According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the largest number of undecided refugee cases in the world at the first instance and on appeal was reported by South Africa – 131,000 at the end of 2006. As Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, the situation is unlikely to improve.
Magnet Theatre’s latest creation, Every Year, Every Day I Am Walking, was commissioned by the African Festival for Children and Young people in Yaoundé, Cameroon and is partly inspired by The Suitcase Stories, a book produced in a creative therapy process with refugee children initiated by Glynis Clacherty of Johannesburg.
Every Year is a two-hander with the versatile Jennie Reznek and tragedienne Faniswa Yisa (Medea in Brett Bailey’s medEia) as mother and daughter. A physical theatre performance it makes imaginative use of simple props. Julia Anastasopoulos’s innovative design is a model demonstration of ingenious economy. A drawing of the pastoral village is burnt by hooded militia. Pairs of shoes held in the actors’ hands trudge across sprinkled sand. The use of different textures is powerfully evocative. Neo Muyanga acoustic accompaniment sensitively underscores the action.
Driven from their home and separated from their relatives mother and daughter arrive eventually in a xenophobic city in a foreign country.
This is not only worthy work, but it lives up to high artistic standards. Director Mark Fleishman manages to balance with delicacy the big picture – the plight of deracinated individuals marooned within our society – and the personal narrative with which we have immediate and easy identification.
