ArtSpoken & Reviews
Short in length, big in entertainmentLesley Stones08/03/2012 12:07:52 
Lesley Stones: SA Shorts is a brilliant venture to bring new voices to the stage. Two things will become very clear if you go to see SA Shorts, an evening of new plays written and performed by youngsters. Firstly it confirms that theatre isn’t even ailing, let alone dying out, and secondly, how crucial it is for a dispassionate director to take a show in hand and cut through any over-indulgence by the author. More entertainingly, perhaps, it’s also a great reminder that student theatre can be a huge amount of fun. SA Shorts is being staged by the University of Johannesburg’s Arts & Culture department as a laboratory for new voices and fresh ideas. Or as the head of Arts & Culture, Ashraf Johaardien, puts it, as a platform for new, emerging or established playwrights to show fresh material without the pressure of commercial constraints or the box-office bottom line. UJ’s call for unpublished material received 35 scripts, which director Alby Michaels whittled down to six. The plays then went through further development to hone their content and presentation before being unleashed to a paying audience. So is it worth a look? Well, it’s probably worth going just to see Kill Me, Please!, a quirky quickie that exploits our macabre fascination with killers. Playwright Rhea MacCallum is Californian, so this fascination is a worldwide phenomenon, yet it fits beautifully into South African culture where we pore over gruesome details with unseemly interest. Candy Brown is excellent as the willing victim, with a new hairdo and smart clothes so she’ll look good when the Mail & Guardian splashes her photos as the latest victim of the serial killer. Brown and Lonwabo Ganelo as the Slasher are the stars of the evening, partly because they get all the best lines and partly because they’re both so believable. It’s funny and ridiculous, and a real little gem. The other shorts varied in style, content and quality. Some were two-handers, one had a cast of 13, other were big on special effects but the scripts failed to reach any point or conclusion. Some playwrights stuck loyally to the old advice to write about what you know, with Losing the Plot by Anthony Akerman featuring three characters trying to hatch a storyline for a play. “It’s all been done before, it’s just the spin you put on it,” one of his characters says. That’s undeniably true. Feminist playwright Rob K Baum gave her play The Opening the unusual spin of actors dressed in black with only luminous stick figure outlines visible. Thankfully the content finally firmed up to give it substance as well as a gimmick. Special effects also featured in Dance the Dance by Tristan Jacobs, but a lack of purpose left the play feeling as insubstantial as its main character, a spirit. Wave was the most meandering of all, and twice as long as it should have been. Writer Renos Spanoudes begins in light-hearted mode with a warning that to some, this play may appear meaningless and a whole lot of crap. Well, not a whole lot of crap, but certainly a fair amount. “I’m not sure I’m on the right medication to understand this,” my partner whispered as a cast of clowns tumbled and wailed around. Then it suddenly switched mood two or three times to touch on the raw topics of the Far East tsunami and, much closer to home, the stampede for admissions to UJ in January that left the mother of one student dead. It’s raw stuff to address in a play at UJ, and was done with taste and sympathy. But too much tomfoolery and repetition diluted the impact and highlighted the need for strong direction to pare it down and prevent author ego getting in the way of a good story. Metaphorically Speaking by Zanandi Botes left me thinking I’d stumbled into an offshoot of Waiting for Godot, as two characters struck up a random conversation about life, and the meaning of. Reginald Hufkie was particularly lively as the man with a broken zip, injecting a lovely level of flippancy and zing into the philosophical debate. As he told Nico Horn, the man with a bucket stuck on his foot, you can’t be helped unless you want to be helped. Some of these playwrights and actors need help, some just need more exposure, and it was rewarding to see such experimental work and promising young actors given chance to make their voices heard. SA Shorts runs at the UJ Arts Centre Theatre, Kingsway Campus until August 11. Lesley Stones is a former Brit who is now proudly South African. She started her career by reviewing rock bands for a national UK music paper, then worked for various newspapers before spending four fun-filled years in Cairo, where she ended up editing a technology magazine. Lesley was the Information Technology Editor for Business Day for 12 years before quitting to go freelance, specialising in travel & leisure writing and being opinionated about life in general. Her absolute passions are travel, theatre, the cinema, wining and dining. Lesley Stones Freelance journalist lesley@lesleystones.co.za www.lesleystones.co.za Web site: http://www.lesleystones.co.za
Related Venue:
UJ Arts Centre, cnr Kingsway and University Road Auckland Park Johannesburg Gauteng South Africa
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