Why did you choose to stage this production?
I was very keen to use a production that used a big cast. People have been asking for a musical for a long time, so I wanted to get something with music.
Why did you choose to stage this production?
I was very keen to use a production that used a big cast. People have been asking for a musical for a long time, so I wanted to get something with music.
I was particularly interested in sourcing African scripts because, if I look at the curriculum and the kind of world view that we teach, there’s very little that positions ourselves as a university in Africa.
This play by Femi Osofisan was written in 1983, and it contains an interesting mixture of African traditional theatre forms and Western forms.
He comments on them quite satirically. He’ll use the idea of the play-within-the-play in a comic way, or in a self-referential way.
The subject matter is women, and based on the myth of Moremi, that figure of a woman who used her power to save the nation.
In 1969, during the Nigerian civil war, she still held a strong place in the Yoruba mythology.There was a great deal of controversy [when Osofisan used Moremi].
Soyinka accused him of reducing the past, or using what was sacred to the Yoruba, to serve his immediate political ends.
There’s a strong political and underlying energy that drives the play. Connecting the ancient African worlds and the contemporary world was a really nice challenge.
The press release says the play deals with African issues in African ways, and you’ve said how important it is that Rhodes places itself in Africa. How exactly does the play do this?
It looks at way the rebel community, who in fact were farmers, were characterised by the post-colonial police.
They were in the middle of a civil war, which had been running on and on. Everything had been undermined by the colonialist government so things were ripe for corruption.
It tells the story of someone who finds herself in a bourgeois world. Through the action of the play, the way the system is relying on her ignorance to maintain control of the poor is revealed. That feels like common Africa experience.
Morountodun deals with it in African ways is because here’s an African playwright who has an understanding of Western theatre methods and of African ones and, by combining the two, and commenting on them, contrasts them as well.
Is there anything in particular the audience should look out for?
It’s not often that we do a production of this size in the department. The cast is about 30. The department here is known for physical theatre work, but this is strongly based in drama.
Osofisan encourages using music in the text. He’ll give the text in Nigerian, and a translation, but he’ll say, ‘Look, it’s more important that you use music that has an immediate reference for the audience that you’re playing to, rather than trying to reflect the origins of the songs.’
We’ve been quite free with that. We’ve worked with Xhosa versions of songs. Culturally it invites different things from the students, and I think that’s really exciting for them.
It certainly is for me.We didn’t get a composer in, so it is something they’ve brought to the work themselves.
What are the physical demands on the cast?
There’s a bigger sense of ensemble. You can talk about listening to each other on the stage, but when there are 20 people on the stage, the focus is actually on two characters, I’m [as a performer]not just sitting waiting for my cue or for the scene to end. Everything I’m doing is focusing energy onto that [scene]. That requires a heightened concentration, and of being able to really listen to each other.
What were the challenges in the directing this production?
A lot of the time, and certainly for the less experienced students, you’re teaching basic stagecraft. So to watch young performers now starting to take possession of the role themselves they’re starting to listen and feel each other you can feel performances growing like this. Watching what develops between actors
has been really rewarding.
What are you most pleased with as a director?
That I’m starting to watch actors take ownership. I keep saying, ‘Once you’ve opened I’m not around’. Once we get to opening night, it’s not my play anymore.
It’s yours, and you need to take responsibility for it. The audience applauds you, not me. I’ll be in the pub, probably!
•Morountodun is at 7.30pm Wednesday and Saturday at the Rhodes Theatre. Tickets cost R20 and R15 for scholars, students and pensioners and can be pre-booked at Theatre Cafe.
