LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      Ruda: Black people?

      John: No, no. Oh, black people wanted more. White people. But . . . a few white people left. The rest stayed. Then the crunch came when they opened at the Market Theatre. Gerard Maclean from The Star phoned me and said, “Tonight there’s going to be some kind of a protest. I don’t know what, it’s just information I am getting.”

      So I tell Sandra, “Something is going to happen tonight. If you feel unsafe, look at me and nod, we will both leave the stage.” I made a little joke. I said, “My people don’t mind me kissing you, it’s your people who have a problem. My people don’t mind.” So in the Main Theatre, which is now the John Kani, I put my hand below her breast, and there was the biggest silence I have ever heard in the theatre. I put my hand up, because I am tilting back, pretending there is something in my eye. So that she could lean over me, and her breast is almost on my face. And I touch her breast. And I hear this one “Oh God!” And she grabs me. It was Sandra who kissed me! I’m a servant, see. I say, “No, ma’am, leave me alone”, and Sandra goes, “Mwah”, and she keeps it that way. And jirre jong, the exit doors were opened. Two hundred people, led by the late Professor Lincoln Boshoff, walked out of the theatre. The other theatregoers stayed and booed them. We went backstage and we came back. The part they were objecting to was not the kiss.

      Ruda: It was the touching?

      John: More than that. We run offstage and I come back, pulling my zip up. And Sandra comes in holding her panties and her pantyhose in her hand. So what freaked them out is what they think happened backstage!

      Ruda: Yes, it’s the implication.

      John: We didn’t do anything! But we had an incredible run – apart from the fact that every night we would get bomb threats. We’d get a call that there’s a bomb. Colonel Tait from John Vorster Square, the bomb squad, would come with the sniffer dogs. I had a person who drove with me. Sandra was protected too once she got into her car. We decided not to give Sandra the hate mail, because it was terrible. It was terrible, terrible hate mail.

      Ruda: What did that mean to you?

      John: Excitement. I like a play that creates a conversation, that creates an interaction and engages the audience. I didn’t do it to annoy or to be part of protest. It was a great play and I had an opportunity to work with a very, very good actress, Sandra Prins­loo. But this was the eighties, this is the high point of the United Democratic Front. Black and white people were coming together voicing their objection to the system of apartheid. Suddenly the opposition to apartheid was not black. It was just the people of South Africa. It was exactly at that time that Miss Julie, followed by Othello in 1987, happened, in that political climate. Where somehow even artists stood up and said, “I too, I want to be counted.”

      Ruda: It became a symbol.

      John: (Nods) It became a symbol. And that I enjoyed very much. But then, when we came to 1987, my wife said, “No. No. You nearly died during that play.”

      Ruda: You were attacked and almost killed, right?

      John: Ja, eleven stab wounds around my body, my face, my back. So my wife said, “You’re not doing this one. It’s not just a play. You know this play, and Desdemona. You know that you’re going to be in a love relationship here.” I said, “It’s a moment in my life. To play this great role, Othello, the classic, directed by Janet Suzman, from England. Don’t worry, there won’t be any problem. At least this time they know it’s Shakespeare.” Oh my God.

      Ruda: Was it just as bad?

      John: Not as bad as Miss Julie, but there was a bit of reaction from the audience. Very few of them walked out. But they watched. That’s because they wanted to see the moment.

      Ruda: But with Othello, you know that is what’s going to happen. That’s what the whole thing is about. So the audience was prepared.

      John: They knew what was going to happen. Then suddenly, one day when I came back from the theatre, the security police stopped at my home in Soweto. “Can we ask you a few things?” they said. “Who decided to do this play?” And I thought, I’m going to say, The Market Theatre, not me. I am just an actor. But I was the artistic director of the Market Theatre, so I couldn’t get away with it. And the policeman says, “Why did you choose the play?” And I said, “Look, in the life of an actor, you have to do the classics if you really want to enhance your career.” Then he said, “But tell me something. On page 17, you are with the duke who is going to tell you to go and fight the war outside. Your wife comes in, right? And you . . . you kissed her. It doesn’t say that; why did you do it?”And I thought, “He read the book! Die poliesman het die play gelees!7 He read the play.” I was so happy. And then finally he says to me, “In the bedroom, when you were killing her, you were wearing nothing but a little loincloth. And you straddled your whole body over her beautiful white body. Why did you do that?” So I thought I’d be a little smart and I said, “Remember in the sixties, when Maggie Smith and Laurence Olivier played the same parts? Laurence was covered in black make-up to look black. They couldn’t kiss, they couldn’t be sensual, because that make-up . . .”

      Ruda: It would rub off!

      John: “ . . . it would rub off on Maggie’s white dress and Maggie’s face,” I said. “I don’t have that problem.” And he looked at me, like, next! But finally he let me go. We filmed the play and it was shown in England. It was very well received. In fact, it made me recognised as one of those “greatest African Shakespearean actors”. It was an incredible experience for me.

      Ruda: Against that background, how did you personally experience the transition in 1990?

      John: It was an incredible time in our lives. Remember, the release of Nelson Mandela happened when the entire country, especially the black communities, had been rendered ungovernable. I had been living in a house, and I couldn’t pay rent or electricity for six years. I couldn’t pay even if I wanted to, because the offices for rent were burnt down. Nobody would come and cut electricity. The rioting around the communities was incredible.

      I remember at night I would wake up and hear the Casspir trucks that used to patrol our township. And then one night I didn’t hear them. I got worried. I almost said, “Where are the soldiers? I need to hear them to harass me or to look after me.”

      And suddenly Nelson Mandela walks out [of prison]. He makes that speech in Cape Town, and he is asking us to give him a chance, saying that if he could, through negotiation, save one life, it would be the greatest achievement. But we needed to trust him.

      We didn’t know what he meant exactly but we said yes. What followed then, right up to the death of [ANC leader] Chris Hani in 1993 . . . was the violence in our townships of the Third Force8 or Fourth Force or Sixth Force . . . but at the elections of the 27th [April 1994] we had to re-emerge as a different people. We had to come out as black people with an understanding that there is a better future that could be here for us.

      We even had to believe in this thing called the vote. Remember, we fought for freedom, we fought for liberation. Now we were told about something we had never heard of: democracy. Excuse me? Explain this thing, what is democracy? It means we are not going to kill all the whites. It also means we’re not going to chase them all out of the country, because we need them. It means there are a number of good black people and good white people that will come together, and take this country to the future of equality, of equal opportunities or something. We bought into it like that, and it was amazing.

      I remember 1994. I took my whole family, young, four, five of them, the girls, the boys, to vote. They didn’t vote, I just wanted them to experience it.

      Ruda: How old were they?

      John: They were . . . sixteen, the other was nine, the other one twelve. The press came, CNN came, the BBC came. They wanted me at the front of the queue so they could take a picture of me voting. I didn’t write anything on the ballot. I didn’t vote; I just put the empty clean ballot paper in the box, because I wanted to stand in the queue. So they took the photograph, and I went back to the queue. I asked my son, “Where is your mum?” “No, Mum

Скачать книгу