NAME: FIDEL F.

NAMISI
NUMBER: 0409466M
COURSE CODE: DRAA213
DRAMA & FILM: SOUTH AFRICAN THEATRE
LECTURER: GREG HOMANN

Question:
International theatre practitioners such as Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht and
Augusto Boal have been the source of much inspiration for South African theatre
groups such as The Serpent Players, The Junction Avenue Theatre Company,
Workshop 71 and The Company at the Market Theatre.
Through a detailed analysis of any ONE play dealt with in the course, and a thorough
interrogation of the key principles of the relevant international practitioner(s):
Discuss how these methodologies have guided the collaborative
process of the play makers.
Then expand on this to demonstrate the ways in which thematically
and structurally the selected text confronts the realities of South
African society.

Due Date: September 14th.

When Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema approached Barney Simon to collaborate
with them on the creation of a play, they probably had no idea that Woza Albert!
would become an instant classic of South African theatre. With a script and stage that
demands a powerful performance from the actors, Woza Albert! has had the unique
combination of critical and economic success in the various cities it has toured
throughout the world. Undoubtedly, this is partly due to the fact that the crafting of
the play was extensively influenced by the leading theorists and practitioners of
contemporary theatre, principally Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal.
This essay will give a detailed analysis of the play, paying specific attention to the
way in which the key principles of the aforementioned international theatre
practitioners influenced the playmaking process of Woza Albert! In addition, it will
look at how Woza Albert! confronts the realities of South African society, both now
and at the time in which it was written.

Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema began working on Woza Albert! in 1981 when
they met on the set of the play Mama and the Load, a musical by Gibson Kente.
(Mtwa, 1995: 1). During the township tour of the play, Ngema had been contracted to
work as an actor while Mtwa was a singer and dancer. They found that tey shared a
common desire to create more challenging and powerful plays, palys that would
confront the reality of the South Africa that they were living in, and therefore decided
to study the playmaking process more diligently and academically. Their studies led
them to the discovery of Grotowskis Towards a Poor Theatre and Peter Brooks
The Empty Space. They stopped drinking and smoking and exercised theur bodies,
their voices and their resonators. Although they had decided that they wanted to
create a piece together, they were yet to diceover what their subject matter would be.

They stumbled upon it quite serendipitously. One night in their touring busthere
was a heated argument on the Second Coming. What would happen to Jesus if he
came back to South Africa! (Mtwa, 1995: 1).

The very premise of the play, we therefore see, is deeply rooted in its social context.
1981 was a period of extreme unrest in South Africa. Five years earlier, in 1976,
students in Soweto staged an uprising that could only be quelled by the use of military
force. A state of emergency was declared, which continued well into the mid-eighties.
Ngema and Mtwa found themselves surrounded by a volatile situation of extreme
tension. Political activists were being banned, arrested, or even worse, murdered. The
government was using strong-arm tactics to keep itself in power. Thus Ngema and
Mtwa undoubtedly felt that a good outlet for their thoughts, which were probably
representative of the sentiments of the majority of the black population, was to direct
a stinging tirade of satire at the oppressors. And what better premise for such satire
than the interesting, and indubitably humorous argument that they stumbled upon in
their touring bus about the things that Jesus would be subjected to if he decided that
1981 South Africa was a good time and place to stage his Second Coming?

However, Ngema and Mtwa were not fools. In 1981, all theatres in South Africa could
be multi-racial upon application for a permit. These theatres just so happened to be
located in the white cities. The black townships had to make do with halls, churches,
community centres and schools. Mtwa and Ngema realised that a play that appealed
only to black audiences was a play that was limping on one foot in terms of getting its
political message across. They had to cross the colour divide. They therefore
approached Barney Simon for help. He had founded The Company in 1974 along with

Mannie Manim, which had made its home in Johannesburgs old Market in 1976,
where he became of the Artistic Director of the newly founded Market Theatre. Mtwa
and Ngema knew that Simons extensive experience in Black and non-racial theatre
and the work that he had done in the creation of text with actors made him the
perfect person to direct their play. (Mtwa, 1995: 1). Simon agreed, and the three spent
six weeks working intensively to create the play that was to be Woza Albert!

As we have already mentioned earlier, Ngema and Mtwa had come across the
writings of Jerzy Grotowski, and these had made such a strong impression on them
that the two changed their lifestyles and started carrying out Grotowskis exercises
even before they had begun creating their play.

They relied on Grotowskis

methodology of creating texts from the actors, also known as the workshop style of
development, to develop the play. Grotowski strongly felt that the main creative force
in the theatre was the actor his body, his voice and his thoughts. Therefore the actor
also needed to make exercise this power in the creation of the text. This system of
play development was utilised extensively in Grotowskis Laboratory, which was his
own theatre company. (Grotowski, 1968: 51).

The collaborative creation of the piece also involved the reading of the Gospels and
scouring the streets of Soweto and Johannesburg (Mtwa, 1995: 1). This was because
the premise of the play required material that would be generated by the catalytic
clash between a biblical figure and contemporary city life. Although this may have
been a coincidence, this aspect of the plays production closely parallels Bertolt
Brechts methodologies. Brecht laid a lot of emphasis in the contemporary political
world, and he often turned to history and fable in order to achieve an insightful

juxtaposition. Such juxtaposition often resulted in the creation of a particular crisis on

which the play would be based (Williams, 1976:324). He often used this to enhance
the alienation or distancing effect that he was always seeking to achieve. This entailed
making the audience keenly aware of the fact that what they were watching was
merely a play, and as such they should think less of the play itself and more of its
underlying message (Willet, 1999: 58).

We see this methodology clearly at play in Woza Albert! Jesus, who is a historical
figure, is placed within the contemporary context and the resulting crisis provides the
premise of the play.

The influence of Brecht and Grotowski was much more far reaching than that,
however. The essence of Grotowskis poor theatre, if such a description could be
hazarded, could be summarised as the deepening and strengthening of the connection
between the actor and the audience, which are the only two vital elements needed for
theatre to exist (Grotowski, 1968: 17). As such, everything that is not strictly essential
to the performance must be stripped away, both in the actor and in the set, as a sort of
purifying of theatre.

The first consequence of such a methodology is that the play becomes less about the
plot and more about the characters, as is seen in Woza Albert! The plot consists of a
series of apparent encounters between Morena and various urban dwellers, ranging
from a coal seller to the Prime Minister. Nothing really happens in the play, and after
several such encounters the main characters ask Morena to resurrect their heroes of
the freedom struggle. The real message of the play comes across in the various

reactions that the characters have to the prospect of meeting Morena. It reveals the
satirical nature of the play, and serves to put some distance between the audience and
the play itself, encouraging them not to think about the events in the play but rather
about the underlying message of the play. Again, we see the influence of Bertolt
Brecht guiding the collaborative process of the playmakers. According to Brecht, a
play should not cause the spectator to emotionally identify with the action they are
presented with. Rather, the play should provoke rational self-reflection and a critical
view of the actions on stage (Willet, 1999: 32).

Another Grotowskian element of production is the minimal use of props. In the

written text of the play, the set is described as consisting of two up-ended tea-chests
side by side about centre stage. Further upstage an old wooden plank, about ten feet
long, is suspended horizontally on old ropes. From nails in the plank hang the ragged
clothes that the actors will use for their transformations. That is all there is on stage
in terms of props. All the other props are imaginary, and the actors create them by
miming their use. This is seen in the scene where the two actors pretend to pull a truck
forward (Mtwa, 1995: 45).

The lighting of Woza Albert!

is also very simple. This is in keeping with the

methodologies of Grotowski, who liked to keep the lighting of his sets simple so as to
lay more emphasis on the encounter between the actor and the spectator. The sound
effects are actually produced by the actors themselves. They simulate the sounds of
sirens, houseflies and electric hair clippers. The resultant effect is that the audience is
no way distracted from the actual performance of the actors by the trappings of sound,
light or scenery (Grotowski, 1968: 32).

The methodologies of Bertolt Brecht also influenced the collaborative process of the
playmakers. Brecht believed that theatre should focus on political issues, especially in
its themes and plots (Willet, 1999: 18). Plays should provoke the audience to think
critically about the political, social and economic situation that provides the context
for the play. As such, the audience should not be too engrossed in the plot or the
characters of the play itself, but rather in its underlying socio-political themes and
messages. In order to do this, Brecht devised a number of techniques to foster this
alienation effect as he liked to call it (Willet, 1999: 19). These devices were used
extensively in the crafting of Woza Albert!

For instance, the use of song has the effect of reminding the audience that all they are
seeing is a performance. Woza Albert! uses many songs and even dance, which add to
the element of spectacle but without really engrossing the audience. The songs,
however, do have a strong underlying political message. For instance, one song,
entitled Woza Kanye Kanye, calls the audience to come together because whites are
swines (sic) and they call [black people] damns (sic) (Mtwa, 1995: 43). The song at
the end of the play is about the Lord resurrecting the black heroes of the struggle. The
political message in it is that the audience should celebrate the lives of these heroes
and not let their deaths have been in vain.

The actors also play multiple characters, which was a devise that Brecht used to create
a distance between the audience and the text (Willet, 1999: 35). In Woza Albert! the
actors play the roles of prisoners, prison wardens, journalists, politicians, barbers,
township women and army officers. The actors, however, do not try to give the

impression that they truly believe themselves to be this wide array of characters nor
do they expect the audience to believe so either. Rather than mimicking real people,
the actors portray these roles as representative of the different groups of people in
South African society (Willet, 1999: 37).

Direct address was yet another technique that Brecht used to achieve the goal he had
in mind for his theatrical performances (Willet, 1999: 24). This technique is also
utilised extensively in Woza Albert!

It does not, however, have the effect of

distancing the audience, because the audience eventually gets used to it and sees it as
yet another comical effect in the play. One such instance occurs when one of the
characters turns to the audience and says that black people really know how to lie.
The resultant effect is quite comical, and results in the audience being more riveted
than it was before (Mtwa, 1995: 3).

Comparing it to the classical constructs of the theatrical discourse as compiled by

Aristotle, it must be said that Woza Albert! departs radically from the classical Greek
form of theatre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grotowski, J. 1968. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Willet, J. (ed.) 1999. Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill and Wang.
Williams, R. (ed.) 1976. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. Great Britain: Penguin.
Mtwa, P., Ngema, M. & Simon B. 1995. Woza Albert! London: Methuen Drama.
Boal, A. 1979. Theater of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.