(Thembi
Mtshali-Jones)
A powerful, heartrending but ultimately triumphant play. (Review by
Keith Millar)
The South African Woman’s Arts Festival, which is presented by the
Playhouse Company in Durban annually, can be relied on to offer robust, gutsy
productions which highlight the struggles and hardships,and occasional triumphs,
women experience in this world.
Thembi Mtshali-Jones’ one-woman biographical play, A Woman in
Waiting, is no exception. The programme promised a tour de force performance,
and that is what we got – by the bucketful.
Mtshali-Jones is a hugely talented performer and has a vast amount of
experience in all areas of the performing arts. All her accumulated ability is
on display during this production as she relates her story through intense
narrative and powerful song. She is utterly in control of every nuance of her
performance and the result is profoundly moving.
A Woman in
Waiting tells of the many iniquities suffered by black woman in domestic
service during the apartheid era in this country. A situation which I fear may
still be rife to this day.
Mtshali-Jones enjoyed a happy carefree childhood in rural Zululand. The
only problem was that she saw her mother, who was maid for a white family in
Durban, just once a year at Christmas. When she finally moved to the city to
attend high school she had to live in the crowded, dusty township of Kwa Mashu with
seven other children.
She hero-worshipped her mother but was soon to realize the regular
humiliations this proud woman had to endure as a servant to earn a paltry
living.
Mtshali-Jones tells of her own years as a domestic worker when she had
to leave her own baby at home while she looked after the young of others. She
relates the fear of the late night raids by the Black Jacks and the agony of
the mothers as their children faced up to the Army Caspers during the student
uprising.
Her eventual transformation into a performer and singer who has
appeared on international stages is a testament to the strength and capacity of
the human spirit to survive.
A Woman In
Waiting is in a sense Mtshali-Jones’ own personal Truth and Reconciliation
commission and advocates that the women who have suffered need to “speak out or
their hearts will burst.”
The production was written by Yaël Faber and Thembi Mtshali-Jones. It
is beautifully scripted and almost poetic in its use of the English language.
Faber also directed the production and is also responsible for the clever props
and set design. The assistant director is Gina Shmukler, Company Manager is
Leigh Colombick and to complete the all-woman team production management and
lighting design is by Gerda Kruger.
A Woman in
Waiting is a powerful, heart rending, but ultimately triumphant, play. There
was a very special moment after the production when Mtshali-Jones brought her
aged mother onto the stage for a standing ovation. – Keith Millar
For more information about the festival visit www.playhousecompany.com or Facebook at www.facebook.com/DurbanPlayhouse
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