The Story of The Coat (South Africa)

Members of the Northern Stage team have been in South Africa taking part in an exciting project. Like last year's South Africa trip, we're keeping up with goings on through a series of blog posts. Erica tells us more about her experiences:

"On the second day of our workshop, we brought in some copies of a play called The Coat, devised by a group of actors in South Africa in 1966. I noticed it in a collection of Athol Fugard plays, and was rather amazed by it. It was scripted and directed by Fugard from a series of "theatrical experiments" that the recently formed Serpent Players were engaged with at the time. The Serpent Players later became very famous for the plays The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead, both starring Winston Shona and John Kani. John appeared in the first performance of The Coat. The group lived in New Brighton, a township close to Port Elizabeth. In the early 60s they were known for producing modern classics such as The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Les Justes. None of them were allowed to perform for a mixed audience. When they did perform, they were frequently raided and their papers and scripts confiscated. Inspired by Brecht, they started to play around with coming in and out of character and a conversational style designed to wrongfoot, seduce and challenge their audience.

The Coat tells the story of a coat which was sent home to New Brighton from one of the many trials in Cradock (in the north of the Eastern Cape) which condemned political prisoners to long sentences, often on Robben Island. A sentenced man hands the coat to a woman who is visiting her accused husband. He doesn't know the woman, but he asks her to take the coat back to his wife and tell her to "use it". The play wittily and disturbingly unpicks what might or might not have happened when the coat was returned to his wife - did she use it? Did she give it to her son to use? Did she sell it? Through these stories, the actors (who took the names of characters they had recently played in order to conceal their identities from the authorities) paint a vivid and moving picture of life in a township.

We read the play together and were all very excited by its possibilities. It is very funny, but also asks for great characterisation and sensitivity. It was first performed to an all-white audience in the Hill Presbyterian Church (we pass a sign for this every day as we walk to the Opera House) , who had asked to see a sample of the work of the Serpent Players. Many of the group comment on how the play still has something to say now about life in the townships and we are all struck by how powerful it could be to revive it at the Opera House, which still has a largely all-white audience.

Over the new few days we played with the text - trying different ways of staging it and trying to understand how each scene works. In the second week, a remarkable thing happened. Nomhle Nkonyeni, a very distinguished and brilliant actress who was in the original cast of The Coat, met with me and then agreed to come into rehearsals. She guided us and challenged us and was a wonderful and inspiring presence in our room. It was a bit like having John Littlewood herself coming to see how you're doing with one of her scripts. Nomhle was incredibly generous to spend time with us and when we put an extract of the play into our final showcase, it was a great honour to have her in the audience.

We'll write more about the work we did as a group, and the final show in which all the Northern Stage team did a little dancing... but thats enough for now."