EVEN the best actors struggle for money. On stage and onscreen, James Ngcobo is red hot; he shares movie sets with Oscar winners and his shelves are stacked with his own awards. Raising R500000 to update a Fugard classic for the World Cup crowds, however, he’s facing a freeze. “I feel like Joseph knocking at the inn door on the night before Christmas,” he sighs.
At 40, the KwaMashu-born star agrees that doing the hard yards up the showbiz ladder is part of the job. He welcomes SA hosting the Soccer World Cup because live entertainment outside the stadiums will benefit big-time from the tourists.
A member of the Market Theatre’s artistic committee in Johannesburg, he’s up to date with the commercial opportunities lining up for next year, and where he can set out his own stall amid heavyweight players such as the State Theatre in Pretoria, Johannesburg’s Civic and Sandton’s glitzy Montecasino.
“As an independent producer, director and actor I have to raise money to finance all of my projects,” says Ngcobo. Trained as a teenager in Napac’s Loft company in Durban, he has taken up the post-apartheid mantle of the iconic John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who performed the often-banned playwright Athol Fugard’s works worldwide.
Kani and Ntshona won Tony awards on Broadway in 1975 in the plays The Island and Sizwe Bansi Is Dead.
“Now I’m going around knocking on doors to try to finance a production of Master Harold and The Boys,” says Ngcobo. “It’s not easy. At present, the corporate world is mostly focused on sport. We accept that it gets extensive media coverage but we cannot afford to neglect theatre’s importance in our national identity, as the World Cup puts us in the global headlines.”
The R500000 he needs is a break-even budget, he explains, to restage next year a play that helped keep attention riveted on SA during its fight for freedom three decades ago. “It’s a three- hander, without expensive sets, and I believe that Fugard deserves to be represented in such a year. He’s one the world’s best playwrights, and I believe that our young actors today deserve to relive the roles that John Kani and Winston Ntshona brought to life during the struggle era.”
Ngcobo’s own professional career got under way as the African National Congress was unbanned in 1990.
By the time he relocated to Johannesburg in 1992, the young actor had toured Britain in classics by Fugard and Chekhov. He became established on prime-time TV in 2003, becoming a household favourite as the hen-pecked husband in the comedy series Stokvel.
“What Stokvel did for the first time was show that a sitcom about a young black family in the townships was as popular as anything out of Hollywood,” says Ngcobo. “I hadn’t done much comedy up till then but it’s a valuable skill to master in any form of commercial entertainment. It requires as much technique as playing in Chekhov or Pinter.”
It was not only there that Ngcobo unleashed his inner Eddie Murphy — he used it in theatre in Janice Honeyman’s production of the French hit La Cage Aux Folles, playing the flamboyant butler Jacob in high heels and hot-pants.
“You have to push your portfolio to the limit to stay busy in the work market,” he remarks. “I am not gay, so I had to work hard to get the character right, the accent, the walk, the costumes — it was such a departure from my resumé that it made me very marketable.”
That resume nowadays also features movies with bankable Hollywood names such as Kim Basinger, Hilary Swank and Kristin Scott Thomas.
“The quality of our talent and performance here is equal to any worldwide,” say Ngcobo. “Visiting actors are astonished by the amount of work we do to stay competitive in our profession, and how low are the fees we get for it.”
On the upside, the many awards he has won in theatre and TV have paved his way into corporate theatre.
“Utopia for an actor is to be in two plays and a TV series simultaneously,” he says.
“It means working very hard while learning one role, rehearsing a second and performing a third, but it does provide a healthy income. Corporate theatre pays equally well and is an excellent discipline to deliver top-class entertainment for an audience comprising staff and clients.”
Working for clients such as Murray & Roberts, Harmony Mining, , and Acsa has taught Ngcobo to become businesslike about making theatre as popular an entertainment as sport.
You can’t produce a show for an audience of construction workers, miners or airport staff without getting them thoroughly hooked into the action and storyline, he maintains.
“Entertainment comes first,” he says. “Theatre is not a temple of culture. It should be as much a part of the family lifestyle as television and the weekend braaivleis . We need bigger audiences to get more backing to produce more plays. Filling seats is the bottom line of the theatre business; it has been since Shakespeare’s days.”
The increasing numbers of black executives in business management, Ngcobo believes, can help swing the corporate mind-set towards supporting theatre with the same level of conviction that united audiences behind Fugard in the 1970s-80s. It needs to be a habit as regular as supporting township soccer, he adds, coming to see plays based on life as it is right now.
As an actor, Ngcobo has worked with every established director in SA; as a director, he uses that experience to mentor fast-rising young talent, as colleagues such as University of Cape Town drama graduate Mandla Mbotho, Mncedisi Shabangu (nurtured in the Market’s Lab programme), and Lara Foot Newton are doing.
“What we all share is a common vision to bring a new generation of our stories to stage in 2010,” he says. “We have a legacy to respect. I cannot play a black person whom I’ve never met. Times are hard today, sure, but I cannot make a career out of playing happy natives. Our human stories today require depth to portray the times we live in.”
He’s not short of distinguished support. Zakes Mda has written a play for Ngcobo called Our Lady Of Benoni, which is now in development, but Ngcobo gives little away about several other projects he’s working on for next year.
Each one is a blend of entrepreneurism and blind faith, he admits, and some scripts can take years in preparation before the necessary financing, venue and cast become available. In the meantime, rival directors, producers and theatre managements are pitching their own projects into the corporate market in search of funding.
At present Ngcobo is rehearsing Songs Of Migration, a documentary musical he’s developed with legendary jazz- man Hugh Masekela. “We’ve been talking about it for five years and 2010 is the right timing,” he says. “It opens in January. Hugh’s acting is excellent; he is the heart and spirit of the play — Masekela the man, beyond the music legend.”
Part purist, part pragmatist, Ngcobo still puts his heart ahead of his accountant. One example: he learned multi-camera TV directing during the six-year run of Stokvel, a handy sideline for an actor in a broadcast industry dominated by daily soaps and weekly sitcoms.
The extra R25000 or so for a week’s work of rehearsing, shooting and editing a half-hour episode pays many bills, but not in Ngcobo’s case.
He abhors a safety net. “You can’t afford to get comfortable as an actor,” he insists. “Edge is what defines your work. As a man, okay, you need security, but as an artist you can’t afford to let your passion become a routine job. Corporate work gives me self-discipline and strengthens my technique. Then, on television and on stage, it allows me to push the line with every project I do.”
One TV production he’s leading next year is about James Mpanza, the maverick leader of the Sofasonke party who led Johannesburg’s homeless in 1944 to settle in shantytowns around Orlando. “I’m already taking horse-riding lessons,” Ngcobo says. “Mpanza was like a Moses for the homeless 60 years ago. He had a dream to take his community out of the shacks they were living in, and he’s now seen as one of the fathers of Soweto.”
The visibility he attracts as that historic firebrand will serve to excite attention for a stage production in which Ngcobo will play the father of controversial MK activist Andrew Zondo, the teenager who was hanged for the bombing of Amanzimtoti’s Centre in 1986.
Janice Honeyman will direct the play, which is based on transcripts of Zondo’s trial, done by Prof Fatima Meer.
“For me, the true business of theatre is summed up by the old Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams,” Ngcobo says. “Build it and they will come. He built his baseball diamond in a mealie field. The stories we are performing today, though, are very real. They are the link between where we’ve come from and what lies ahead.”
As a man, okay, you need security, but as an artist you can’t afford to let your passion become a routine job