Photo: Pat Bromilow Downing
Director and playwright Lara Foot Newton’s latest creation, Karoo Moose, is conceptually her strongest work to date since her seminal play Tshepang. With it, she returns to the subject of child rape and a rural town – a shattered, forsaken community where “there are no fathers”.
Fifteen-year-old Thozama (Chuma Sopotela) is ‘sold’ for sex to pay off the gambling debts of her jobless and spiritually crushed father, Jonas (Mfundo Tshazibane) – “an opportunist with no opportunities”. Her rape is depicted with shocking lyrical power – Thozama standing in an enamel basin of water, a goal post net draped over her, is used for target practice by men kicking their soccer ball at her legs and cheering. Sopotela gives us one of the best theatre performances of the year, burning with controlled energy and illimitable rage.
Foot Newton however doesn’t lapse into sermonizing or righteous anger. Even Jonas redeems himself in part. There are no outright villains in the piece, except perhaps the main culprit, Khola (Thami Mbongo), but then we learn his father was a bad man too.
But the key redemptive quality in this work lies in its format. Each performer in the ensemble acts several roles. Mdu Kwenyama plays the infant Quinnie sucking her thumb, but also the rapist tsotsi David. In playing male and female, adult and infant roles, the actors through their performances deconstruct and debunk the patriarchal constructions of black masculinity.
The imaginative use of props, such as the two dried palm fronds that become the moose with its antlers, or a hide drum that transforms into a womb at the moment of birth, together with Bongile Mantsai’s evocative musical arrangements, display the creative beauty of which the human mind is equally capable.
The collective experience of theatre such as this, functions in a similar way as Thozama’s courageous act, when the escaped moose terrorising the imaginations of this small town is killed by her – a magical feat that releases her own power.
