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!!!!!!!