(Bhoyi Ngema)
Actor and director Dr
Christopher John pays tribute to the late Bhoyi Ngema.
I first met Bhoyi
in 2006 when Mbongeni Ngema asked me to take a leading role in 1906: Bhambatha the Freedom Fighter. I
think the production ran into difficulties reaching a wider audience when the
political life of the country became consumed by the Mbeki/Zuma power struggle
and the play became contentious as it celebrated South African armed struggle
against colonialism and apartheid and placed its origins in this act of Zulu
rebellion.
It had seemed to me
extraordinary that the Drama and Performance Studies programme at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, where I was working at the time, had no
relationship with Ngema, such an important South African theatre practitioner
who was then living in Durban. I approached Ngema and he agreed to provide some
lectures for the UKZN students in return for my providing some skills training
to the Committed Artists cast. Later, when he was having difficulty casting a
white actor in the production, he asked me to join the company.
I was as excited to
join the Committed Artists cast as I had been years earlier when I had worked
for The Royal Shakespeare Company back in the UK. It seemed the rehearsal room
teamed with the history and talent of black South African theatre. There is
much about Mbongeni Ngema’s creativity and the work of Committed Artists that I
would not have understood had I not worked with them on a daily basis.
Many of the key scenes
I was involved with were with Bhoyi. He had played leads in most of Ngema’s
productions dating back to Asinamali.
It was he who decoded much of the theatre history and introduced me to the
other great talents in the room many of whom had long associations with
Committed Artists as well as connections dating back to Gibson Kente’s company.
Bhoyi seemed simple
and very straightforward. He worked and went home. He was one of those actors
who, when you worked with him, gave himself to you totally. Sure acting is
about listening and responding but with Bhoyi this was a direct and intimate
exchange of energy.
Outside the scene
and when not acting he seemed very ordinary. For Bhoyi, the work was important
– absolutely important. He worked for the Art not for money or status. And
outside of the theatre industry, and despite the significance of the roles he
had created, he never achieved the fame of Mbongeni Ngema. He also seemed
incapable of holding onto money. He always seemed a penniless actor. So it was
in role and on stage that he was at his most remarkable and acting with him is
an experience I will seldom if ever meet again.
We became and
remained good friends and, through Bhoyi, I became friends with the larger
Ngema family. At this time I was being made very unwelcome within the Drama and
Performance Studies programme at UKZN and it was privately the Ngema family who
protected and held me during this difficult period; something for which I will
always be grateful.
I briefly worked
again with Bhoyi in Lion of the East
when Ngema asked me to take over a leading white role for two performances when
there were problems with the actor in the role. So I travelled to Nelspruit and
successfully improvised my way through two performances. This was only possible
if you are able to create an authentic connection with the other actors and to
listen and respond. And so Ngema was able to make the point to the company that
no-one could hold a whole project to ransom.
When The Lion of the East finished its run,
again Bhoyi was penniless and he came to live with me, I had a house in Queensburgh.
He stayed there for over a year. During the Durban run of The Lion of the East, Bhoyi had spent much of his time performing
in the evenings and returning to the hospital where his then girlfriend Mpho
Ngcobo was terminally ill – that was his day, back and forth, the play and the
hospital. I was able to witness Bhoyi’s capacity for love that seemed to equal
only the intensity with which he gave himself to a role and living a created existence
on stage.
At the time of his
death he was in a relationship with Busi Biyela and whenever I met them they
seemed inseparable. Bhoyi had often been hurt in personal relationships but
never lost the courage to love and to love absolutely.
The last time Bhoyi
and I worked together was as writers on The
Dictionary and then to test the product, I directed him in a short run of
the play with Madala Kunene providing the music. The Dictionary was a story that Bhoyi and Mpho Ngcobo had been
trying to develop into a play. Bhoyi and Ngema had invited me to work on it. We
found a magical realist style with which to successfully tell a charming story
about a rural man threatened by modernity personified and explored through his
relationship with a dictionary. I think it a wonderful story and play. Here
again Bhoyi worked on the project and drew a team together all who worked for
very little money in order to create and test the project. Sadly, after a
number of attempts the project never found a full production although initial
discussions to produce it were underway at the time of Bhoyi’s death.
He worked on The Dictionary, as an actor, in order to
develop his skill at detailed realism. His focus and ability to play a moment
with total commitment and allow the audience to sit forward and respond to the
performance was wonderful. Later, he gained success in the television series Muvhango. It had taken a long while for
him to get the opportunity use his talent and skill in this medium. I thought
it long overdue.
At one time, Bhoyi
took me on a tour of the sites in and around Durban where
they had rehearsed and performed Asinamali
- including the site of the famous attack on the cast at Hammarsdale. He had
come from rural Zululand to work on the play. Ngema had created and rehearsed
the play with the cast over a period of about five years while he was touring
internationally in Woza Albert. The
play, in its day, was an intense collision of real-life experience and theatre.
It was this that
shaped Bhoyi’s life as an artist. He told me how in those years, unlike today,
when you toyi-toyied you knew one of you would die. Also, he spoke of the
threat of ANC and IFP violence and how the lines between real-life and the play
in this respect seemed at the time very blurred. When travelling abroad with
the play he told me how unimpressed he had then been with all the theatre
awards the work received and as a young man from KwaHlabisa, he only felt he
had ‘arrived’ when they received an award for the play alongside an award given
to the famous football star Maradona at the same event at the Mark Taper Forum
in Los Angeles.
While discussing Asinamali, Bhoyi said that he felt many
revivals of the play mishandle it. This, because in order to perform it, he
said, you need to have a child-like enthusiasm for life whether you are
speaking about happiness sadness or violence. You need a child’s fascination
and fixed attention for the moment at hand and then a great deal of energy.
It was this
child-like attention that defined for me Bhoyi’s absolute commitment to acting
and that I witnessed in his capacity and courage to love, no matter past hurt,
all in a total commitment to the moment at hand. He died suddenly in a moment
hit by a car and a great light went out for us all.
Dr Christopher John
(AKA Christopher Hurst)
December 27, 2013
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