One day when I am old and grey, and no longer inclined to let inconvenient facts and details get in the way of a good story, I will tell people about the time I shared a stage with two greats of SA theatre: John Kani and Buhle Ngaba.
I won’t mention that we weren’t actually performing in a play, or that my presence was largely redundant (I was only there to introduce a conversation between the two of them for a gathering of fellow actors and academics). I will simply sigh, with a far-off look in my eyes, and say, “Ah, yes ... John, Buhle and I ... those were the days!”
My moment in the limelight was short-lived. The next day I was back in my customary position in the audience, watching them exercise their craft in very different ways. We were at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. Kani was starring with Antony Sher in Kunene and the King, coming towards the end of its run on the Fugard’s main stage; Ngaba gave a one-off performance of her solo piece Swan Song in the more intimate Sigrid Rausing Studio.
It was an opportunity to reflect on two distinct career trajectories — which first intersected when Ngaba was cast in Kani’s play Missing in 2014 — representing a “passing of the torch” between two generations of theatre-makers.
The productions were marked by contrasting styles, apposite both to the spaces in which they were being performed and to the dramatic content. Kani was more declamatory; Ngaba more restrained. Kani’s character was teaching the audience about SA history, painting in broad brushstrokes; Ngaba’s character was telling us about her life, making us her confidantes, creating a pointillist portrait.
Both plays are framed by Shakespearean histories and institutions. Kunene and the King was co-produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon. Swan Song was created during Ngaba’s residency at the RSC through the Brett Goldin Bursary in 2016. But while Kani employs Shakespeare as a leitmotif (intertextual references to King Lear weigh heavily on structure, plot and thematic concerns), for Ngaba this is merely a starting point: the famous swans of the Avon river provide a sustaining metaphor.
A swansong is, of course, a farewell. It is a moment of sublime creativity before death or, more prosaically, an artist’s final performance. This would be a paradoxical focal point for a young artist whose career is flourishing and expanding in various directions — Ngaba is actor, writer, activist, educator — but only if we make the mistake of conflating the creator with her creation.
Strands of Ngaba’s own life story are woven into Swan Song, but the character we encounter is autonomous. The minutiae of her emotional and intellectual world are so vividly portrayed that she is singular and self-contained. Yet she is also a symbolic figure, speaking on behalf of others about experiences that are simultaneously “universal” (love, lust, adventure, freedom, fear, loss, loneliness) and very particular to being a young black woman in SA.
This is partly a celebration, an affirmation of the embodied self with all its quirks and frustrations: a process of recognising that the beautiful “wings” with which an individual can fly may be seen by others, or be internalised, as deformities — like a winged scapula. But there is also an undertone of despair. Our protagonist is isolated and in pain. If her narrative culminates in self-expression, it does so through self-harm.
There is a discomfiting sense of proximity, of unearned closeness, with both performer and character in Swan Song. It premiered inside a container-turned-theatre in Oudtshoorn at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in 2017 (where it garnered two Kanna Awards). Audiences at the upcoming Vrystaat Kunstefees in Bloemfontein will experience this powerful intimacy when Ngaba performs there on July 5 and 6.
Swan Song is a small show with a big heart, and Ngaba has big ambitions for it. Before heading to Bloemfontein, she will be hosting “Going for a Song”, an art auction raising funds for future performances. If you’re in Cape Town on July 1, get to the Book Lounge on Roeland Street and put in a bid to help this production take flight.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.