A month?

Really? A whole month since our last post? I guess that's what happens with handmade home-brewed theatre making: so busy rewriting, reblocking, fundraising, moving sets around, sourcing sound effects, solving transport problems and praying for a stage manager that you don't find time to blog!

Aah well, a lot has happened since the whirl of festival. This brand new little wobbly baby is getting stronger legs at last. This strange but compelling mixture of ghost story, love story, quest story is starting to settle.

I saw my first performance in front of an audience - a tiny audience of trainee arts and culture teachers. They laughed a bit, (in the right places, thankfully) and hung on tenterhooks (at least one tenterhook) and didn't notice me in the lighting booth, swearing, muttering, holding my breath, shaking my head and scribbling on my prompt copy of the script (new endings, new bridging moments...) I felt like I needed to pick up the whole play and just shake it vigorously until all the bits fell into their proper places. It was a bit like that. I wrote a whole new ending coz I felt cross that it seemed to end on such a downbeat note - a real winter play.

And then, we did a free performance for the lovely National Arts School kids, to thank the drama department for so kindly letting us use their theatre for rehearsing in. We spent a chaotic day polishing, working some transitions, developing one of the backstories, and - wow, something really ignited that night. I sat in the lighting booth spellbound - missed two cues because I was just enjoying the rollicking performances of three talented actors stretching their muscles and starting to play a bit, to explore the edges of their comfort fields.

What fun. Jessica is incandescent at the moment. Ndu's wistful Thandeka is kind of heartbreaking - its such a common, ordinary tale really, there are thousands of young girls lost and searching in this city, but she gives it a quiet integrity somehow. She's anywoman, but she could be your sister. Watch this actress. When she's smoking up screens and stages in five years time you can say, you saw her in Paydirt first.

And Nhlanhla let out that impish playful spirit of his that night. Lovely to see, when the actors really start trusting each other and feeling that its ok for them to try new stuff out, its not going to throw anyone, they're just jolling.

So, with a few more tweaks and tugs, we'll be ready for our run in the 969 Festival next week. We play alongside some very hot new plays and are so excited to do this on our own stomping ground. 15th - 19th September, every night at 20:30 - Wits Downstairs Theatre.

See you there?

The "Outside Eye"

Well its been jolly hard to sit vas in Jozburg, while the cast and Jen are 'doing the festival'. Although I have to say I have done my fair share of them, and I wouldn't have missed the arrival of my brandnewbaby niece for the world.

It all seems to be holding together, though news from Jen is scarce. I know what its like - you're constantly having to fend off people in silly hats, people trying to sell you silly hats or trying to get you to go and watch their show, old mates trying to get you to drink at 9 in the morning, and streetkids with never-ending renditions of shosholoza. If its not that, its working that damn village green and trying to recruit audiences. Hard work, all in the bitter cold. Do I sound like I wish I was there? Course I do! Every year if I'm not in Grahamstown for the first ten days of July, it feels all wrong.

So here's the review we got on the festival website. Its good to get some outside validation for stuff what we were trying to do. For the record, Paydirt is rooted in a character's journey - a simple quest narrative - but what we going for was to let the 'story' of Joburg's origins coexist with her story, and see how these mirror each other. Like Indra's web, perhaps. Little bits of the parts reflected in each other. Or something. He's quite right though, the play will definitely evolve. There's lots we still want to do with it. It'll be interesting to see what Joburg dwellers make of it.

Grahamstown here we come

Qaqambile. This character based on a real person that Nhlanhla, spoke to in Joubert Park.

Some friendly ghosts called George. Legend has it that George Harrison discovered gold in the rocks around these parts. Or was it George Walker? George Honeyball? All three battle it out, Goldrush style in Paydirt this Thursday... and Friday, and Saturday, and for a week after that.

Hoswa chats up Thandeka at Home Affairs...
All pics by Lisa Skinner

Wheweeee. Sorry about the disappearance. That's what happens when you're on the inside of a black box for three weeks being scriptwriter, director and marketing person.

Well, they're ready. I think. First performance tomorrow evening at 6:30 pm and I feel rather odd not to be there. Not for the first time, I'm faced with choosing art or life, and this time its life. My sister is due to deliver her baby into the world next week and I'm sticking around for that one, so the dear Paydirt cast are with Jen in Grahamstwon and I have every bit of faith in their ability to kick ass tomorrow, and the next day and the next and the next.

I think its turned out well. Oh, by September it will be a completely different play, I have no doubt, but for now, its working. It has a sweet simplicity to it - the core story, that is, while the rest - well, the stories and movement sequences layered into the story provide a kind of Joburg buzz. There are the history layers, and the jolting familiar oh yeah I know that moments - tequila drinking, lost in Joburg, reciting streetnames. I love those sequences, the gesturescapes that Jen has created.

Its exciting. I wish I could see it in front of an audience!

Palpable relief and the need for a climax

Ok, so we had our first run without stopping and our first audience of three. And although the play still needs to gets it's arc right, (ie we need to see what happens in the little quest we establish - does Thandeka find out what happened to her dad in Johannesburg? Does it matter? Does she make sense of her journey...etc) - still, at least the audience (of three) is interested in what happens to her. This is good.

Its been an incredibly taxing week, trying to push it all together. The performers we are working with are AMAZING!!! I am SOSOOOOOSO impressed by them. I am constantly giving them new bits of script, new lines, taking away lines I gave them only a day ago. (Oh sorry, did you learn those words, well, we're cutting them!). And I have never seen any of them with script in hand during a rehearsal or run through. They are SO professional, SO versatile and so so talented.

Congrats to them. And to Jen and I for casting them - aren't we clever for spotting such talent!!

No, no video yet. Monday, Monday....

The Abyss (and back again)

Blogging about this baby is harder than I thought. There's always a bit of mystique in the rehearsal process and artists don't like voyeurs in the early stages - with good reason.

Sometimes we wonder if there's a play in there at all. Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself. Staring down into the abyss wondering if there's a play in there somewhere. Watching the calendar shrink.

The slow work of trying to make concrete the invisible. Ideas abound, but bodies in space and time catch up slowly. This process of page to stage and back to page again is confounding sometimes.

We had Guy in town two weeks ago. Our lighting designer and production, old mucker from Grahamstown. What were we thinking? When we first planned his visit, we felt sure that the early June was the perfect time. We'd have enough to show him by then, and we'd still have enough time to polish before the festival. Gulp.

We didn't factor in the Wits prac exams and how incredibly fragmenting and time consuming they'd be. So at best we had some cobbled together scenes to show him, from all the material we've been generating. A hilarious "friday night" movement sequence, and this still tentative little narrative... girl travels to Joburg to find what happened to her dead father... meets taxi owner / tour guide megalomaniac... hmmm, but its sketchy at best and needs serious editing.

When we had a run on Wednesday I went home with a rock in my heart. That sinking ooooh noooo feeling. Stayed up late and made some bold cuts, shuffled some scenes around and now its looking stronger.

Its turning into a collage of ghost stories - strange little portraits of Joburg people past and present who's spirits wander the streets and tunnels underneath the streets.

We'll be taking a video clip over the weekend, and if we're brave enough we'll post some here.

We declare the gold diggings open

Joburg is probably the most democratic of South African cities. Sure, the rift between rich and poor is an ever widening canyon. Sure the real money is in the hands of the few, and it helps if you went to the old boys schools. But if you have a smart idea and a gift for talking, you can make cash flow towards you. Easier than, say, Cape Town where its your pedigree that counts, and how many grape vines your family owns.


We built this city on rock and gold
Joburg has opened her dirty streets to Nigerians, Rwandans, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Mozambicans, Malawians, Cote d'Ivoirians, Senegalese and Ethiopians. Lets not forget that both her sky-grabbing buildings and her earth-burrowing shafts were built by migrants from the north. Well, apparently this was forgotten when so-called foreigners were chased, burned, beaten and stolen from, a year ago. But lets not dwell on that weird contradiction right now.


Come join us on the playground
So in the spirit of the inclusiveness that made this city, we want to throw open the doors to Paydirt, and invite people to collaborate. Do you have ideas, snippets of writing, stories or real life experiences that you'd like to share or see included in a unique collaborative performance piece? If you are a digital artist, writer, photographer, an image maker, storyteller, animator or simply someone who lives in and loves Jozi, you are welcome to send us a proposal for a project that might link into Paydirt in some way. Think exhibitions, online collaborations or site specific performances.

But that's not all
The play that launches in Grahamstown on the 2nd of July is still under construction. Currently its a melting pot catchment for portraits, landscapes and meditations on the Jozi experience, with a chopped up linear narrative running through it.

Be part of the first blog playmaking collaboration ever (that I know of)
Like the city that has been built, erased, re-built and is still under construction, Paydirt will continue to be shaped and tweaked long after its Grahamstown run. Or so we hope.
So here are some starters – taken from some of our chapter headings. We welcome stories under 500 words and they must relate to Joburg – portrait, landscape or still-life.
Lost
Park Station
Negotiations
Trouble
Friday Night
Traffic-Lite
Under Construction
Hillbrow
Protection

Send them (or your proposal) to playdirtplay@gmail.com
If we like yours we'll either:

Put it on the blog
Incorporate it into the play
Use it in one of our future reworked versions of the play

You will be credited. We cannot yet promise moolah, but if you invite more and more people to visit the blog we can persuade new sponsors to give us money and we can promise them some logo-space on the blog.
Go on, give it a go!

Process - early days

Collaborating in the way we have chosen requires huge reserves of trust and lots of letting go. As well as a healthy dose of control, in the right places, and loads of preparation. Sounds contradictory? Its weird, but I'm a firm believer in a creation process that doesn't involve constructing so much as uncovering. Or allowing. Finding the underlying structure and pattern to a work, listening closely, and scratching away at the topsoil to reveal what's there - a skeleton framework under the sand. The key is spotting a pattern that others may not see coz they don't have their eye tuned in.



Let me take you back to our early chats. Jen's idea - I want to create a work that uses three modes - portrait, landscape and still-life. My idea - I want to create a work about Joburg. About the way that this city's goldrush origins still inform it's contemporary spirit. The original city site was the driest, most inhospitable piece of land in the area - allocated for settlement because it was the only spot where there was no gold underneath. The population that streamed in like the rivers that originally brought gold dust into the sludge here in the first place, billions of years ago, came purely on the "tata ma chance" philosophy - a bit of adventure and (maybe) some money. They chipped and drilled and blasted away, penetrating ever downwards in search of those quick moments of yeah-haaa! Yep, its origins are distinctly masculine.



So, we take these two ideas and we audition people using some extracts from Vladislavic's Portrait with Keys and a couple of non-verbal scenarios based on getting lost in the city. We cast three people that we like and feel excited about working with.



At our first meeting, we take those three modes - portrait, landscape, still life and we brainstorm. Mining each of our 'Joburg' experiences, we create three lists. What is Jozi to you - the landscapes, the objects, the people.



We give homework - everyone must go and research two random people that fascinate them. One on each end of the economic scale.


At the next rehearsal we share these stories, gestures, observations. Nhla has had an extraordinary conversation with a homeless man in Joubert Park. His story is one of many stories that give truth to the "if you go there you will never come back" line. A man from Lusikisiki whose mother does not know where he is. Their stories layer quite neatly over the conversations we already had, and the structure that is starting to emerge.

I've already got a storyline I'm nurturing as a hook - something about a girl who goes to the big city in search of her father. She meets a skellum. She has some choices. I'm not pushing this story, but i'm aware its there, and I share it, and ask them to do some character exploration. I only know the opening phrases of it - no crisis yet, just the first movement.

In the meantime, we are also using each of their audition pieces as source for some material. Jess did a haunting breath/running/chased sequence. Ndu clearly is adept at character channeling. Nhla, well, he's got a nice take on the rural perspectives. We spend some sessions bouncing the storyline back and forth at each other until it starts to get an arc. This is fun. We realise that we all have an 'outsider' perspective on Joburg. But then we remember that this is the core Jozi experience. Everybody was a foreigner here in the early days. Its part of the soul of the city.

In the meantime, Jen developing some killer gesture-scapes with them. As you can see, our rehearsals til now are fragmented and we are working piece by piece, filling in a structure that can accommodate small slotted-in segments. Yes, there's a storyline. But there's also a whole parallel historical narrative that sketches the history and origins of the city, as we follow our heroine on her journey. And there are also parallel "car window" vignettes. Short cuts, chopped in. Fragmented, yeah, that's the scene here in Jozitown, so that's how its working for now.

And I trust that it is. Working, that is.

That was the first week or so. Now that we've done some interesting explorations and generated some truly delicious physical sequences ( the Friday Night Brenda Fassie sequence is to die for, doll), we need to start pinning it all together and sculpting. I've got the structure down now. Nhlanhla and I have figured out the story arc. (Well, it just landed, really).

I'm frantically trying to get a decent working script out for tomorrow, so pardon me for now.

I do have an exciting aspect to talk about in terms of collaboration and further processes we wish to explore, but before those come, I just needed to give you that bit of background...

If you'd like to write to us, please do - you can send email to paydirtplay(at)gmail(dot)com. You get the code, neh? That's to fool spammers. Coz I'm a streetsmart Jozikid, me. I can sommer fool the spammers. They won't catch me.