AFTER years of hard work, making their way up the ranks of development theatre, Umlazi’s Umsindo Theatre Productions have made a second major break in their journey – this year staging a production on the National Arts Festival’s Arena Programme.
They are the first community theatre group to stage on this platform. The Arena programme is intended to bridge the gap between the festival’s Main and Fringe programmes.
Works are either from established companies presenting something new and exciting, or established productions that have received rave reviews or awards elsewhere, or from the bright young stars of tomorrow who have made a name for themselves on the Festival Fringe.
Umsindo Theatre Productions won a Standard Bank Ovation Award last year for their production To Be Like This Rock – a poignant look at the scourge of human trafficking. The award gives accolades to some of the most exciting work presented on the Festival’s Fringe programme as judged by a panel of professional arts critics.
As a result of the award, Umsindo earned their spot on the Arena programme this year.
The Umsindo group have been active in Durban development theatre for some time now, guided by Twist Projects – a local development initiative.
We caught up with award-winning writer/director/actor, Neil Coppen, who’s one of Umsindo’s mentors – and co-writer of Secrets from the Drawer which the group will stage on the NAF Arena this year. While Coppen won’t be directing the Grahamstown version, as he will be in Cape Town on stage with Venus In Fur as he has written the script and will be flying to Durban for a day or two to help shape how the production is staged.
“Later in the year we intend to return to the rehearsal room together to revisit it,” Coppen said.
“It’s called Secrets from the Drawer and is based on an idea by the Umsindo theatre group who will be responsible for performing and creating the production on stage in Grahamstown. I never got the chance to see their original production, which was staged a few years back, and this I reckon was a healthy thing as it gave me the freedom to take the seed of their initial idea and reinvent the story and characters from scratch.
“During the writing process I am in frequent touch with the company directors who throw new ideas and research at me. It’s a nourishing process from start to finish.
“During the writing of this play I went back to reading Spanish playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca’s plays, his rural trilogy which includes classics like Blood Wedding which are powerful dramatic works, and his is a style I wanted to pay homage to when writing this play.
“I also greatly admired the television series Six Feet Under and when I heard this story was set in a township morgue I combined the two influences with my own sort of magic realist slant.”
He said all the stories were drawn from actual events and people.
“My job as a writer was to weave them all together and create a dramatic structure that might excite a contemporary South African audience. Although the story is set in a morgue, it is not an entirely hopeless one. While this sort of environment allows for a writer to make some pretty powerful social commentary on the state of the nation etc, I have tried to stay clear of being didactic or unremittingly bleak,” Coppen said.
“There’s nothing worse than going to the theatre and feeling like you are being bludgeoned over the head by a daily newspaper.”
The key protagonist of the piece is Albert Mkhize, an elderly man who has been cursed by an ancestor (his father) who was given an improper burial after his untimely death in the 1960s.
“Albert is haunted by this wondering ghost and, as a result, is able to hear and access the hidden desires of the dead. With this gift, or curse, he takes it upon himself to work at the morgue and ease the passage of the dead into the next realm. This involves him setting out to complete any unfinished business they might still have in the living world. Over the course of a few days, he encounters and becomes embroiled in the lives of various characters, each of whom arrives bearing a new secret. In this sense the play is written like a sort of riddle that, by the conclusion, needs to be solved.
“I suppose our story looks at community and how sometimes the action of one man – a devious politician in this instance – has huge repercussions for those living on the ground. But it is also a deeply human story about love, loyalty and family. I think the story we have come up with makes for compelling theatre and there are plenty of twists and turns along the way to keep one involved from start to finish.”
Coppen (Abnormal Loads, Tin Bucket Drum) has been working with The Twist Community Theatre Initiative, headed by Roel Twjinstra and Emma Durden, for several years assigned as a writing/director mentor with various community theatre groups in and around KZN.
“There is an abundance of talent to be found in these groups and I learn so much by working alongside them… The advent of B-grade action flicks and soapies on television has had a pretty destructive influence on South African scriptwriting and storytelling in general, so I work hard to steer the young groups away from the more obvious stereotypes and melodrama. We work together, researching, asking questions, interrogating an idea before forming it into a script which I then go home and write at the end of the day.”
To Be Like This Rock proved the Umsindo group a force to be reckoned with, their growing presence being felt at a host of Durban development festivals.
“Umsindo are a deeply committed and passionate bunch of theatre makers. My first experience with them was on the Twist project Like this Rock and we rehearsed and created the show, directed by Debbie Lutge, in an abandoned old butchery in Umlazi with shebeen music blaring next door. These artists inspire me beyond words,” said Coppen.
“They have been given so little to work with in the way of funding, infrastructure and instruction but they get on with it, they source a venue to rehearse in, they cast actors, build their own sets and props, write their own material to perform it.
“Their stories are brave reflections on South African society. They are socially engaged and concerned storytellers whose work has enormous power to shift and challenge perceptions of all those who see it. Most of all they do not wait for others to enable them, they don’t sit around, like many do, moping about not getting funding etc. They simply put their heads down and get on with it.
“I sense with them that there is an urgency for their stories to be heard and seen, and that is the essence of good theatre making in this country, making it happen despite the seemingly insurmountable odds.”
• Secrets from the Drawer stages at The Hangar from June 27 to 30. For the full National Arts Festival Programme go to www.national artsfestival.co.za