugardian collaboration,
the experimental Orestes, first put on in Cape Town in
1971.[8] Influenced both by Fugard's
experiences of workshopped theatre gained from his collaboration
with the Serpent Players and by his reading of Grotowski's theories
of 'poor theatre', [9] Orestes
was described by one critic as 'a performance piece rather than
a conventional play'.[10] It was improvised by Fugard and his three actors
[11] using mime and primarily visual
images, with minimal employment of spoken dialogue. The South
African strand of Orestes [12]was
based on an act of protest against apartheid legislation that
had occurred in 1964, when a White schoolteacher called John Harris
left a bomb in the concourse of Johannesburg station. It exploded,
killing a little girl and injuring a white woman. In each 'exposure'
of Orestes, images from this strand overlapped on to images
of the mythical figures of Clytemnestra, Electra and Orestes.
The two sets of triangular relationships were connected by the
notion of the destructive cycle of violence linking Clytemnestra
and her children and underlying the oppressive structures of apartheid
legislation.[13]
Guy Butler's play,
Demea, based on Euripides' Medea,[14] offers another example of the amalgamation
of South African political and Greek tragic elements. Demea
was written in the early 1960s but not performed until 1990. At
the time of its composition, sexual relations between members
of different race groups were prohibited. Butler transformed and
updated Euripides' version of the Medea story with the expressed
intention of exploring racial and cultural prejudice in South
Africa.[15] His reworking changed
the names of the characters and transposed the setting to the
frontier region of the Eastern Cape in the late 1820s, the period
leading up to the Great Trek of 1834. This was a key event in
South African history, when many Boer farmers migrated out of
the Cape rather than live under British rule. Butler's principal
characters are recognisably modelled on their Euripidean prototypes:
Demea (an anagram of Medea) is a Tembu princess who has married
Captain Jonas Barker (Jason), a British officer who came to the
Cape during the Napoleonic Wars and stayed to become a trader.
His marriage to Demea gives him access to trade with remote kraals
unvisited by other white traders. He and Demea have two sons.
The play opens fifteen
years into the marriage, when Jonas decides to lead a group of
mixed-race trekkers north, at the same time as Kroon (Creon),
another white trek leader, is assembling a party of white trekkers.
Jonas subsequently leaves his own community to join Kroon's all-white
group and marry his daughter. His desertion of the racially mixed
community in which he has lived to his advantage and his alliance
with Kroon, who believes in racial segregation, are presented
as a betrayal by English-speaking South Africans of Black and
'Coloured' South Africans. Kroon is made to articulate the ideology
of apartheid. In revenge at being abandoned, and to save her sons
from becoming victims of racial prejudice, Demea sends them to
Kroon's laager where they are slaughtered, as she knows they will
be, in a general massacre of the trek party carried out by Black
warriors.
The Island, Orestes
and Demea all demonstrated the anti-apartheid messages
that could be communicated by bringing Greek tragic material to
bear on South African society. The post-apartheid era productions
of Medea and In the City of Paradise also focused
attention on the similarities between the ancient myths and contemporary
realities, but for audiences struggling not against apartheid
but against its legacy. The first of these, Medea,[16]
was an adaptation of the story of Medea and Jason as found in
Euripides' and Seneca's plays of that name, fleshed out with background
material relating to the myth found in Apollonius of Rhodes' epic
poem, the Argonautica, and with some ideas derived from
Heiner Müller's dramatic fragment, Medeamaterial.
[17] Directed by the husband-and-wife
team of Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek, it was performed in
Cape Town, Grahamstown and Johannesburg in three seasons between
October 1994 and March 1996.[18]
The production encouraged
the audience to make connections between Medea, the 'marginalised'
barbarian and those population groups humiliated and disempowered
by apartheid, and between Jason and those who had violated human
rights in their pursuit of power. As the play developed, the audience
saw events from the contrasting perspectives of the two main characters.
Driven by his ambition to become king, Jason exploits a vulnerable
and credulous Medea and takes advantage of all the opportunities
offered to him, whether by Medea in Colchis or Creon in Corinth.
The play charts Medea's betrayal of her father and brother, her
tricking of the daughters of Pelias into killing their father
and her attempts to blend into Greek society, all for the sake
of Jason, the man of her dreams. Finally, sacrificed to his ambition
and marginalised by the Greek world which had never completely
accepted her, Medea lashes out at her oppressors in two savage
acts of double murder.
The play was created
collaboratively by the directors and by its multiracial cast of
professional dancers and actors. The dancers, who took the role
of the chorus, were from the Jazzart Dance Theatre, the first
South African multiracial modern dance company.[19]
During the years of 'the struggle', Jazzart had developed
under various artistic directors as a collective cultural tool
whose goal was to construct an alternative ideology to that of
the prevailing regime. Through the medium of dance theatre drawing
on the dance ethnography of South Africa's rich diversity of cultures,
it aimed to empower those who were disempowered on grounds of
race or gender. Their work was performed in theatres, schools,
factories, clinics and community centres so as to maximise Jazzart's
outreach to those the company sought to serve. The personal commitment
of the Jazzart dancers to the principles of non-sexism and non-racism
was significant in shaping the Medea production.
The players themselves
created the text. During the rehearsal period they studied different
translations of the versions of the Medea myth, workshopping each
phase of the story in a series of improvisations until the scene
gelled into a verbal text that might or might not echo an earlier
version.[20] While drawing on and
being influenced by past interpretations, the cast used their
own responses to the material to create a dramatised revision
of the myth that related to their own experience of divided South
African society.
The dramatic narrative
that evolved from these improvisations reconstituted the myth
to make it intelligible to an audience that knew little of Greek
mythology. The action of the play began in Corinth immediately
after Jason's decision to remarry. The Corinthian setting of Euripides
and Seneca framed a number of improvised flashbacks to the past
in which Jason's arrival in Colchis and his meeting with Medea
were re-enacted, drawing on Apollonius' version [Illus.
1 Aeetes and Medea (Photo : Ruphin Coudyzer)].
The South African
remodelling staged Jason's arrival amid paramilitary overtones,
landing him deus ex machina-style by parachute from a helicopter.
The anachronistic action of his planting a flag in Colchian territory
conveyed in a single, wordless image the exploitative agendas
of all such colonisers. Medea's father, Aeetes, and her brother,
Apsyrtus, appeared as characters. Aeetes was introduced wearing
the Golden Fleece, which functioned as a powerful visual symbol
here and in other scenes. After Jason had obtained the Golden
Fleece with the help of Medea's magical skills, the cast mimed
the escape in the Argo and the killing of Apsyrtus. The action
then shifted to Iolchus, the scene of Pelias' murder, and moved
to Corinth, where they were allowed to stay. The rest of the play
proceeded on broadly familiar lines, from Creon's decree of banishment
to the despatching of the poisoned dress to Creon's daughter,
her death and that of Creon, and the murder of the children.
The making of dramatic
meaning was a mixed creative process. Contemporaneously with the
development of the words of the script, the sound signifiers of
meaning, the actors created a physical language to communicate
on a visual level as well as through vocal utterance. Through
mime and dance the bodies of the actors employed gesture and rhythmical
movement to suggest additional layers of meaning. While the physical
body is an important part of the meaning-making process of almost
all live theatre, it is absolutely central to contemporary South
African theatre.[21] The emphasis
on the physical body as a source of primary meaning is due partly
to the fact that so many modern South African plays, particularly
in the 1980s, have been created in the workshop process rather
than written.[22] 'Text is created through improvisation, a physical
process in which gesture exists before and alongside words as
an independent sign system. In performance the workshop play exhibits
a physical quality with a pronounced gestural component which
runs alongside and interweaves with the words of the text'. [23]
Another contributing factor is the 'oral consciousness', as opposed
to 'literary consciousness',[24] of the background of many Black performers,
for whom information is traditionally recorded and passed on through
story telling. In contrast with written communication, oral communication
is associated with somatic gesture to complement meaning. A further
consideration is that communication through the language of the
body is a means of transcending language barriers in a country
in which eleven languages enjoy official status.[25]
In particular, physical movement in South African theatre draws
on traditional African dance forms as part of a living tradition
that has meaning both for performers and spectators, and where
movement as well as vocalisation expresses feelings and emotions.
In the Medea production, verbal and somatic language jointly
communicated the story, with the result that the play was constructed
in a virtually alternating series of image beats, in which the
actors employed gesture and dance to tell the story, with sparing
use of verbal text, and story beats, in which words rather than
visual images functioned as the dominant signifying system.
Much of the production's
power derived from the chorus, who played a double role. In the
Corinthian sequences they impersonated Greeks, dressed in bikers'
boots and trenchcoats and communicating through modern Western
contemporary jazz dance. In the scenes located in Colchis they
transformed themselves into ethnic Colchians, wearing tribal dress
and toyi-toyi-ing and performing traditional African dance movements
to appropriate music [Illus.2Aeetes
and Colchian chorus (Photo :Ruphin Coudyzer) ].
In the mimed escape
sequence, they even transmuted themselves into the hull of the
Argo. Unlike an ancient Greek chorus, however, they expressed
themselves principally through dance, restricting their vocalisations
to chants and refrains.
The production was
multilingual, forcing the audience to deduce meaning from the
actors' physical language when they could not understand the language
of sections of the spoken text. Although the primary language
of the verbal text was English, some characters used other languages.
Medea's nurse frequently switched into Kaapse taal, the
dialect of Afrikaans spoken on the Cape Flats by the Coloured
people. In the Colchian flashback, the Jason actor mimed the performance
of the tasks set him by Aeetes while a Xhosa-speaking member of
the chorus described his actions in a praise-song, to the accompaniment
of a Xhosa chant by the chorus [Illus.3
Jason and imbongi (praise-singer)]. (Photo
:Ruphin Coudyzer)
Although some spectators
may have understood all three of these languages, very few would
have comprehended the utterances in Tamil of Aeetes, played by
an Indian actor. Jason clearly did not understand the instructions
given to him by Aeetes, so both he and most, if not all, of the
audience had to watch the movements of Aeetes' body to grasp his
meaning. To complement his use of Tamil, the Aeetes actor incorporated
Indian dance forms such as Kathakali and Bharata Natyam into his
physical language, using stylised hand gestures and grotesque
facial expressions.
Each of the linguistic,
visual and musical codes through which the performance communicated
was interpreted with varying degrees of ease by the individual
members of the audience, depending on their cultural backgrounds.
The spectators' uneven comprehension of the play's different signifying
systems became a metaphor for the difficulty of understanding
what was happening in South Africa in the immediate post-election
period, during which the old structures and certainties disappeared
almost overnight to make way for a new set of givens, likewise
subject to constant revision.
Although Euripides'
play was the principal source, the South African production sometimes
took a different turn. In Euripides, the children are included
in Creon's sentence of banishment (Eur. Med. 70-72), but
the South African version followed Seneca, whereby Medea is ordered
to leave her sons behind, to be brought up by Jason and his new
wife. This inhuman act of deprivation helps to render Medea's
reason for killing them more sympathetic. She foresees for them
a future of rejection such as she herself had experienced:
'What will become
of them?
There will be step-brothers despising them,
mocking them, them and their mother,
the savage from Colchis.
They will either end up serving here as slaves,
or else the bitterness gnawing at their hearts
will turn them sour, make them loathe themselves.'[26]
The production offered
a sympathetic reading of the Medea character [Illus. 4Medea (Photo
: Ruphin Coudyzer)].
The killing of the
children was presented as the impulsive decision of a woman driven
to despair on their behalf. In contrast with the Euripidean version,
there was no preliminary announcement of her intention to kill
the children, thereby [27] removing
the possibility of showing her resolve resisting appeals from
the chorus or being tested in a scene of self-debate.
The role of Aegeus
was radically re-interpreted, compared with the Euripidean version.[28]
In the South African Medea, Aegeus and Medea do not meet
physically but are viewed talking to each other by cellphone from
different quadrants of the acting space. Aegeus is cast as Medea's
lawyer, whom she contacts for advice on how to contest her divorce
and banishment. He informs her that as an alien, she has no rights
under Corinthian law:
'You will always
be an alien.
In Corinth, in Thessaly, in all the cities
of the Grecian federation you are not a person.
You have no rights, only obligations.' [29]
Aegeus merely sends
her the card of one of his Athenian business associates, with
whom he arranges sanctuary for her. It made a more reasonable
scenario for Aegeus to be consulted by Medea as her lawyer than
for Aegeus to be paying a chance visit to Corinth, as in Euripides'
version. Aristotle would have approved of the logic of this updating.[30]
The recasting of the episode ignored the motif of Aegeus' childlessness,
which assumes such thematic importance in Euripides' play,[31] and skated over the issue of Medea's future sojourn
in Athens. Instead, it brought out Medea's plight in terms comprehensible
to a South African audience. Although not all discarded wives
in contemporary South Africa have easy access to lawyers, the
role of lawyers in the division of matrimonial assets in cases
of divorce is well established. The dramatic Medea, however, has
no legal redress because, as a non-Greek, she has no rights. The
audience then saw Medea not just as a wife traded in for a younger
model but as a representative of the disempowered population groups
of the apartheid era.
The production highlighted
themes touching on contemporary South African experience, exposing
the cost of racial arrogance, the trauma of divorce and the suffering
of innocent children, who bear the brunt of marital and political
strife. These themes were, however, presented in an open-ended
way. Jason's ruthless pursuit of power evoked memories both of
the apartheid government's abuse of the legal system to entrench
its position and of the violent record of the various Black liberation
movements. The price paid by Jason for the attainment of his ambition
was concretised in the death of his children, suggesting that
all those who pursue power relentlessly, of whatever shade of
the political spectrum, must ultimately face its human cost. The
Aeetes character, too, was rendered unsympathetically, underscoring
the visceral cruelty inherent in the instinct to cling to power.
No 'noble savage' he, the tasks he prescribes for Jason amount
to a death sentence.
The production also
resisted an obvious temptation to represent Jason and the Greeks
as white Afrikaners. The English spoken by the 'Greek' characters
was standard, educated South African English, without a trace
of Afrikaans accentuation. This choice universalised the conflict
between colonisers and the colonised instead of treating it in
a more limited, localised way. Yet while the great colonisers
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British and the
Americans, have been English-speaking, the use of English served
as a reminder that many English-speaking white South Africans
colluded with Afrikaners in supporting the former Nationalist
government. It should also be noted that by the time of the play's
production, English had replaced Afrikaans as the language of
political dialogue.
The dimension of religious
belief was entirely absent from the South African production.
In view of the variety of religious persuasions present in modern
South African society, the decision to exclude any form of divine
machinery from the new version was probably the only practical
course. But Medea's magical powers, which become increasingly
important in Euripides and which are so prominent in Seneca, were
fundamental to the South African reshaping of the drama. Belief
in magic and witchcraft is deeply rooted in African society, in
which the sangoma is an influential figure.
The last scene was
powerfully performed but in some ways unsatisfying.[32] Medea has been granted permission to
bid farewell to her sons before she departs into exile. She embraces
them as they stand mute and uncomprehending before her, then gently
strips them of their clothing, grey shorts and white shirts such
as are worn by most South African primary schoolboys. Beneath
these garments, which represent 'civilised' dress, they wear loincloths
similar to those worn by the chorus in their Colchian incarnation.
This 'barbarian' clothing symbolises their birth from a non-Greek
mother and their essential marginalisation from the Greek world.
Medea leads them offstage, returning shortly afterwards to climb
up the back wall of the set, assisted by members of the Colchian
chorus. She crouches in a small aperture set high in the wall.
From this unreachable vantage point she watches as Jason storms
in to avenge the killing of Creon and the princess. He discovers
his sons' abandoned clothing. He kneels on the ground clutching
their garments, while the realisation dawns on him that they are
dead. As grief engulfs him, one of the chorus players sets the
crown of Corinth on his head. This final image is ambivalent.
Is it Jason, foregrounded centre-stage, who arrests the audience's
attention? Or Medea, elevated and unassailable but, unlike her
Euripidean and Senecan predecessors, silent and disturbingly static?
The final scene exemplified
the complex, multivalent nature of the whole production. At no
time did one single meaning emerge, but each image, verbal and
visual, invited a range of responses from the spectators. It is
perhaps a mistake to ask whether Jason or Medea dominated the
final visual frame. As in the closing scene of Euripides' play,
the two figures occupied different planes of the acting space,
symbolising their dislocation from each other as the inevitable
result of their different values and perceptions.
In refusing to offer
simplistic answers, the production had much in common with Euripides'
version, which resists the drawing of easy conclusions and constantly
requires spectators to re-evaluate their judgement.[33] Both dramatisations of the Medea myth,
separated from each other by huge chronological and geographical
distances, highlighted problematic issues in the world of their
audiences without providing obvious answers in the performances
themselves.
Reviewers of the South
African production acknowledged its relevance to contemporary
problems.[34] One wrote, 'This
Medea says more to me than any other play I have seen for
years about the way living in South Africa now feels: its sheer
complexity of emotion.'[35] Another stated, 'It holds a mirror up
to the gratuitous violence, brutality and racial xenophobia of
South Africa today, bringing in everything from smart lawyers
and cellphones to colonial-type superiority and divorce settlements.
It would seem as if the Corinth that Euripides wrote about in
431 BC is alive and well and hanging around our streets right
now'.[36] In a review headlined
'Medea highlights another SA shame', another critic expressed
his amazement 'that no one has yet sought, until now, to adapt
the Greek tragedy, Medea, to South Africa.'[37]
Not all reviewers
reacted favourably to the blending of European, African and Indian
performance forms. One was disturbed by the Colchian scenes, objecting
to the 'Indian elements in the movements and extended tongues
in almost imbecilic faces' that, (for the reviewer), made the
inhabitants of Colchis 'come across as simply repulsive rather
than "uncivilised" in the Greek sense'.[38]
Another critic attacked the directors' decision to 'Africanise'
the production, viewing the 'Africanisation process' as 'peripheral,
limited to decorative details that have been lumped on top of
Euripides' work but never integrated with it.'[39] The reviewer continued, If this is Africanisation,
does South African theatre really need it? Having just emerged
from the throes of protest theatre, are we about to commit another
folly – the self-conscious Africanisation of theatre. The
formula looks treacherous and deadly.' Such opinions demonstrate
Banning's argument that reviewers' responses are mediated by their
own perceptions of cultural identity, and that 'where innovative
theatre practices do emerge, their effectiveness as catalysts
for transformative cultural practice is limited by the responsiveness
of reviewers'.[40]
The second play, ironically
entitled In the City of Paradise, another Fleishman concept,
was showcased in Cape Town in April 1998 [41]
and was based on the mythic tale of the revenge of Orestes and
Electra on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, as found in the dramatisations
by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Like Medea, it was
a workshopped, collaborative enterprise. Its racially mixed cast
of drama students from the University of Cape Town reworked material
from Aeschylus' Oresteia, the Electra plays of Sophocles
and Euripides and Euripides' Orestes, with several speeches
adhering closely to their models.
Two years separated
the last performance of Medea from the production of In
the City of Paradise. While the earlier play had explored
the human suffering caused by apartheid, the second faced the
issue of how to bring to an end the destructive cycle of violence
proceeding from it. By April 1998, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission was nearing the end of its work, having heard hundreds
of requests for amnesty from perpetrators of violence during the
years of apartheid who claimed political motivation for their
actions. It had also allowed victims of violence to relate their
experiences. Many violators and their victims, or the relatives
of deceased victims, were brought together for the first time
since the commission of the deed for which amnesty was sought.
In some cases the parties were reconciled, in others, the victims
refused to accept the sincerity of the abusers' regrets. The issue
of whether or not the granting of amnesty could be an acceptable
means of dealing with politically motivated crimes was passionately
debated.
In the City of Paradise
approached the question through the story of Orestes and Electra.
The theme of the eating of children, derived from Atreus' tricking
of his brother Thyestes into consuming his own murdered sons,
was developed into a food-based visual metaphor sustained for
the duration of the play. The action took place in a large kitchen-cum-dining
hall, with a dustbin in the corner of the performance space. The
kitchen contained an old, disconnected refrigerator, cupboards
and a portable cabin toilet. A low platform at the back of the
stage bore chalked outlines marking the position of corpses, making
the set resemble the aftermath of a crime scene. The essential
element of Greek drama, the chorus, was retained but updated in
relation to the food theme by being cast and costumed as a team
of caterers, comprising cooks and chefs, waiters and waitresses,
cleaners and kitchen hands.
The action begins
with a young girl exiting from the darkened kitchen area to deposit
a bucket of slops on the rubbish heap beside the dustbin. She
is interrupted by a disembodied voice shrieking out alternately
in seSotho and English, evoking the spirits of children murdered
in the house and eaten by their parents. This is the voice of
Cassandra, effectively setting the scene for the series of murders
to follow [Illus. 5 Cassandra] (Photo : Margaret Mezzabotta)
The part of Cassandra
was played by a seSotho-speaking student. As seSotho is not widely
spoken in Cape Town, the seSotho portions of Cassandra's utterance
were not understood by most of the audience, conveying a sense
of the enigmatic character of Cassandra's pronouncements. Clytemnestra's
motivation for killing Agamemnon is presented in a prologue scene
in which she unsuccessfully attempts to dissuade Agamemnon from
sacrificing Iphigeneia. Two frightened children, Electra and Orestes,
are sung to by their nurse in Zulu, as she tries to distract their
attention from the angry voices of their quarrelling parents.
The time then moved
forward to several years after the murder of Agamemnon, whose
bloodied, newspaper-wrapped corpse has been tossed onto the heap
of kitchen rubbish. A sequence of scenes established Electra as
the neurotic daughter who can be seen as an even more tormented
extension of the Euripidean Electra. Filthy and neglected, she
emerges from the disused refrigerator, [Illus.
6 Electra] (Photo : Margaret Mezzabotta) and crawls to the
heap of refuse to commune with Agamemnon's corpse. She is deeply
hostile to Clytemnestra, whose affair with Aegisthus has gone
off the boil. The scene included the report of Clytemnestra's
dream (from the Libation-bearers) and an acrimonious debate
between mother and daughter. [Illus 7 Electra and Clytemnestra] (Photo : Margaret
Mezzabotta)
All the while, a lighted
window set into the flats of the set revealed images of two travellers,
who will turn out to be Orestes and Pylades, journeying ceaselessly
towards the audience.
Aegisthus was portrayed
as an oversexed, drunken tyrannical thug, who amused himself by
urinating on Agamemnon's body and setting his secret police agents
to spy on the Argive crowd. [illus 8 Aegisthus, chorus and Informers] (Photo
: Margaret Mezzabotta)
The production made
no attempt to redeem him in any way by adducing his duty to avenge
his murdered siblings. Cassandra is caught spray-painting Orestes'
name on to the back wall, whereupon Aegisthus proclaims Orestes
to be a terrorist and declares a State of Emergency. The Aegisthus
scenes were painfully evocative of the atmosphere of intimidation
and repression that characterised the various States of Emergency
declared during the apartheid era.
In the second act,
Orestes and Pylades return and are welcomed by the chorus. Brother
and sister are finally reunited, with Orestes' weakness being
revealed by the shortfall between Electra's expectations and the
reality of his timidity. Electra goads him into killing Aegisthus,
whose body is dragged into Clytemnestra's bedroom, where she,
too, is murdered. [illus
9 Electra, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Orestes]. (Photo
: Margaret Mezzabotta)
Pandemonium follows,
accompanied by discordant music, as overalled figures wearing
gas masks, representing the Furies, chase Orestes and Electra
and pump the air full of smoke, symbolising the pollution arising
from the crime of matricide. As the fumes clear, two elderly figures
are seen approaching, Tyndareus and Leda, Clytemnestra's parents
[Illus. 10 Leda,
Tyndareus, Orestes, chorus] (Photo : Margaret Mezzabotta)
They have come to
put flowers on their daughter's grave. Modelled on Euripides'
Tyndareus in Orestes, the old man argues that while Clytemnestra
had deserved to die, Orestes should have charged her with murder
through the appropriate legal structures, not killed her himself.
Stirred by his words, the chorus begin to mob Electra and Orestes,
demanding their deaths. This episode awakened harsh memories of
'township justice' carried out by mobs incited to violence. But
Tyndareus insists on the due process of law taking its course,
and brother and sister are tried and found guilty of matricide.
As the chorus prepare to stone them, however, the herald intervenes
[Illus. 11 Herald,
chorus, Electra, nurse (Photo : Margaret Mezzabotta)],
announcing:
[They are] 'guilty
on all counts…
However, we stand today upon an historic bridge
between a past of deep division and discord,
and a brighter future of peace and prosperity for all.
there is a need for understanding, not for vengeance,
for forgiveness not retaliation,
for humanity not for victimisation.
Our learned judges seek to reconcile all differences,
to set aside all enmity and hatred,
to build anew our fragile lives in Argos.
They decree, therefore, that amnesty shall be granted
in respect of acts, commissions and offences
committed in the cause of conflicts of the past,
where a full disclosure of the facts is made,
lest we forget our brutal heritage.'[42]
The gasp from the
audience that greeted this pronouncement showed that they had
recognised their own situation in the dramatisation. But the angry
Tyndareus protests:
'So they walk free?
Unpunished for their acts?
What justice this?………
Can children spill their mother's blood
upon the ground, then settle into their
father's house in Argos?
What about our justice?
A parent's right to recompense and retribution……..
This amnesty pollutes our law….
What say the people to this travesty of justice?'[43]
The chorus hover in
indecision but finally hoist Orestes and Electra on to their shoulders
and join in a chant of triumph. Tyndareus and Leda slink unreconciled
off the stage while the chorus prepare a noisy banquet of celebration
[Illus. 12Feasting
chorus (Photo : Margaret Mezzabotta)].
But while the penultimate
frame presented an almost Aristophanic image of feasting and
rejoicing, the refusal of Tyndareus to accept the court's decision
lingered like a blight on the merry-making, showing that the curse
of Thyestes was still operative. The piece ended, as it had begun,
with words from Cassandra proclaimed to a darkened stage:
'In the City of
Paradise
Nothing is forever
All is struggle.' [44]
The conclusion of
the play left the audience with the message that unless all South
Africans accept the principle of amnesty for past political crimes,
all hope of lasting reconciliation is futile and optimism for
a peaceful future an illusion.
Both Medea and
In the city of Paradise built on precedents set by earlier
adaptations that had examined South African political issues through
dramatic presentations of Greek myth, demonstrating that Greek
drama continues to possess the potential to elucidate modern political
and social problems, in South Africa as well as elsewhere. The
incorporation into these productions of the physicality and multilingualism
of modern South African theatre provided examples of the infusion
of African performance traditions into an ancient art form grounded
in a distant civilisation. Both casts made the original plays
accessible to fresh audiences through adaptation and innovation,
creating new works from ancient Greek dramatic models. For, as
Pliny commented long ago, albeit in a different context,[45] 'There is always something new out of Africa'.
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Endnotes
[*]
I wish to thank Mark Fleishman, Yvonne Banning and the publication's
referees for helpful advice. The financial assistance of the Centre
for Science Development (HSRC, South Africa) towards this research
is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived
at are those of the author and not necessarily to be attributed
to the CSD.
[1]
Information on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be
accessed from its website at www.truth.org.za.
[2]
See M. Orkin, Drama and the South African state (Manchester
University Press/ Witwatersrand University Press, 1991) and T.
Hauptfleisch, Theatre and society in South Africa: Some
reflections in a fractured mirror, (J.L. van Schaik, 1997)
esp. 29-84, on the development of colonial and indigenous theatrical
forms in South Africa and their relationship to the hegemonic
State structures.
[3]
See R. Vandenbroucke, Truths the hand can touch. The theatre
of Athol Fugard, (Theatre Communications Group, 1985) 95-107,
on the Serpent players and their association with Fugard.
[4]
D. Walder, Athol Fugard, (Macmillan, 1984) 88.
[5]
Published in A. Fugard, J. Kani, and W. Ntshona, Statements:
Three plays,(Oxford University Press, 1974).
[6]
S. Gray, File on Fugard, (Methuen, 1991) 49.
[7]
See E. A. Mackay, 'Antigone and Orestes in the works of Athol
Fugard', Theoria 74, (1989), 31-43 and 'Fugard's The
Island and Sophocles' Antigone within the parameters
of South African protest literature', in D. Bevan, ed., Literature
and revolution, (Rodopi, 1989) 145-162, for discussion of
Sophoclean elements used by Fugard. Some critics, however, view
Fugard's work as too politically naïve and too grounded in
bourgeois White 'liberalism' to be regarded as effective protest
drama, e.g. H. Seymour, 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead: A study of
artistic ambivalence', Race & Class 21, 3, (1980),
273-289, R. Kavanaugh, Theatre and cultural struggle in South
Africa, (Zed Books, 1985) 63-64, 73-75, 161, Orkin (note 2),
124-148, esp. 146-147. For assessments of Fugard's position in
terms of the South African liberation struggle, see D. Walder,
'Resituating Fugard: South African drama as witness', New Theatre
Quarterly 8/32, (November 1992), 343-361.
[8]
Gray (note 6 above), File on Fugard, 40. See Vandenbroucke
(note 3 above) 110-116 and Mackay (note 7 above), 'Antigone and
Orestes', 31-33 for evaluations of Orestes. The production,
with a text of only about 300 words, is described by Fugard in
'Orestes reconstructed: A letter to an American
friend', Theatre Quarterly 8, No. 32, 1979, 3-6.
[9]
J. Grotowski, Towards a poor theatre, (Methuen, 1969).
[10]
Vandenbroucke (note 3 above), 111.
[11]
Yvonne Bryceland, Winston Dunster and Val Donald.
[12]
Fugard (note 8 above) 'Orestes', 3, applies the term 'exposure'
to each performance of Orestes
[13]
Additional discussion of Orestes will be found in S. Roberts,
'Fugard in the seventies: Inner and outer geography', in S. Gray,
ed., Athol Fugard, Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1982, 224-226,
Mackay (note 7 above), 'Antigone and Orestes', 31-33, Walder (note
4 above), 12-13, 82-83, Vandenbroucke (note 3 above), 111-114.
[14]
G. Butler, Demea, Cape Town: David Philip, 1990. B.Van
Zyl Smit, 'Medea and apartheid', Akroterion 37 (1992),
73-81, evaluates the play.
[15]
In the introduction to the 1990 publication (no pagination), Butler
states, 'In writing Demea, I have turned the Medea
into a political allegory of the South African situation as I
saw it, at the height of the idealistic Verwoerdian mania'.
[16]
For reviews of the production written from the viewpoint of classicists
see B. Van Zyl Smit, Didaskalia Vol. 1, No.5 and M.R. Mezzabotta,
Didaskalia Vol. 1, No.5 (http://didaskalia.berkeley.edu).
E. De Wet, Subversive acts: The politics of the female
subject in performance, unpublished M.A. dissertation, University
of Cape Town, 1997, 111-135, provides a lesbian feminist perspective.
Y. Banning, 'Speaking silences: Images of cultural difference
and gender in Fleishman and Reznek's Medea', in M. Blumberg
and D. Walder, eds, South African theatre as/and intervention,
(Rodopi, 1999) 41-47, discusses the construction of gender and
culture in the production.
[17]
Notably Medea's rejection of her reflection in a mirror as an
image of her true self (M. Fleishman et al., Medea, 1994,
unpublished text, 5, cf. H. Müller, Hamletmachine and
other texts for the stage, ed. and trans. C. Weber, Performing
Arts Journal Publications, 1984, 128) and Medea's line, 'You owe
me a brother' followed by Jason's riposte, 'I gave you two sons'
(Fleishman et al. 24-25, cf. Müller 129).
[18]
In Cape Town at the Arena Theatre in the Nico Malan theatre complex
in October/November 1994, in Grahamstown at the Grahamstown Festival
in July 1995 and in Johannesburg at the Market Theatre in February/March
1996. A short video of selected scenes is available from the Department
of Drama, University of Cape Town, Hiddingh Campus, Cape Town
8001, South Africa.
[19]
Jazzart was founded in Cape Town in 1975 by Sonya Mayo. The company
was taken over by Sue Parker in 1978 and directed by her until
1982. Val Steyn succeeded her in 1982 and Alfred Hinkel took over
in 1986. For the history of the company, discussion of its principles
and practices and analyses of three of its productions, see C.
Dembovsky, Jazzart dance theatre: Dance, identity and
empowerment in a changing South Africa, unpublished MA (Dance
Studies) dissertation, University of Surrey, 1997.
[20]
Mark Fleishman, one of the directors, acted as scribe in writing
down the final version of the dialogue.
[21]
See M. Fleishman, 'Physical images in the South African theatre',
South African Theatre Journal 11, 1&2, (1997), 199-215.
[22]
e.g. Woza Albert (1980), Born in the RSA (1985),
Sophiatown (1986), You strike the woman, you strike the
rock (1986). See M. Fleishman, 'Workshop theatre as
oppositional form', South African Theatre Journal 4, 1,
(1990), 88-118.
[23]
Fleishman (note 21 above), 'Physical images', 201.
[24]
Fleishman (note 21 above), 'Physical images', 202.
[25]
Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, seSotho sa Leboa, seSotho, siSwati,
Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. In addition to these 'official'
languages, several others are spoken in South Africa by linguistic
communities of various sizes.
[26]
Fleishman et al. (note 17 above), 24.
[27]
Openly stated in Eur. Med. 792, but hints that Medea might
harm her children appear as early as line 38 and are developed
in ll. 89-95.
[28]
Aegeus does not appear in Seneca's Medea.
[29]
Fleishman et al. (note 17 above), 20
[30]
cf. Poet. 1461b 18-20, where Aristotle censures the irrationality
of the Aegeus scene: 'A charge of irrationality or of representing
wickedness is justified if there is no necessity for the irrationality
or moral wickedness and no use is made of it. An example of the
former is Euripides' treatment of Aegeus, of the latter his treatment
of Menelaus in the Orestes.' [trans. M. E. Hubbard].
[31]
cf. J. R. Dunkle, 'The Aegeus episode and the theme of Euripides'
Medea', Transactions of the American Philological Association
100 (1969), 97-107.
[32]
Banning (note 16 above), 'Speaking silences', 46-47, suggests
that in the closing scene, Jason's tragedy displaces and silences
Medea's tragedy.
[33]
E. A. McDermott, Euripides' Medea:The incarnation of
disorder (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), draws
attention to the ways in which Euripides confuses his audience
[34]
See Y. Banning, '(Re)viewing Medea: Cultural perceptions
and gendered consciousness in reviewers' responses to new South
African theatre', South African Theatre Journal 11, 1&2,
(1997), 55-87, for an analysis of the ideological and cultural
predispositions of reviewers of the production.
[35]
R. Grieg, 'Medea creates a thrilling theatrical language of passion
for a new order', Sunday Independent, (4 February, 1996).
[36]
M. Jenkins, 'A Medea for today', The Citizen, (1 February,
1996), 23.
[37]
D. Wilson, 'Medea highlights another SA shame',
Argus Tonight, (21 October, 1994).
[38]
Jenkins (note 36 above), 'Medea'.
[39]
A. Bristowe, 'Beating the wrong drum', The Star, (1 February,
1996).
[40]
Banning (note 34 above), '(Re)viewing Medea', 84.
[41]
At the Hiddingh Hall on the Orange Street Campus, University of
Cape Town.
[42]
M. Fleishman et al., In the City of Paradise, unpublished
text, 1998, 37.
[43]
Fleishman et al. (note 42 above), City, 37-38.
[44]
Fleishman et al. (note 42 above), City, 39.
[45]
Pliny NH 8. 64. The proverb's pedigree and reception are
discussed in A. V. Van Stekelenberg, 'Ex Africa semper aliquid
novi: A proverb's pedigree', Akroterion 33 (1988),
114-120 and in I. Ronca, 'Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre:
Philological afterthoughts on the Plinian reception of a pre-Aristotelian
saying', Akroterion 37 (1992), 146-158.
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Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English