Before 1994, many South Africans used theater as a voice of protest against the government. But with the end of apartheid, like the artists who watched the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe, theater had to find new voices and search for new issues.
Protest theater has a place again. It's not against whites or apartheid. It is against injustice and anything that fails our people.
In any character you are given to play, be it evil/good/whatever character, you begin with self. You examine yourself and ruthlessly see similarities between you and the devil, or between you and the dictator, or between you and the kind man.
Other theaters exist here solely to entertain the white audience and keep South Africa on a par with what's going on in the West End or Broadway. The Market concerns itself with theater of this country, for this country.
In 1973, 'Sizwe Banzi is Dead' and 'The Island,' which I co-wrote with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona, transferred from The Royal Court Theatre to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End.
When I tried to do 'Waiting for Godot, it was such a controversy. I was tired of political theatre. All I wanted to do was 'Godot.' You know what happened? We were told we had messed up and politicised a classic that has nothing to do with S.A.
Theatre has had a very important role in changing South Africa. There was a time when all other channels of expression were closed that we were able to break the conspiracy of silence, to educate people inside South Africa and the outside world. We became the illegal newspaper.
The exchange rate of the Rand against the dollar, pound or euro makes South Africa an attractive location. The positive side of this is it gives our artists and technicians an opportunity to work.
Seventy is beautiful for me. I am truly, at last, an elder.
Art is universal. When works of art become classics, it is because they transcend geographical boundaries, racial barriers and time.
I have been on the Urban Brew board for many years and assisted with the artistic evaluation of the various shows that were pitched to the production company.
You found during apartheid a strange occurrence from the white folks themselves. There were those who did make a choice to speak out and stand and be counted in the army of human beings who believed in justice. And then there are those who left.
Our job as artists, we believe, is not to make changes in society. We don't have the ability to do that. We reflect life. We are the mirror of the society to look into. Our job is to raise questions, but we have no answers.
I still remember the moment when my teacher, Mr. Budaza, walked into class and said, 'Today we are going to study 'Julius Caesar,' one of Shakespeare's most important plays.'
Inkaba' is about a feud between two South African families. They have been fighting for years, from one generation to the next. It's like those typical feuds you have in rural KwaZulu-Natal where, after a while, you do not even know why you are fighting.
'iNkaba' has made me famous in the living rooms of the people of my country. It was almost like being famous all over again. People stop me in the street and shopping malls to take pictures.
When western culture developed, we became detached from nature, detached from our relationship with the animals. We saw animals perhaps as only the rhino horn, the elephant's tusk, we saw it as making money.
When the situation politically became intolerable within South Africa, we used the arts as a weapon for change.
'Sizwe' is the beginning of protest theatre; 'Nothing But The Truth' is post-apartheid South Africa.
I had to look at white people as fellow South Africans and fellow partners in building a new South Africa.
