Three weeks ago we put on "Hello and Goodbye" at the Masque Theatre in Muizenberg. It is a small theatre with 178 seats and a lovely stage. The play is one of Athol Fugard's ( South Africa's leading playwright) first plays and is set in a poor part of the windsept coastal city of Port Elizabeth. The characters are a brother and his sister who arrives home after an absence of 15 years. They are what was known as "poor whites" - living with no income on the bread line, and no hope of improvement. They lived in a Railway house where Johnnie still lives. Johnnie Smit (played by Wesley Fijali) and Hester (played by Suzi Gehr) are part of the flotsam that the system has left behind. Their despairing lives are lived in shades of the past and slowly unravel during the course of the play. They start with nothing and end with resignation and despair. It is a powerful work which delivers a harsh commentary on the old South Africa. Not for the faint-hearted but deeply moving.
This is one of the most complete photos of what I think is one of my best sets. I went for stark minimalism as this was the mood set by birga Thomas, director of the play. The raised floor was a symbolic way of expressing the disconnection with the present moment of the characters. Railway houses were always brick and run down. The garden is delapidated, the aloes, so typical of the region, spill out of a broken pot at the steps, the zinc bath Johnnie uses leans against the steps, all adding to the desolation of mood and spirit.
The bricks were done with layer by layer giving light and shade, I spread stones and rusted implements around the "garden", added a wooden washing line in a state of disrepair, put tufts of bushy weeds againt the wing-flats and painted the stage to look like gravel and weeds. It was FUN!!!!!!!
Whenever I go away I touch base with my favourite things outside at home before I go and when I return. I send prayers out on the flags for those I leave behind, those to whom I go and to those I have yet to meet but whom I hold dear in my heart. I hear the windchimes call their names softly on the breeze and leave the memories and intentions circling the world and caressing them till I return.
We live less than 500 metres from the seashore and less than a kilometre from the bathing boxes of Muizenberg beach. Recently this whole area was turned into a fairground for the filming of Hollywood's "Speed 3" and for a month was abuzz with movie crews and make-believe. The waves come on shore here on a long beach with beautiful white sand. It is one of the few places in the world that has parallel waves and the long rollers come into the bay in long beautiful lines of cream-topped breakers. The sky and the sea melt into each other on hazy autumn days as the sea finally reaches the first shore she has beached on since leaving Antartica. This bay is called "False Bay" so named by the early wooden ship sailors who experienced the sudden fury of her storms, sending many a ship and sailor to the bottom of the ocean.
Some years ago one lonely Jackass penguin moved into the beautiful Boulders Beach at the tip of Africa. while there were penguins found on Robben Island, the infamous island which housed the great Nelson Mandela, they were not found south of this point. Also that is in the Atlantic Ocean, Boulders is in the Indian Ocean. But that penguin soon had company and slowly more joined the colony, more nested and bred in the scrub surrounding the beach, and the occupants of the surrounding houses had to get accustomed to penguins walking in any open door and making themselves at home! After a sad incidence of poisoning, the colony was declared part of the National Parks Board and became a protected area. Now it is a major tourist attraction with boardwalks and viewpoints, but, down on the beach you can still swim and sunbathe with these wonderful birds, surrounded by the towering boulders that give the beach its name.
In the bottom photo the cast waits their turn to dress and go on stage in the second act. (Most of the actors are already there)
Three weeks ago we put on "Hello and Goodbye" at the Masque Theatre in Muizenberg. It is a small theatre with 178 seats and a lovely stage. The play is one of Athol Fugard's ( South Africa's leading playwright) first plays and is set in a poor part of the windsept coastal city of Port Elizabeth. The characters are a brother and his sister who arrives home after an absence of 15 years. They are what was known as "poor whites" - living with no income on the bread line, and no hope of improvement. They lived in a Railway house where Johnnie still lives. Johnnie Smit (played by Wesley Fijali) and Hester (played by Suzi Gehr) are part of the flotsam that the system has left behind. Their despairing lives are lived in shades of the past and slowly unravel during the course of the play. They start with nothing and end with resignation and despair. It is a powerful work which delivers a harsh commentary on the old South Africa. Not for the faint-hearted but deeply moving.
