Pantechnicon; South African Company

[Background noise] [Singing] [Singing] [Male speaker] We've been together for, this is our 14th year. [Eleanor Stout] 14th? [Male speaker] Yeah we've been together. And, and not just together, we school together. And not just school together, we been We've been this close. We've seen each other you know all this fourteen years you know, more than you know respectively more than we individually have seen our families. We've been together this close. [Eleanor Stout] In South Africa there are four million whites and 15 million non-whites, most of whom live and work in sections designated as the white area. In order to prove his right to be in the city, the nonwhite must produce a passbook on official demand, a passbook which identifies the carrier not so much by name but by number. This is just one of the indignities of the apartheid system,

indignities which have been presented recently in theatre form by South African actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. I'm Eleanor Stout. [Lurtsema] And I'm Robert J. Lurtsema and this is Pantechnicon a weekly program on entertainment in the arts brought you weeknights and every Sunday at this time. Since their school days, John Kani and Winston Ntshona have been acting together. Both are native South Africans and central figures in Serpent Players, The theater group from which plays such is Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island were created. With the Serpent Players they perform numerous plays in various parts of South Africa and have appeared at the African drama festival in Durban. Because artist is not accepted as an employment category for South African blacks, John Kani and Winston Ntshona rehearse and conduct their workshops after regular working hours. Their work became so successful it became necessary for Mr. Kani, who was a Ford employee and Mr. Ntshona,

a factory lab assistant, to leave their income-producing jobs in order to continue their sideline as actors. During this period the play Sizwe Banzi was conceived in collaboration with playwright Athol Fugard. Sizwe Banzi opened at Boston's Charles Playhouse recently and it will alternate performances with The Island through October 5th. [singing] [singing] [Stout] Sizwe Banzi Is Dead brought audiences roaring to their feet recently, applauding a masterpiece of acting in a powerful gripping performance you must not miss. While its humor strokes you like a velvet glove, the frustration and cries of anguish

ultimately break through with heart wrenching pain In this portrait of daily life for blacks in South Africa. Wearing a white laboratory coat with a jaunty bow tie, John Kani begins Sizwe in conversation with the audience as he thumbs through a newspaper jabbing fun at the world and its leaders. During the discourse, John enacts a wonderful factory scene about the day big boss Ford from overseas visited the assembly plant. But he laments his employment and longs to set up a photographic studio of his own. More humor as we are led to the governmental red tape necessary for a black to have his own business. And the business flourishes. Old people, parents, children, until finally Sizwe Banzi enters, played by Winston Ntshona, wearing a rumpled white suit with a battered hat plopped on his head. He wants a photo taken for use as a letter to his wife who was not allowed by the government to be by her husband's side. flashback scene we learn about the South African passbook system and catch a glimpse of apartheid realities. Ultimately Sizwe assumes the name of a dead man called

Robert, In order to claim Robert's passbook. Winston's character provides a wonderful foil for John's more aggressive awakening African. Winston is the passive accepting worker dulled by frustration who can only find happiness when he's drunk. The interweaving of these two characters, their humor, and their plight make an evening truly you'll never forget. With us today are John Kani and Winston Ntshona. [singing] Congratulations both of you on on being Tony Award winners. Are you surprised at the success of these two plays outside of South Africa? But what -- how do you feel about these two plays in the-- and the recognition that they're getting?

Are you surprised at the response? [Ntshona] We like to say we're surprised with it. I suppose it's a tricky question you are asking. When we built this show or put them together we didn't realize the impact that would have outside that society though we're, we did see you know, a lot of potential in them but not as much as is happening. [Stout] Winston, evidently a Washington newspaper mentioned that these two plays are, he described them as sticks of dynamite outside of South Africa. Why do you feel these two plays are so explosive? [Ntshona] Let's --I suppose it's because what they deal with or they talk about what they say is what gives within that society. The whole thing about the racial situation, the things that affect blacks of that society and the laws and regulations

governing that society. [Stout] John how were these two plays developed? Can you give us some background on both of the plays? [Kani] Yes, we belong to a group of [cough] actors I call it a group because we are loosely organized with no organization like uh subsidised theatres, you know that theater for blacks in South Africa He's not on the official list of any sort of respected ?contemporary?. You cannot become an actor. You have to be employed. Therefore everybody works during the day with a steady job. [Stout] Oh, employed elsewhere? [Kani] Employed elsewhere, and uh at night when for three hours get together with a group in a school classroom, in their church, in somebody's house because there are no theaters in the black areas at all. We work there though of course the two of us are full time professional in the sense that we don't have jobs anymore.

So we usually get together to do these plays like Shakespeare, Brecht, Strindberg, Beckett, we've done them from the great classics to the theater of the absurd to all the contemporary writers. But upon ourselves we've taken it as a responsibility that alternatively after doing what would be called a straight written play cut and dried by a certain author we would come back and do something in this attempt of playmaking which could-- Western words could describe it as experimental theatre. [Stout] What do you mean by attempt at playmaking? What do you mean by that? [Kani] The word "experimental theater" has got so hackneyed that we dont know anymore what it means. Act- Actors seem to think that when they are doing anything in the lines of experimental theatre that you have to get people together, and force the audience to react, to participate in whatever you are doing. Yet the word "experimental" as we understand it was what

we do, we experiment on an issue, in an attempt to get the audience involved. That the audience must be drawn into what we are doing as actors, because of the subject matter or the power of the thing we're doing. Not put the responsibility or force the audience to be part of it. [drumming] [Ntshona] Basically performances done for blacks in our society because of the

nature of the situation. But there are instances or chances of performing across the color line depending on special conditions like permits. [Stout] Oh you have to get a permit in order to uh- appear in front of a white- [Ntshona] Yes if you're crossing color lines you must have a permit which when applied for is not easy to get and what enabled us to manage that loophole within ?overruling? regulation which states that no person is allowed to perform across the color line, that is blacks can never entertain whites. Or conversely whites cannot entertain blacks but within that there is a loophole, for instance if you set up a scene whereby you would be entertaining strictly on a pay invitation basis that everybody you know like is an invited guest,

Then along those lines or under those conditions one can cross the color line. This is how we manage to do Sizwe and The Island for mixed audiences at home. [Eleanor Stout] What does the -- does the government try and repress these two plays at all because they are a condemnation really of the South African system? [Ntshona] Not necessarily these two plays, anything that is in the nature and form of these two which could be labeled as a kind of voice that gnaws at the back of the government always meets up with surveillance by either direct government officials or by the police or whoever is authorized to do that. Anything in this nature. [John Kani] Therefore the going to the people is, we are inviting them tonight like we're now at the Charles, wherever we'll be at the Charles tonight, we'll be taking the trip to New Brighton. Where we were born where we live and there we will go together through our lives.

[Stout] Do you find that the audiences are responsive to this, that they're very good about throwing out commentary and ideas? Or do you have to -- do you find sometimes that you have to pull ideas from them? Is there usually a good give and take in this? [John Kani] Well it depends on whatever your play and the nature of that particular place, the geography, and some of the factors, in South Africa It was in a black audience. I mean we know exactly what we're talking about, you know the kind of common denominators are suffering, all of us. If you play like in England, the English is very very reputable for him being very conservative and trying to protect what belongs to him and his privacy. So it takes a little bit of time to make the breakthrough, to relax him and make him part of the thing. The American audiences, talking about whites. The white American, he's on the little bit loose side than the

English, a little bit more outgoing, ready to receive and participate, uh, not needless to mention the blacks because they are exactly like they are at home. So if the audience is a bit balanced like there are uh black and white members of the audience, the night becomes a bit exciting. [music] [Winston Ntshona] In South Africa there is what we call Group Areas Act.

It's a segregation law, there are areas which are proclaimed white, there are areas which are proclaimed Black and these black areas are something worse than ghettos adjacent to these white towns. Now the laws of the Group Areas Act forbids any black man to travel from one town to another town without the permission of the authorities of both towns and giving four reasons why you live in this town to go and work in that town. Now Sizwe Banzi come from the rural areas which is -- we call it the reservoirs where they dump the unemployed until they need them for a special contract to work in the industries. Now those people stayed there for about five to almost their whole years waiting for some white men to come saying "I need twelve men" and then

Sizwe Banzi decided to pack his little bag, leave his wife and four children and go to a white city and look for work. Getting in there, he got entangled with the pass laws system which govern his movement and jobs, influx control, job preservation, and on and he was tossed out because he doesn't have the permission of both authorities so he had to go back, a thing which is very difficult for a man with a wife and four children who have been starving for the rest of their days, decides to hook up with a friend for that particular night before he decides what to do. And things happen in the big city there are some of the blacks that were born in the cities who are more with it, who can manipulate the system, who knows how to survive under these terrible conditions and thus stumbling upon the cot a dead man's body and trying to find out with Sizwe's persisting, insisting

that something must be done about this dead man. While we in the city feel "well he's dead snothing to do with me. Check whether he's got a dollar, which I could use 'cause he can't use it." Then we get the book. They find out that he has the right to remain in this city. Now The crux of the matter is for Sizwe Banzi to die in the place of this dead man and the dead man to live because he has the right endorsement stamp in his book. [Eleanor Stout] The time is now, or the time could be any time? [Ntshona] The time is now. [Stout] And just the two of you in this play, is that right? [Ntshona] Yep. [Eleanor Stout] Do you use any props in your work or is it a barren stage? A bare stage. [Ntshona] No it is not a barren stage but there are a few props, just a few. [Stout] Is there any connecting link between the play you were just talking about and

The Island? [Kani] No. [Stout] There's no common thread? [Winston Ntshona] Except maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe the message. [Eleanor Stout] Which is? [Ntshona] Uh, human behavior which say- how human beings behave towards one another. [Stout] What happens in-? [Ntshona] Which is the theme of the two plays basically. [Stout] What happens-? [Ntshona] Inhumanity of man to man. But that's the common theme between these two. Thats exactly the thing that links these two, otherwise in terms of the artistry and everything else you know, there's nothing else that links them. [Eleanor Stout] What happens in the Island? What goes on in- in the second play? [John Kani] The two men who committed crimes, political offenses so to speak and then they are sent to an island. And then what we deal with

it just to go beyond, it was an attempt to go beyond what writers usually do when a man is arrested, you often see a man walking down the street and the next thing you see is a police van and the policeman getting out his handcuffs or whatever things he's going to use and take the man and throw him into the van and the last time you're going to see this man is when he goes, is when he's at court and when he goes down the docks to serve his sentence. Now we have taken our scene, we have ignored that man, that is understood that a man once upon a time walked down the street. He was 22 when he was charged at court and sentenced two men now are sentenced, one is sentenced to 10 years in prison and the other one to life for political offenses. And then what we are doing is to try to work out and figure out as to how men living under such conditions survive, and then we have attempted

to marry. 2 human beings, man and another man and let them live in one single cell. Just see how they manipulate their way around secluded place called an Island. [drumming, singing] [Stout] What do you suppose is going to happen to theatre in South Africa now? What is the future for

theatre in South Africa both from the standpoint of white audiences and black audiences? [Kani] It [cough] it is becoming slowly and very forcefully a very definite and confident place, The most valuable voice of the people at this moment. In a situation like South Africa where any sound uttered by a human being on both camps, black or white that has anything to do with the social, political or whatever conditions of that country is stifled and strangled immediately. Now theatre, in, that country ehh, its difficult to say that it could be divided into two. There are those that swing with the stream, that do things that could go under that uh, with the consent of the establishment

the Peter Pan, Annie get your Gun There's a girl in my soup, Broadway ex-con or or One Time Fame one time successes or actors who are no longer respected in America or in England. Get to South Africa and go perform there and keep the world going. Or the type of other actors who are more concerned with the real issues in life and in that particular time would dedicate their lives into talking about things that people not only want to hear but have to hear. [drumming, music playing] [Stout] Thank you for being with us today. We've been talking with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona

currently performing at Boston's Charles Playhouse through October 5. For Pantechnicon this is Eleanor Stout [Lurtsema] And Robert J. Lurtsema. We'll be back again next sunday at noon, and remember that Pantechnicon is also heard on weeknights. Pantechnicon is produced for WGBH radio by Greg Fitzgerald [music] This is the eastern Public Radio Network. This is the Eastern Public Radio Network. [silence]