News from the Mission
Theatre Production Reaches Broad Audiences on HIV/AIDS
August 14, 2007
In the Continuum, an outstanding off-Broadway show about two women dealing with the harsh reality they have been infected with HIV, has concluded its four-week tour through South Africa.
The show opened with five performances at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, starting on July 5. The play was also seen by hundreds of high school students at the Education and Arts Festival the following week.
The play then traveled to Cape Town, Mafikeng, Johannesburg, Polokwane, Witbank, Pretoria, Durban, and KwaMashu for a full schedule of shows for a wide range of audiences and workshops with drama students and NGO organizations dealing with HIV/AIDS.
The show was seen by several thousand South Africans, received rave reviews from all corners, and reminded all that this disease affects people of all classes and backgrounds.
In an environment in which people are weary of hearing and reading about HIV/AIDS, this gut-wrenching production reminded South African audiences that this tragic pandemic is affecting black women in both Africa and the United States – and that it must be talked about openly and addressed with compassion and sensitivity. Actors/playwrights Nikkole Salter and Danai Gurira powerfully presented the stories of a sophisticated TV journalist from Zimbabwe and a teenager from Los Angeles dealing with the news that they are HIV positive. The play put deeply moving stories on the impact of HIV/AIDS in front of audiences in a way that another lecture, another study, or another news story simply can not do.
Johannesburg
On July 23rd, our Public Affairs Office in Johannesburg (PAS/Johannesburg)staged the play at Johannesburg’s famed Market Theater. 140 people attended the performance.
After the play, noted South African actor John Kani rose and gave brief remarks praising the US role both in addressing social issues in South Africa, and in supporting the arts through a variety of exchanges.
Mafikeng
PAS/Johannesburg also staged three performances of In the Continuum in Mafikeng, capital of the Northwest Province, on July 18-20.
Two of the performances were for high school audiences and the third was for representatives from a diverse group of government and non-governmental agencies working in the areas of both gender and health programs.
The four members of the In the Continuum company also facilitated four skills-based workshops for community arts practitioners who use theatre as a methodology to inform their audiences about HIV/AIDS.
Cape Town
The quartet -- Nikkole Salter (actress), Dani Gurira (actress), Robert O’Hara (director), and Kate Hefel (stage manager) -- returned to Cape Town for a brief but dazzling program that involved two days of workshops and one live performance In The Contiuum, on July 12-14.
The workshops, held at UCT’s Baxter Theatre and in the Zolani Community Centre in Nyanga on the Cape Flats, focused primarily on dramatic technique and structure, while the performance itself, at Artscape’s Arena Theatre, received a standing ovation and calls for a return engagement. (In The Continuum was performed at Baxter in 2006).
Approximately 40 people participated in each of the two workshops, most of them local theatrical groups and AIDS activist organizations. Among these groups were students, aspiring actors, actresses and directors. The live performance was attended by a capacity crowd of 250 people at the small Arena Theatre.
Following the performance the audience got to meet the group over refreshments. The unanimous opinion was that everyone is benumbed by the never-ending drumbeat of deadening HIV/AIDS statistics. The play humanized the horror and made it real in a way that makes people feel the tragedy of AIDS, its impact on human beings, and the social context which both promotes its spread, and aggravates its consequences.
In The Continuum was also performed at the National Arts festival in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, in early July.