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."

South Africa Update

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 updates us on her experiences this year:

"We've all found it quite hard to write about our experiences here because it has been pretty intense and very absorbing. So you might need to wait until we're home before we manage to write the whole story. However, here's a little flavour of what we've been up to.

We started our workshops last Tuesday and met the group for the first time. There are several actors, a couple of writer/directors, two hip hop specialists, four choreographers and a singer/actor, so quite an amazing set of skills around the room. We started by asking everyone what they do and what their key strengths and weaknesses are. I was struck by how boldly they all spoke about what they do, happy to say "I am really good at..."; a wonderful self-belief that would be unfamiliar at home. And yet underneath that we have discovered a lack of confidence in quite a different way - a lack of belief maybe that their work will be taken seriously.

We played some games together and spent some time setting ground rules - most importantly that we are here to learn from each other and share skills and techniques - which seemed to go down quite well. We were all nervous; it's quite something to come all the way across the world and try to communicate what you do, and it's no small thing to to open up to complete strangers in your second or in some cases third language!

Naomi led a very powerful writing exercise, getting us to complete simple statements such as I believe, I hope, the world is...etc. Then we asked everyone to perform each others. I think we saw more straightforwardly heartfelt acting in the afternoon than most of us ever see! It was rather amazing and a great way to get to know each other. Mark introduced a game with tennis balls and names which was to prove quite a challenge throughout the fortnight, not helped by the fact that I really can't catch... In the afternoon we introuduced some Shakespeare, which was very new to most of the group. Immediately we saw some real results - people really throwing themselves in. We were surprised that, just like at home, most people's first instinct is to impersonate an Elizabethan actor - but once we got ourselves rooted in 2009 South Africa the words really took off. It was a great first day.

Too much to say. I have to go now because today is our last day and we have to finish making our showcase, but more soon about the rest of the process."

Northern Stage in South Africa!

For the next couple of weeks, members of the Northern Stage team are in South Africa taking part in an exciting Summer School project. Like last year's South Africa trip, we're keeping up with goings on through a series of blog posts. Erica Whyman, Northern Stage's Chief Executive reported back today:

"I arrived in South Africa on Saturday afternoon after a long flight but quite easy by comparison. I had a coffee and a great chat with Zamuxolo (a dancer, choreographer, healer and generally rather extraordinary person) about the show he's making just now. Reminded of how hard going it is here. This last week has been the first time in four years he has had per diems for his actors (no wages even now) to spend any dedicated rehearsal time on the piece.

Then to dinner at Peter Stark's - who set up and now chairs the Swallows Foundation who are hosting us and with whom we have worked on this partnership for a few years now. Amazing to find firm friends on the other side of the world, but as Monde and Nomsa walk in and then Toto and Siya it is as if we work with each other all the time and they have just stepped out of the room. A great chat about clans, kinship, the DVD market, belief sytems and how to build an audience!

Sunday I could have a rest - try to do some work on Peter Pan and Northern Stages (not so easy sitting here!) and then lunch with Monde and Nomsa and their daughter Sivu to hear about their rather fantastic year, lots of touring and hard work but also Monde was asked to perform in front of Nelson Mandela and all the surviving accused from the famous Rivonia trial. Monde has a theatrical version of the events of the trial which he performed for them all in Jo'burg, met Mandela, and spent an hour chatting to the other survivors. Unforgettable. We talked about the forthcoming workshop and it weas very useful to get his sense of what was needed. He was especially keen to get theatre makers working better together. I then watched some of Zam's rehearsals before going to the airport to meet a very tired Mark (Calvert, Creative Participation Co-ordinator) and Andy (Stephenson, Stage Manager), and then together with Naomi we went to see the show "Aunt Rose" .

Zam has made a huge epic piece, entertaining, full of exuberant dance and song, moving and troubling. It tells the story of a generous woman whose spirit has been broken from years of abuse and living on the streets. It is really impressive although quite a challenging for the audience of over 150 family and friends who have unexpectedly turned up. The audience want to find everything funny so the cast have to work hard at times to be taken seriously, but they do and it works and by the last very affecting scene where Rose's ancestors come to cleanse her spirit everyone is gripped.

Afterwards we eat and dance and sing with the cast, a traditional South African welcome!

On Monday we saw 12 performances in four different locations in the townships. So fantastic to be here with colleagues who will take in all the complexities of this place and meet the challenge ahead of us with sensitivity and care. We saw powerful poetry, verbatim theatre, gentle comedy, mythic drama, new African songs, brilliantly choreographed traditional dance, an improvised monologue, mindblowingly skilled hip hop, a little Shakespeare and the most beautiful children's dance group who rehearse and perform in a little wooden room built onto the end of their leader, Florence's house. She didn't have a space to work in. So she built one. All the performances, without exception, were heartfelt, skilful and powerful and offered to us with such generosity. We are really very lucky to be working with such talented and dedicated people, who continue to make work and to practise and train in spite of having no resources. We were all shocked by the condition of their rehearsal spaces, about which they are uncomplaining. One young actress, Nomakula, improvised a very upsetting and brilliantly detailed performance of a young woman who had been raped. When we asked her about it she said she had had no notice and so had thought of it that morning from what she sees all around her. At the end of the afternoon, Florence's children took our hands as we got off the bus and led us inside. It felt as though all day that was what our hosts had been doing. It was a truly extraordinary day."

Racine's Life and Times

A Pre-show discussion
Thu 2 April 6pm

Professor Jan Clarke, Head of French at Durham University, in conversation with Erica Whyman

Did you know Racine wrote Andromaque for his lover, acress Mlle Du Parc, and was later suspected to have poisoned her?

Why did Racine abandon the stage at the height of his fame?

These are just some of the questions that will be posed in this fascinating pre-show discussion exploring Racine's life and times.

Suitable for students and public alike. FREE with a ticket to Andromaque. No booking required.

The Art of Business Performance

Northern Stage presents a new series of workshops for individuals wishing to develop their communication and presentation skills. Our last event in July received significant praise and endorsement from delegates, including representatives from RBS, Northumbrian Water, Newcastle City Council and Newcastle Building Society.

Our next workshop is on Tuesday 14 October. Erica Whyman, Chief Executive of Northern Stage and Director of recent productions including Our Friends in the North and A Christmas Carol will lead a Communication Skills workshop with a professional actor. This workshop is aimed at individuals who wish to boost their performance in presenting to a range of audiences, including meetings with colleagues and clients, pitching for new business and after dinner speaking.

This full day course with lunch offers extremely good value for money, with an inclusive price of £195 + VAT per person.

If you would like further information and booking details for this workshop please email Jane Hall at jhall@northernstage.co.uk

Erica Whyman in South Africa, Part III

I'm sitting at Johannesburg airport on my way back home, so this will be my final blog from SA. However I need to go back a day or two and write about some of the other memorable moments from Grahamstown.

One event that really changed my thinking was the opening of Wordfest, the literature festival. This is convened by the very impressive Chris Mann, a white South African, who has ensured the festival is a celebration of all the indigenous languages of SA. He addressed the conference in isiXhosa, with just four words of English, 'we need each other'. Before that though we watched as about sixty writers paraded through the streets, declaring the importance of words. They then gathered outside Rhodes university where they delivered their poems and writings into a box which was handed to the MEC (senior politician for Arts and Culture) who is expected to publish them. This being South Africa it transpired that she had failed to do this last year because of bureaucracy! The delivery ritual derives from a tradition of leaving a stone on a cairn to mark the fact that you have passed a certain village or place. As we listened to a chain of distinguished poets and praise singers address the room, it struck me that when we have been contemplating a major production here we have been assuming it will be largely in English. In any other country we would be assuming it should be in the most spoken language and then translated into English. Because of South Africa's peculiar history English is so dominant that we have not thought like this. Now I'm wondering, if we were to do a major classic with a company here, like a Shakespeare, would the groundbreaking thing to do be to perform it in isiXhosa, Afrikaans and English, with an explicitly mixed cast? If the Russians can do it, why not the South Africans?

We spent one afternoon at the festival talking with two playwrights, a professor of literature and a colleague of his. It was a fascinating discussion about the frustrations and hopes for the arts here. At one point the more experienced playwright, Monde Ngonyama said that 'the artists are tired', meaning that after the struggle against apartheid, the fight has gone out of their work. And that the system currently works against encouraging them to make and fund new pieces. If we could inspire people here to believe in the importance of their work again, and by doing so encourage artists in the North East to be braver about the work we make, that would be really something.

We returned to Port Elizabeth on Thursday afternoon, ready for our women's event on Friday. This event came from one we hosted at Northern Stage on the occasion of a visit by senior Eastern Cape politicians in 2007. It sprang from conversations I had on my first visit to SA with young and very senior women here who felt there was a need for women to get together to share experiences and speak about issues which are hard to address in most public arenas. Post-apartheid, women are the beneficiaries of strict positive action laws to ensure there are equal numbers of men and women employed in all places of work. This has meant a great deal of change very quickly, against a backdrop of a very patriarchal culture (in black and white communities) and increasing domestic violence. The event in Newcastle was a big success, with many NE women enjoying a space to talk, but nothing could have prepared me for Friday afternoon.

We arrived at Red Location museum, a huge building in the middle of the poorest township near in Nelson Mandela Bay. Some very senior women started to arrive, teachers, writers and the most famous actress in the Eastern Cape, who was part of Athol Fugard's Serpent Players and the first black actress to play to an integrated audience. As we gathered for lunch more and women arrived, many of whom had heard myself and Peggy Calata (who works for the Swallows Partnership and is a very well respected figure here) on the radio. They had come, not really knowing what the event was for, but wanting to get together with other women. A group of young dancers performed for us and then their director, Florence, was interviewed by her daughter about her life and the journey she has been on. Florence was born just a few months before me, and yet her life has been inutterably different, with very limited opportunities and a struggle to just survive, and yet she has formed this group and she encourages the young women to believe in themselves, and as she says, to 'be someone'. I was speaking next, but I was so very humbled by Florence and more than a little bewildered by the range of women in the audience, so I didn't say much of what I had planned. Instead I talked about my mother and grandmothers, which is certainly something that South Africa makes me think about; the fact that you are who you are because of other people, and most especially because of your family. I was unusually concise (!) but didn't give a good account of what on earth I was doing there..

Mo and Peggy were brilliant at creating an atmosphere of trust, and one by one the women introduced themselves and spoke about their lives and their struggles. It was extremely moving, with more than one woman speaking about bringing up large families, on their own, sacrificing so much to give their children an education, who then have no jobs or income at the end of it. Many young women spoke about fighting for their own education, including a government officer who walked for two days, wearing her shoes out, to ask for a grant to study, which she didn't expect to get. Another recurring theme was women who already have so little, making a point of helping others, caring for the elderly, working in schools, or simply expressing their admiration for each other. A number of young performers spoke about how the arts have given them a living, as well as self esteem and opportunity. Towards the end of the afternoon, a lady spoke who had come all the way from Cradock (a two hour drive), and her story was so upsetting that Peggy was unable to translate.By the end of the afternoon, quite a number of tears had been shed. Not just because of the stories of tragedy and struggle, but because all the women had had the courage to speak about themselves. There were promises to find a way to hold these events regularly and I know Mo and Peggy will find a way to do this.

I have to leave this extraordinary country now. I am still shocked at the terrible deprivations and continuing divisions and prejudices. And I am all the more inspired by the people who are fighting them. Against the backdrop of the nightmare that is Zimbabwe, and rising food and oil prices, this place feels more troubled and less optimistic than when I first visited, but so many colleagues I've met have an admirable determination to keep going, and to create opportunities for the next generation, the 'born free generation'. There is amazing talent in the Eastern Cape, and theatre is one small way that stories of the new South Arica, with all its struggles and hopes, can reach the rest of the world.

July 5th, Johannesburg, SA
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Erica Whyman in South Africa, Part II

So where to start. I've seen fifteen shows in five days, plus three talks, a couple of exhibitions and many memorable conversations. and I've eaten a massive amount of chicken! The Grahamstown festival is the strangest, most contradictory place I've ever visited. A frontier town with pretty clapboard houses, whitewashed security walls, elegant University buildings, and on the hill the huge grey concrete Settlers Monument, which makes the National Theatre in London look like warm and cuddly architecture. The Monument is a symbol of the 1820 settlers, from England, who took this land and claimed it as their own. Now it is the festival hub, covered in posters, filled with people selling their shows, and decorated outside by a line of young performers with white face paint, the 'statues', who will dance for you if you give them a coin. From the hill, you have a panoramic view of the townships, where most of the fringe companies are staying, reliant on lifts and hitchhiking to get to and from their venue.

The town is freezing cold, especially at night and we had to invest in hats and jumpers as the week went on. There is a buzz in the streets, but it seems quiet for an international festival, and I am shocked by how silent, and dangerous it can feel at night, even with hundreds of shows on. The roads are crazy, filled with cars, and very few helpful signs, so everyone seems permanently lost. And whenever you park you meet a car guard, sometimes quite elderly women , who will watch over your car in return for a few coins whenever you feel like coming back. One woman told us she would be on the street guarding cars until 4 am, because she had children to feed. The casual acceptance of poverty and desperation in this country still takes my breath away.

I won't list all the shows we saw, but just try to give a flavour of the huge range of work here. For instance we saw a British co-production of a new piece about memory, rather beautiful but very earnest. A touching play about the dreams of young women who want to move up in the world, an amazingly exuberant physical piece about daily life working in the mines, a play about prison, one about the justice system and a classic outdoor Midsummer Nights Dream performed in the sunny gardens of a magnificent country house by very well spoken drama students! The vast majority of the black led companies are presenting plays about rape, infidelity, inequality and HIV, which can become pretty tough viewing. Meanwhile much of the white led work feels very European and often has little connection to Africa or to life here. It is a very disconcerting mixture. Most of the young black performers cannot afford to see any of the other productions, although there is a fierce trade in comps and they make every effort to see the work of friends and neighbours.

Here are a few of my highlights, the shows I think I will remember for quite a time. A production called Halo, which looked at the role ancestors play in African society, and the effects of ignoring them on a white family. It was a very poetic piece of writing, very theatrical in style ad made me think about my own family and the legacy we each carry with us. A new play called Ten Bush, part of the main festival and produced by the Market Theatre, which was a very disturbing story of curses and witchcraft, asking some searching questions about violence and cruelty. A fantastic production called Awaiting Trial, made in a township in Gauteng (near Jo'burg) and performed by three tremendous young actors, who used simple physical staging to tell a dark and funny story about being selected for heaven and hell. A show called Curs In The Womb, a startling reworking of Oedipus set in a mythical Xhosa tribe, which was very funny, very troubling, and somehow had a happy ending once everyone had accepted their mistakes! I really enjoyed the bold playing style and the integration of Xhosa traditions and language, it felt much more alive than some of the dour versions of Greek plays you can see in the UK. And perhaps my favourite experience was seeing a small show called Life On The Streets of Grahamstown performed by sixteen very young people, some as young as seven and eight. They used mime and comedy to paint a picture of the tough life of crime, pickpocketing, gangs and the daily fight to survive. They were very self assured and engaging, and I was never lost although the whole show was in Xhosa. They really demonstrated what is possible with almost no resources except a massive dose of determination and a desire to give the audience a really good time.

On Sunday we saw Ours Was The Dawn, by our old friends Monde Wani and Nomsa Siyo. Monde is a writer, director and perfomer, who was in the show Elephant which toured to the North East, and Nomsa, his wife, is an actress and gospel singer. They both spent a few weeks with Northern Stage last summer so it was great to see them again. Their show was fabulous, so alive and funny and touching. They take a look at the new South Africa through the eyes of an ordinary couple who are dealing with a lot of change (she has a powerful dream to run her own business., and he is not so keen when she leaves him a flask of coffee rather than being home to make it herself!) . They perform with great affection, songs and a fantastic rapport with the audience. Monde also does an unforgettable impression of Mandela! We were thrilled when they got a great review from the Festival newspaper.

So, now I really should tell you about the fierce policeman.. Mo and I were stopped because she didn't stop at a stop sign. She was crawling over it a very few miles an hour as, as usual, we were not sure where we were going! The policeman was determined to make us pay a fine, and took great pleasure in explaining that if Mo didn't pay a warrant would be issued for her 'immediate arrest'! We made sure to stop at every stop sign from then on. This was not quite as scary as the night we accidentally turned left instead of right and found ourselves heading back on the motorway to Port Elizabeth. I was confident there would be a place to turn round, until Mo pointed out that SA roads don't work like that and you can go for sixty or more kilometres without any exits at all. Luckily there was a hotel not far out of town and we made it back in about twenty minutes.. it was a close thing though!

I'm back in PE now, for a very special women - only event tomorrow. I'll try to write more about that before I come home .

July 3rd, Port Elizabeth, SA

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Erica Whyman in South Africa, part I

So a few words for the blog from freezing cold South Africa. That's right, really properly, Newcastle on a bright February morning cold. I've had to buy gloves and lots of long stripey socks because it rather took me by surprise! The sun is shining and this country looks as spectacular as ever, it's just the middle of winter, so it's cold. I arrived on Friday after a 26 hour journey which makes you feel like you've lost a day of your life. Within minutes I was having lunch with Mo (a colleague who is now living and working out here for the Swallows project) and Toto and Siya (Technical Manager and Head of Development at the Port Elizabeth Opera House who spent a month with Northern Stage last Christmas). I think that's going to be my favourite thing about this trip, meeting people on the other side of the world who have become good friends through this project.

The Swallows project is a cultural partnership between the North East and the Eastern Cape of SA, and my job this week is to get a clearer sense of what theatre is being made here and what projects or productions Northern Stage might get involved with in the next few years. So on Sat Penny Rae (from Dance City) and I met with a successful music project SageGateshead have been running called Amandla Esandla (the Power of Five) . These amazing young singers have been selected from all over the region to travel to the UK and perform and then to act as facilitators to encourage other young people to develop their talent. They have the most extraordinary voices, and sitting in a little delapidated office in the Opera House they sang for us for an hour, each song magically fusing traditional Xhosa rhythm with a funky and sometimes cheeky modern sound. These guys feel like the future, and their generosity and exuberance is very moving. They say one very striking thing about Bex and Sharon, the singers they worked with from the SageGateshead, that they not only treated them with respect but they behaved as equals. eating and sleeping in the same place. This still shocks me, that young people here could be surprised not to be segregated from the white practitioners ( not much older than them). Clearly Bex and Sharon did a brilliant job here and I've asked the group to come and sing in the foyer while they are over so watch out for that!

We set out for Grahamstown Festival on Sat afternoon, a huge arts festival with an international reputation and a significant fringe programme, so that I could see plenty of work and the difficulties in making it happen here. First up we saw Weave, a piece our colleagues Kylie Lloyd (Director of Participation at Northern Stage) and her husband Mark have been working on with a young group from Motherwell ( a township close to Port Elizabeth). The piece was very strong, and affecting and the young people had tremendous confidence and poise. The young chair of the Arts Centre told me they had come on an incredible journey since working with Kylie and Mark. The same story, of giving these talented young people full professional attention making a real difference to their self respect.

The real challenge for me is how to create a project or projects which can have a lasting legacy. There is such need and inequality here that it makes you want to fix things, which of course we can't, and I want to bring the whole team here, which I'm sure they'd love (!) because it makes you so appreciative of what we have. But we have to find a way to make a real impact without neglecting our responsibilities at home, and perhaps most importantly without imposing our own style and practice on the artists here. I would like us to find a way to work together so that in both countries as many people as possible are empowered to have courage to make our work in the future. We have a great conversation over dinner about the need to train young directors in both countries. Maybe that would be a very good start.

That's enough for now! I'll write more soon about some of the work I've seen at the festival and our run in with a fierce policeman!

Erica, Grahamstown July 1st
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device