July 20, 2007
By Ndaba Dlamini
RECONCILIATION has been tackled in many a play in South Africa, but Craig Higginson, in his play Dream of a Dog, delves deeper into this promise with a realistic exploration of the relationships between blacks and whites in the old and new dispensation.
Dream of a Dog is at the Market Theatre, opening to much applause on Friday, 13 July.
Directed by Malcolm Purkey, it is set on a KwaZulu-Natal farm. Patricia (Vanessa Cooke), a 60-year-old farmer's wife, is getting ready to leave. She and her husband, Richard (Peter Terry), have sold the farm and are preparing to move to a house near the sea.
On the scene bursts a young man, Look Smart (Mncedisi Shabangu), immaculately dressed in a suit. He worked on the farm as a boy, was sent by "Madam" (Patricia) to boarding school and then disappeared. He is back as a successful property developer and has vengeance in his heart.
Then there is Beauty (Bongiwe Given Lunga), the couple's maid. Fleeting though her appearance may be on stage, it is Beauty who tells the truth about what happened in the dark past of the family. Her heart lies heavy with the secrets that she has kept concerning the death of her sister, Look Smart's beloved, on the farm a long time ago.
Haunted by memory
The death of Beauty's sister still haunts Look Smart, and his return to the farm marks a transformation of roles as he dominates Patricia, flooding her conscience with accusations and threats. The conversation between Patricia and Look Smart is almost poetic and exposes the past and present relationship between the two characters in a subtle but realistic manner.
The play's plot is tight and Purkey says it was a daunting and exhilarating task to work on a play as richly textured and complex as Dream of a Dog. He describes it as partly a thriller, "in part rather poetic, almost 'absurd'; in part a painful realist document in search of truth, when truth seems to remain forever elusive".
"The play suggests that there is a brutal incident to uncover, but can we trust our memories of this past event? Whose memory should we rely on, and who will have the final picture when sickness of mind and soul destroys our images of the past? Memory and the search for truth may be redemptive, but what happens if our search for this truth is clouded by dreams of revenge?"
South Africa is in need of deep healing and the play poses some pertinent questions, Purkey adds. "But do we deserve this promise of redemption? If we are damaged, what do we have to do to clear out the poison, and how do we live out the promise of reconciliation?"
Working on the text took two years and there were many more years of work before that. Higginson came up with many drafts in response to Purkey's provocations and interventions.
Playwright's intentions
"I have been working on this play on and off for about five years. It started as a radio play, became a screenplay, became a stage play, a radio play (for SAFM) and then the stage play you are seeing today," explains Higginson, who has a few words to say about his intentions in writing the play.
Mncedisi Shabangu and Vanessa Cooke in the Market Theatre's Dream of a Dog
One of these has been to write about the history of a country and its people in one scene - past, present and future.
"Another intention has been to ask us to stop belittling each other by cramming each other into the essentialist boxes we've inherited from Verwoerd. I am trying to find a language and a theatrical form appropriate to complexes of our democracy and our barely explored freedom.
"I am asking us to confront the terrible thoughts and actions that have passed through all of us, not because we are defined by them but because, firstly, we seldom do, and, secondly, because they are not the only things we ought to be defined by."
Dream of a Dog, painful though it might be in places, is a brilliantly staged play that makes the audience feel part of the action. It is running until 26 August at the Barney Simon Theatre, at the Market Theatre complex in Newtown. Tickets are available at Computicket.
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