(Above: Anton Cawthorn-Blazeby, Logan Byrne, Iain ‘Ewok’ Robinson & Daniel Sheldon)
Theatre review by Akhona Jr Mhlungu
By the time I reached DUT’s Courtyard Theatre for the final
afternoon of Backstage in Action, a six-hour workshop had left me mentally
spent. I had little energy left for another performance. Yet the stage seemed
to invite rather than demand attention: microphones, chairs and instruments
stood beside a flask and a potted curry plant, beneath a projection of distant
stars. It suggested a conversation waiting to happen.
That conversation was Dubious Gurus, a meeting of spoken word, jazz and hip hop led by Durban artist Iain ‘Ewok’ Robinson. The October 16 performance brought Backstage in Action to a close after The King of Broken Things and a Wellness Activation. I had also seen and reviewed the protest-centred History Is a Home Address the previous week. Each encounter had asked something different of its audience. What would this one offer?
Robinson appeared alone, opening with a poem concerned with provocation and response. His delivery was conversational without losing its precision, allowing humour and reflection to share the same breath. Daniel Sheldon joined him on trumpet, followed by Logan Byrne on upright bass and Anton Cawthorn-Blazeby on violin. The ensemble assembled gradually, each arrival unforced.
Once together, they did more than accompany a poet. Byrne’s bass gave the words weight and warmth; Sheldon’s trumpet and percussion shifted their pace and texture; Cawthorn-Blazeby’s violin could extend a thought or gently unsettle it. Sound and speech took turns leading. The musicians listened to Robinson, and he listened back.
Karen Logan’s vlog visuals deserved equal attention. Set against the intimacy of live instruments and a speaking body, the projected imagery opened another way of encountering the material. Its screen-based perspective joined the exchange between what was said, heard and seen. The images were part of the work’s thinking, not simply its atmosphere.
Dubious Gurus resisted easy classification as a poetry reading, concert or theatre piece. Robinson’s writing moved between wit, lived observation and social commentary without insisting on a single conclusion. There was an improvisatory freedom to the performance, but that freedom was not a matter of making things up. It required trust and discipline: knowing when to lead, respond or leave silence.
For me, that was also where the learning happened. Backstage in Action, convened by Dr Clare Craighead through DUT’s Higher Certificate in Performing Arts Technology, brings industry practitioners into direct engagement with students and their developing practice.
These are not classroom demonstrations. The performances must stand on their own before a public audience, while giving students opportunities to study professional choices, develop their practice and produce learning that can be reflected on and assessed.
There is something distinctively DUT about that relationship between making and learning. The theatre becomes a place where artistic and technical decisions have consequences beyond a mark: they must communicate with an audience. Live work also invites critical reflection on collaboration, timing, sound, visuals and professional responsibility. Education meets practice as it unfolds, rather than explaining it from a distance.
I arrived at the Courtyard Theatre exhausted. I left thinking about what artists can make through listening, and what students can learn from that discipline. As a finale, Dubious Gurus avoided the tidy goodbye. Its conversation remained open, and so did the questions it left behind. - Akhona Jr Mhlungu
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