Edinburgh Festival Fringe ended this week – and with it the wads of flyers, nightly fireworks, obnoxious street performers and overpriced drinks that characterise the largest arts festival on earth.
Coinciding with the stand-up comedy shows, contemporary dance, interactive theatre and spoken word was the third South African season at Assembly Festival, which curates a selection of works from throughout the world. This season was particularly important for South Africa, celebrating twenty years since the end of apartheid.
We spoke to Nat Ramabulana from Hayani, a play that sets the autobiographical narratives of playwrights Ramabulana and Atandwa Kani (son of protest theatre hero John Kani) against the vibrant, multi-lingual backdrop of post-apartheid South Africa. Hayani, which means ‘home’ in Venda (one of South Africa’s eleven official languages), questions the identity of a new generation growing up in a transitional society.
Nat Ramabulana forged the beginnings of the play from his drama thesis at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand in 2008. Ramabulana, who was sent to private school by his father’s employer Ms Hill towards the end of the apartheid years (when integrated schools were rare), deals in the play with his tumultuous upbringing: including his parents’ hardship as domestic workers, their determination to pay his school fees once Ms Hill passed away, the financial gaps between himself and his friends, and his mother’s later remarriage to a polygamist. None of these things are easy to act out, especially in front of your mum. In fact, Ramabulana’s mother, who now works as a carer in England, came up to Edinburgh to see Hayani for the first time since it debuted in South Africa five years ago.
We chatted to Ramabulana about all this at an underground bar in the heart of the University of Edinburgh, before his next venture to the bright lights of New York for a one-night performance of A Distant Drum at Carnegie Hall.
Going Down Swinging:
So how’s it going?
Nat Ramabulana:
It’s going absolutely fantastically. Reviews have been awesome. Unfortunately they haven’t translated into packed houses.
GDS:
I’ve heard the Fringe is a money loser.
NT:
Then that’s why! Makes sense. But for some performances we get really great audiences and, for those that do come, the responses are awesome. They really love the show.
For us, it’s a very South African show.
GDS:
What has the response been to the different languages used in Hayani?
NT:
One reviewer completely hated it very early on: she felt it completely alienated her. But she’s the only one. Since then, some people have loved it – they’ve said it gives [the play] a freshness. Some people loved the sounds. I suppose it roots it in something, you know.
So varied responses, but most of them positive. That was always the scary thing for us – we have shifted [the play] a bit; we have accommodated for an international audience. Back home it’s richer in the dialects.
GDS:
Do your South African audiences follow all the different dialects?
NT:
An interesting thing happens. We have two South African languages [in the show], Venda and Xhosa. Xhosa is more widely understood and spoken in South Africa. So all your ethnic groups will understand it more or less, even if they don’t speak it, whereas Venda – that’s what I am – is a much smaller group within South Africa, so people do know about it, but they won’t necessarily understand it, regardless of whether they’re black, white, coloured, Indian, whatever they are. So back home Xhosa is more widely understood; Venda isn’t.
GDS:
I really want to know what your mum says about the play.
NT:
I’m so scared and excited at the same time, because it’s been five years and she’s never seen it.
In terms of my upbringing, my mom upset me a lot with some of the decisions she made, and I didn’t want to be too biased in the conception of the play. In talking about what it was that we wanted to do, we made a decision to be really honest and really revealing in terms of the people in our lives, and how they were, and how they affected us. So I’ll bring up the stuff about my mother getting married to a guy who is a polygamist, which is an embarrassing story normally – it’s not something you would share with everyone – but I wanted to include that. […] It was just about being honest and really staying true to the story of how we grew up and how it affected us, because in the end it was positive. We didn’t turn out too badly.
GDS:
What made you decide to write such a personal play?
NT:
Personally, I was tired. I found the kind of person I was – and my history in South Africa – wasn’t being represented in the theatre that I was watching. I was just fed up.
There’s a term in South Africa called ‘coconut’, which means white on the inside, black on the outside: referring to black people who speak like I do, who had a privileged upbringing and education, and therefore had more white friends than black friends. Which I had, but I was still poor – but people used to call me that.
Up until varsity I felt I was really misunderstood, and people didn’t take the time to get to know me for who I am. I mean, nobody does that, but I just wanted to write a play that was honest and real and something that people could identify with. People [would] see me and think I’m privileged and that I have this cushy lifestyle/upbringing, but it wasn’t. It was really rough; it was really hectic.
I’m grateful to my dad’s employer, who decided at three years old to pay for my initial schooling. I’m also grateful to my parents who, despite how hard it was, carried [my education] on – because they could have easily decided at some point that this was too expensive, but they carried on.
More than anything it’s a bit of an homage to my parents; to Ms Hill; to the different people who contributed to my life. And I think it was just something inside of me that wanted to come out. The seed was sown in my long thesis in drama.
GDS:
What has the response been to this homage? Have you found other people in South Africa are feeling similar?
NT:
Completely. It was complete identification and relating from all colour and creeds and backgrounds – it didn’t matter […] We’ve had some really life-changing moments after the show, where someone has watched it and were like, ‘Thank you, for just speaking to me and making me feel acknowledged and represented’. The one word I can use as a description for what people feel like is relief – they’re just so relieved that this play is happening, and it’s happened, and they’ve watched it.
GDS:
What’s the arts scene in South Africa like right now? Have you seen a change recently?
NT:
We’re moving out of the post-apartheid struggle theatre era that we were in – the likes of John Kani, Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema, Barney Simon – those guys who contributed heavily to South African theatre during the times of the struggle. And for a large time afterwards, I think South Africa was in a transition phase – now that we’ve got our freedom, what do we write? Some plays came out, most of them really bad, but now what’s interesting is that you have my generation who are young enough to know what it was like, but not old enough to have the scars. We know the songs, we know how it was for our parents – they’ve told us the stories of what it was like – but we don’t have the scars ourselves. Like, I was called kaffir sometimes but it wasn’t under those circumstances. I wasn’t whipped; I wasn’t arrested.
So we have that generation, and that’s who I find now is creating and writing, and they’ve got some very interesting ideas on what South Africa is and what it should be. Recently, I was at an arts festival and I [performed] a play written by a young lady, and she was exploring the intercultural relationship between a coloured woman and a Xhosa man. So yeah, it’s very interesting stuff that’s coming out. I think now, more than anything, my generation and those guys a bit older than me are starting to find their own voices. It’s exciting.
GDS:
Is South Africa struggling with its identity at the moment?
NT:
Yeah, completely. Completely.
GDS:
What do you see as the role of the arts in this?
NT:
I think it’s central. I think it’s absolutely vital in helping South Africa create its identity. And it’s sad that they haven’t really seen the value or the importance of the arts in helping. South Africa is sports mad like New Zealand, so they look to sports to create the healing and bringing people together, which is done and it’s done great – the 1995 [Rugby] World Cup, the 2010 World Cup – there are some awesome freaking moments in our country, but the arts have been left out of it. But I think slowly, on some level, they’re recognising. I think there’s more of a dialogue around what the arts can do and it’s contribution to SA society.
This is the third year now of the South African season in Edinburgh, [and] I just really hope it carries on and it grows and they get more people on board to help, so it becomes a dialogue across not just government, but corporates and other institutions.
GDS:
What’s the funding situation like in South Africa?
NT:
Arts-wise it’s hard; it’s rough. This is the first time someone else has paid for us to perform the show in the five years that we’ve been doing it. We get these rave reviews and it does nothing, which is the most awkward feeling in the world. So we’re good; people love it; but no one wants to pay. No-one wants to invest in it.
GDS:
Do you think anything will change after Edinburgh?
NT:
I hope so. I mean, South Africans love things that have been overseas. You could go to New York and pack dustbins, but when you come back it’s like, ‘He’s from New York!’ So definitely, having it on the poster and letting people know is a big plus for us.
GDS:
What’s the next step with Hayani?
NT:
First up, when we get back we’re going to try take it to some more schools – kids love it. High school kids, they love the show, it’s amazing. They think we’re rock stars.
GDS:
Are you allowed to swear in the schools?
NT:
We swear in the shows. We don’t hold back on anything, and for some reason they don’t mind. […] I suppose in this day and age we’re not trying to be ignorant about it.
