Florence & Wine in the Wilderness – A Theatre Review and Reflection on Black Identity
The
image of the ‘non-whites only’ bench in
Queen Victoria Street Cape Town, a reminder of Apartheid South Africa,
comes to mind when looking at the on-set photographs of Nwabisa Plaatjie’s Florence
& Wine in the Wilderness, a production consisting of two combined plays,
which closed at the Baxter Theatre recently.
Originally written by American playwright Alice Childress, each
play uniquely highlights the various socio-political, cultural, communal and
intimately personal narratives that takes place within a 1940’s African American setting. Alice Childress is acknowledged as "the only African-American woman
to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades”. The urgency
of the voices of her stories are most certainly felt through the characters in
both plays, particular in Tomorrow Marie, the lead female protagonist in Wine in the Wilderness.
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| Cultsha Kennis with Nwabisa Plaatjie |
Review of Florence
Florence opened with an elderly woman, Ms. Whitney, sitting on a bench
labelled ‘colored’. We later
discover that she is “giving myself
plenty time” before her train leaves for New York City where she will pay a concerned visit to Florence, her
daughter who is a struggling theatre actress. Between conversations with Florence’s younger sister, who drops
her at the train station, and a butler, Mrs Carter, a middle-aged white woman, arrives
on stage in a large red coat, bright red
lipstick and black stilletos and takes a seat on the ‘whites’ bench as she too awaits to board a train to New York.
The two
women make small talk while waiting for the train, mostly about inappropriate racialist and controversial topics
initiated by Mrs Carter. Ms. Whitney
discovers that Mrs Carter is a dramatic
actress, and bravely takes the chance of asking Mrs Carter to help Florence
build more leverage in the acting
industry. Mrs Carter responds with a name
and number on a piece of paper for a friend of hers who is looking for a
housekeeper – a climatic point where Ms.
Whitney’s rage and Mrs Carter’s apparent oblivion brings the short play to
a dramatic closing.
Ms. Whitney,
maintains her South African accent while
playing these American characters, allowing the audience on a sensory level
to travel between space and time, and perhaps inspire the audience into drawing
parallels between African American as
well as Apartheid and post-Apartheid racial politics!
Review of
Wine in the Wilderness
After
a 20 minute intermission, the audience returns to the theatre venue where we
are introduced to Wine in the Wilderness: Bill, a painter, is in his living room wearing
a dungaree. His friends, Old Timer, Cynthia and her boyfriend,
arrive after a riot had just ended, and they introduce him to a new lady friend,
Tomorrow Marie, as a subject for the
3rd instalment of his
triptych.
While Bill and Old Timer
are out on a take-out run for Bill’s new art subject, Tomorrow Marie asks
Cynthia for her expert advice on how to find a man – advice which she applies
as she lures Bill in during their painting sessions!
Wine in the Wilderness is a witty, provoking and entertaining piece
which definitely stirred its audience! Tomorrow Marie’s character, the real and the prospective shown through
the artistic eyes of Bill, represents the inner-most dialogue of black women globally. The show challenges
the dominant black masculine stereotype by calling for the acceptance of the realness of black femininity (Tomorrow Marie says
to Cynthia, “why should I give him back
his manhood when I was not the one who took it away?”) and all black
individuals – a necessary and relevant protest message in this era of decolonisation!
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| Profile of Nwabisa Plaatjie |
DID YOU KNOW?
A triptych is a set of three
associated artistic, literary or musical works which are intended to be
appreciated together (Oxford Definition).
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