Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Contents
1.
Charles Dickens’ Life
2. Charles Dickens’ Work
3.
History of South Africa
08
4.
Apartheid
11
5.
South African Music
14
6.
Language in A Christmas Carol
19
7. The Original Story
8. The New Story
9.
Cast and Creative Team
10. Interview with David Lan, Artistic Director of the Young Vic
11. Interview with Mark Dornford-May, the Director
12. Interview with Mbali Kgosidintsi, actress
13. Interview Mandisi Dyantyis, the Music Director
14. Article by Kwame Kwei-Armah in the Guardian
15. Article by David Lan in the Independent
16. Assistant Directors’ Rehearsal Diary
17. Resources
02
06
20
22
24
26
28
30
31
32
35
38
46
If you have any questions or comments about this Resource Pack please contact
us:
The Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London, SE1 8LZ
T: 020 7922 2858 F: 020 7922 2802 e: info@youngvic.org
Compiled by: James Farrell
Young Vic 2007
First performed at the Young Vic Theatre on 20th November 2007
1
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
1. CHARLES DICKENS’ LIFE
Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was the foremost English
novelist of the Victorian era as well as a vigorous social campaigner.
He is considered one of the English language's greatest writers; he was
acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved
massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. This popularity has meant that
none his novels or short stories has ever gone out of print. Dickens’ works,
like most Victorian novels, appeared serially in periodicals and only later
appeared in book form.
Although other famous authors such as Anthony Trollope
completed an entire novel before its first number appeared in print, Dickens
composed his books as they went along in parts. This meant that he could gauge
his audience’s reaction to elements in his story as he was writing – a very
unique relationship. As a result each new part of his stories was eagerly
anticipated by the reading public.
Early Years
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth in Hampshire, the second of
eight children. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent and then
in 1822, when he was ten, the family again relocated, this time to 16 Bayham
Street, Camden Town in London.
2
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
His early years seem to have been an idyllic time with all the benefits of a
middle class life style. However, this time of prosperity came to an abrupt
end when his father, after struggling to provide for his family on his meagre
income as a clerk for the Navy pay office, could no longer satisfy his
creditors and was imprisoned at Marshalsea debtors' prison. His father is
thought to have been the basis for Dickens’ famous character, Micawber in
David Copperfield and throughout the remainder of his life was consistently in
financial difficulty, much to the embarrassment of his son. The family’s time
in Marshalsea was a period in his life, like many others, that became the
stimulus for one of his novels – in this case, Little Dorrit.
The novel
exposes the terrible conditions in the debtors prisons and the impossibility
of being able to clear their debts. Dickens even went so far as to name
Marshalsea in the book rather than creating a fictionalised version of the
prison.
In order for the family to survive, the twelve year-old Dickens was sent to
work ten hour days in a Warren's boot-blacking factory. The shocking
conditions of the factory and the loneliness of being sent out to work as the
sole provider for his family at such a young age had a profound affect on
Dickens.
This experience was a possible source of scenes in David Copperfield
and Bleak House among others of his works. In David Copperfield, judged to be
his most patently autobiographical novel, in which David is orphaned and sent
to work in a factory by his stepfather, he writes of the young boy’s
childhood, "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no
assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind."
Resentment of his particular experience in the factory and the general
conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his
works. All through his life he championed the rights of the poor and oppressed
and told stories of their hardships in his fiction.
3
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
In May 1827, Dickens went to work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as a
law clerk. It was here that he gained his detailed knowledge of the law and
the poor's powerlessness against it. He also developed a loathing of
inefficient and senseless bureaucracy. He showed his contempt for the lawyer's
profession in many of his literary works, most particularly in Bleak House,
which tells the story of a long-running legal dispute which has devastating
consequences for all involved.
At the age of seventeen, he became a court stenographer and, in 1830, met his
first love, Maria Beadnell.
Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and
effectively ended the relationship when they sent her to school in Paris.
Again this experience informed much of his writing, with the character of Dora
in David Copperfield based on Maria.
Journalism and Novels
In 1834, Dickens became a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary
debates and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the
Morning Chronicle.
His journalistic sketches which appeared in periodicals from 1833 became his
first collection of writings, Sketches by Boz, which were published in 1836.
Their success led to the serialisation of his first novel, The Pickwick
Papers, in March 1836.
On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth, the daughter of George
Hogarth who was the editor of the Evening Chronicle in which Dickens had some
of his work serialised.
They set up home in Bloomsbury and in the following
years had a total of ten children. They were joined by Catherine’s unmarried
sister, Mary, who Dickens became very fond of. After a brief illness in 1837,
Mary died in his arms which had a profound effect on him. She became a
character in many of his books, and her death is fictionalized as the death of
Little Nell.
4
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
After the success of Pickwick Papers Dickens embarked on a full-time career as
a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate,
although he continued his journalistic and editorial activities. His fame
increased as he published Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39),
The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock
series (1840-41), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) and the first of his immensely
successful Christmas books, A Christmas Carol appeared in 1844.
All were
published in monthly installments before being made into books. These
installments made the stories cheap, accessible and available to a very wide
audience. The series of regular cliff-hangers at the end of each installment
made each new episode widely anticipated. Part of Dickens's great talent was
to be able to write in this episodic style but still create a coherent novel
at the end. This tradition has been continued in some newspapers in America,
creating Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Candace Bushnell’s Sex in
the City, whilst on British television the BBC’s Bleak House series emulated
this format by creating short half hour weekly installments.
After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846), Dickens
returned to England and continued his success with Dombey and Son (1848),
David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), Hard Times (1854) Little
Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861). He
was incredibly prolific and few writers have created such an impressive and
consistent body of work.
In 1857, Dickens formed a bond with Ellen Ternan which was to last the rest of
his life. She was an actress he met when preparing for the public reading of
one of his stories. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, as both
Dickens and Ternan burned each other's letters, but it was clearly central to
Dickens's personal and professional life. However, it is known that a year
after meeting Ternan, Dickens separated from his wife and family. Divorce was
almost unthinkable, particularly for someone in the public eye and he
5
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
continued to financially support his wife, as well as maintain her in a house
for the next 20 years until she died.
Last Years
On 9 June 1865, while returning from France with Ternan, Dickens was involved
in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first seven carriages of the train
plunged off a bridge. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was
the one in which Dickens was travelling. On going to leave he remembered the
unfinished manuscript of Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to
retrieve it.
Dickens, though unharmed, never really recovered from the Staplehurst crash,
and his normally prolific writing output shrank to completing Our Mutual
Friend and after a long interval starting the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin
Drood. Although typically, Dickens did use this experience as material for his
short ghost story The Signal-Man.
From the mid 1860s much of Dickens’ time was taken up with public readings
from his best-loved novels. At this time it was very rare for a writer to read
their own work in public and his tours proved incredibly popular. He did
several tours round Britain and was also invited to New York. Reports suggest
that the readings were incredibly theatrical with Dickens’ creating different
voices for each of the characters and lasting for many hours.
The effort and passion he put into these readings is thought to have
contributed to his death. When he undertook an English tour of readings in
1869 and 1870 he became ill and died at home after suffering a stroke.
He was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription
on his tomb reads: "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the
6
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the
world."
Very few people knew the details of his impoverished early life until six
years after his death when John Forster, a biographer and critic, published a
biography on which Dickens had collaborated. A shameful past in Victorian
times could taint a person’s reputation, just as it did for some of his
characters, and this may have been Dickens' fear if he had been open about his
past during his lifetime.
7
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
2. CHARLES DICKENS’ WORK
Charles Dickens used his rich imagination, sense of humour and detailed
memories, particularly of his childhood, to enliven his fiction. His work has
remained in our consciousness not only because the stories are so engaging,
but because of the unique characters he created, the literary techniques he
employed in his writing – such as serialisation - and because of the social
issues he raised in his work.
His characters are among the most memorable in English literature, full of
humanity, complexity and humour. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Fagin, Oliver
Twist, Micawber, Abel Magwitch, Samuel Pickwick, Miss Havisham, Wackford
Squeers, Uriah Heep are drawn with such detail and care. One reason for this
longevity is the realism of the characters. They were not stereotypes but
honest, though fictionalised, reflections of the people he knew and observed.
These are some of the best drawn characters of the time and serve as a window
to the era - a time when many other authors did not present working class
characters with such humanity. Dickens even included regional accents and
working class idioms in his stories, something that was unheard of in earlier
writers.
Dickens sometimes used idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to
contrast with the ugly social truths he reveals. In Oliver Twist (1839), for
example, Dickens provides readers with a portrait of a young boy so inherently
and unrealistically 'good' that his values are never subverted by either
brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young pickpockets
(similarly Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol never looses his positive outlook
despite poverty or illness). In many ways his idealised characters highlight
Dickens's poignant social commentary by contrasting their goodness, purity and
humanity with the world’s inhumanity.
8
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Dickens’ presentation of the brutal world around him affected social reform.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens’ depiction of poverty and crime were so stark that it
was responsible for the clearing of Jacob’s Island, the slum featured in the
novel. In addition, his portrayal of the tragic prostitute, Nancy humanised a
group of women who were usually demonised as irreparably immoral.
Dickens was a fierce critic of the poverty and oppressive social structure of
Victorian society. He campaigned on issues such as education, factory
conditions, legal reform and social injustices to name but a few. In his books
he held a mirror to Victorian society and encouraged them to question their
own lives and political allegiances. In A Christmas Carol Scrooge clearly
represents the nineteenth century industrialist system that was fueled by the
desire of a few to make money rather than create a society in which all can
thrive. It was also in direct connection to the then government’s Poor Laws,
which had instigated the creation of the infamous workhouses.
It is salutary to realise that many of the issues Dickens raised almost one
hundred years ago are still relevant today. There is still poverty,
inequality, ignorance and want in almost every part of the world – including
England. In particular, the characters and story Dickens created in A
Christmas Carol explores similar issues that are being faced by people living
in the townships in South Africa today. Depsite the end of apartheid, there is
still not enough being done to ensure the basic requirements of food, work and
shelter are being delivered for all the nation.
uScrooge’s suggestion that
“if they are dying they had better do it and decrease the surplus population”
best encapsulates the sentiment that Dickens’ most criticised.
9
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
3. THE HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA
The history of South Africa is marked by migration, ethnic conflict, and the
anti-Apartheid struggle. The Khoisan – the name for two major ethnic groups of
Southern Africa - are the aboriginal people of the region who have lived there
for millennia. Black African South Africans are believed to originate from the
Great Lakes region of Africa in prehistoric times. The Cape Coloureds are a
mixed race whose ancestors were brought over from Indonesia, Madagascar,
India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as slaves.
White South Africans are
descendants of later European migrations from the 1600s onwards.
Ancient History
Around 2,500 years ago Bantu peoples migrated into Southern Africa from the
Niger River Delta. The indigenous Khoisan and the Bantu lived mostly
peacefully together. Beginning around 2,500 years ago some Bushman groups
acquired livestock from further north. Gradually, hunting and gathering gave
way to herding as the dominant economic activity as the Bushmen tended to
small herds of cattle and oxen. Community structures solidified and expanded,
and chieftaincies developed. The pastoralist Bushmen, known as Khoikhoi ("men
of men"), began to move further south. Along the way they intermarried with
the hunter-gatherer Bushmen, whom they referred to as San, prompting the use
of the term Khoisan. The Bantu-speakers practiced agriculture, farming various
crops as well as displaying skills in working iron.
Colonisation
In 1647, a Dutch vessel was wrecked at Table Bay at Cape Town. The marooned
crew built a fort and stayed for a year until they were rescued. Shortly after
the Dutch East India Company (or VOC) decided to establish a permanent
settlement to establish a secure base camp where passing ships could shelter
and restock supplies.
10
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
The new settlement traded out of necessity with the neighbouring Khoikhoi but
made deliberate attempts to restrict unnecessary contact. Partly as a
consequence, VOC employees found themselves faced with a labour shortage. To
remedy this, they released a small number of Dutch from their contracts and
permitted them to establish farms, with which they would supply the VOC
settlement from their harvests. This small group of farmers, or free burghers
(Boers) as they were known, steadily increased and began to expand their farms
into the territory of the Khoikhoi. They spoke the Afrikaans language, based
on Dutch.
To supplement the work force the VOC began to import large numbers of slaves
primarily from Madagascar and Indonesia. Many of the women married Dutch
settlers, the offspring of whom have become known as the Cape Coloureds. With
this additional labour, the areas occupied by the VOC expanded further to the
north and east, with inevitable clashes with the Khoikhoi. They drove the
Khoikhoi from their traditional lands, decimated them with European diseases,
and destroyed them with superior weapons when they fought back.
As the burghers continued to expand into the rugged hinterlands many began to
take up a semi-nomadic pastoral lifestyle. These were the first of the Boers
who were completely independent of official controls, extraordinarily selfsufficient, and isolated.
British at The Cape
As the 18th century drew to a close, Dutch merchant power began to fade and
the British moved in to fill the vacuum. Power resided solely with a white
élite in Cape Town, and differentiation on the basis of race was deeply
entrenched. Outside Cape Town and the immediate hinterland, isolated black and
white farmers populated the country.
In 1820 the British authorities persuaded about 5,000 middle-class families to
emigrate to South Africa with the promise of land and prosperity. Although
11
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
they were encouraged to settle in rural areas within three years, almost half
of these settlers had retreated to the towns to pursue the trades they had
held in Britain. This influx fractured the relative unity of white South
Africa.
Where the Boers had before gone largely unchallenged, Southern Africa now had
two European language groups and cultures. English-speakers became highly
urbanised, and dominated politics, trade, finance, mining, and manufacturing,
while the largely uneducated Boers were widely scattered living on remote
farms and small communities. The Boers started to grow increasingly
dissatisfied with British rule in the Cape Colony and the British proclamation
of the equality of the races particularly angered them.
From 1835, several groups of Boers, together with large numbers of Khoikhoi
and black servants, decided to trek off into the interior in search of greater
independence and uninhabited grazing lands. They found, it seemed, their
promised land, with space enough for their cattle to graze and their culture
of anti-urban independence to flourish and they soon established themselves
into various Boer Republics.
For a while it seemed that these republics would develop into stable states,
but the discovery of diamonds near Kimberley turned the Boers' world on its
head. Britain soon stepped in and annexed the area for itself and the Boers
were naturally angry that their impoverished republics missed out on the
economic benefits of the mines.
Long-standing Boer resentment turned into full-blown rebellion, and the first
Anglo-Boer War, known to Afrikaners (Boers) as the War of Independence, broke
out in 1880. This war continued for 22 years and became known to the British
as the Boer Wars. On 31 May 1902, after many casualties and losses on both
sides, a superficial peace came with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging.
Under its terms, the Boer republics acknowledged British sovereignty, while
12
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
the British in turn committed themselves to the reconstruction of the areas
under their control.
After several years of negotiations, the South Africa Act 1909 brought the
various areas of South Africa together as the Union of South Africa. Under the
provisions of the act, the Union remained British territory, but provided
home-rule for Boers.
English and Dutch became the official languages. Afrikaans did not gain
recognition as an official language until 1925. Despite a major campaign by
blacks and Coloureds, only whites could gain election to parliament and the
voter franchise remained as in the pre-Union republics and colonies – for
whites only, although this did change on several occasions to suit the needs
of the government of the day.
World War I
The Union of South Africa was tied closely to the British Empire, and
automatically joined with Great Britain and the allies against the German
Empire. Some elements of the South African army, mainly made up of Boers,
refused to fight against the Germans, and along with other opponents of the
Government, became known as the Maritz Rebellion. The government declared
martial law on 14 October 1914, and forces loyal to the government proceeded
to destroy the rebellion.
World War II
On September 4, 1939 the South African Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, declared
South Africa officially at war with Germany. Once again, Smuts took severe
action against the pro-Nazi South African movement, who were caught committing
acts of sabotage, and jailed its leaders for the duration of the war.
Aftermath of World War II
13
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
South Africa emerged from the Allied victory with its prestige and national
honour enhanced as it had fought tirelessly for the Western Allies.
However, internal political struggles in the disgruntled and essentially
impoverished Afrikaner community soon came to the fore leading to Smuts'
defeat at the polls in the 1948 elections at the hands of a resurgent National
Party. The National Party’s policies led to South Africa’s isolation from
other countries which condemned the introduction of Apartheid. (See Section 4
on The Apartheid).
4. APARTHEID
As soon as the National Party (NP) gained power in 1948 they implemented
Apartheid (meaning separate-ness in Afrikaans), a system of racial
segregation.
The rules of Apartheid legally classified people into three
distinct racial groups; black, white and coloured.
Blacks became citizens of one of ten bantustans (homelands) that were
nominally sovereign nations. These black homelands were economically the least
productive areas in the country and many black South Africans had never lived
in these areas.
Education, medical care, and other public services were segregated, and those
available to black people were of an inferior standard.
Other notable aspects of Apartheid included:

The Group Areas Act of 1950 became the heart of the apartheid system
designed to geographically separate the racial groups. The Separate
Amenities Act of 1953 created, among other things, separate beaches,
buses, hospitals, schools and universities.

Interracial marriages were made illegal.
14
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May

All South Africans were compelled to carry identity documents. For
blacks, these identity documents became a sort of passport which
prevented them from migrating into white South African areas.

For blacks, living in the cities was restricted to those who had
employment. Families were excluded, thus separating wives from husbands
and parents from children.

By 1956 coloureds (mixed race) were removed from the common voters' roll
in the Cape, and a separate voters' roll was established for them.

During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the government implemented a
policy of resettlement, to force black people to move to their
designated group areas. It is thought that over three and a half million
people were forced to resettle during this period. The best-publicised
forced removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, when 60,000
people were moved to the new township of Soweto (an acronym for South
Western Townships). Forced removals continue in post-apartheid South
Africa and are being vigorously contested by, amongst others, the shack
dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
All of these measures put the black South Africans at a massive disadvantage
to the whites.
Women Under Apartheid
Colonialism and Apartheid had a major impact on women since they suffered both
racial and gender discrimination. Oppression against African women was
different from discrimination against men. They had very little or no legal
rights, no access to education and no right to own property. Jobs were often
hard to find but many African women worked as agricultural or domestic
workers, though wages were extremely low, if not non-existent.
As a result children suffered from diseases caused by malnutrition and
sanitary problems, and mortality rates were high. The controlled movement of
15
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
African workers within the country through the Natives Urban Areas Act of 1923
and the pass-laws, separated family members from one another as men usually
worked in urban centres, while women were forced to stay in rural areas.
Internal Resistance
In 1949, the conservative leadership of the African National Congress (ANC)
was overthrown by its Youth League (ANCYL) and they advocated (for the first
time ever) a policy of open defiance and resistance. This unleashed the 1950s'
Programme of Action, which resulted in occasional violent clashes, with mass
protests, stay-aways, boycotts and strikes predominating.
Consequently the government was forced temporarily to relax its Apartheid
legislation, but that was not the campaign's only success: as a direct result,
membership of the ANC increased and attention was drawn to Apartheid's
injustices. Once things had calmed down, however, the government responded
with an iron fist, taking several severe measures.
Nelson Mandela, who had been arrested and charged with terrorism, was tried
for treason at the widely publicised Rivonia Trial. In June 1964, Mandela and
seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment for terrorism. The trial was
condemned by the United Nations Security Council, and was a major force in the
introduction of international sanctions against the South African government.
Young blacks inside South Africa committed themselves to the struggle against
Apartheid, under the catchphrase "Liberation before education". Black
communities became highly politicised.
Final Years of Apartheid
Serious political violence was a prominent feature of South Africa from 1985
to 1995. For three years police and soldiers patrolled South African towns,
thousands of people were detained and deaths mounted on both sides. The ANC
exploded bombs in restaurants, shopping centres and in front of government
16
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
buildings such as magistrates courts, killing and maiming civilians and
government officials in the process.
By 1985, it had become the ANC's aim to make black townships ungovernable (a
term later replaced by "people's power") by forcing residents to stop paying
for services. The townships duly became the focus areas in the Apartheid
struggle.
Negotiations
From 1990 to 1994, President F. W. de Klerk led the National Party government
in negotiating with the ANC in order to end Apartheid. In his opening address
to parliament in February 1990, in what has come to be known as the ‘Unbanning
Speech’, President De Klerk announced that he would repeal discriminatory laws
and lift the ban on the ANC. The purpose of these negotiations was to pave the
way for a peaceful transition of power. Mandela called on other countries to
persist with their economic sanctions but, at the second 1990 meeting of the
ANC and the NP at Pretoria, he announced the ANC's bringing an end to its
armed struggle.
At the first democratic elections in 1994 20,000,000 South Africans turned up
to cast their votes. People had two votes to cast - one for a National
Government and another for a Provincial Government. There was some difficulty
in organising the voting in rural areas, but throughout the country, people
waited patiently for many hours in order to vote. The ANC won 62.7% of the
vote and Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first democratically-elected
president.
In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for
their work for the peaceful termination of the Apartheid regime, and for
laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa".
Legacies of Apartheid
17
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Many of the inequalities created and maintained by Apartheid still remain in
South Africa. Poverty is still largely defined by skin colour, with black
people constituting the poorest layer.
18
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
5. SOUTH AFRICAN MUSIC
The story of South African music is one of dialogue with imported forms, and
varying degrees of hybridisation over the years. From the earliest colonial
days until the present time, South African music has created itself out of the
mingling of local ideas and forms with those from outside the country, giving
it a unique flavour.
Beginnings
In the Dutch colonial era, from the 17th century on, indigenous tribespeople
and slaves imported from the East adapted Western musical instruments and
ideas.
The Khoi-Khoi, for instance, developed the ramkie, a guitar with three or four
strings, based on that of Malabar slaves, and used it to blend Khoi and
Western folk songs.
Western music was played by slave orchestras (the governor of the Cape, for
instance, had his own slave orchestra in the 1670s), and travelling musicians
of mixed heritage moved around the colony entertaining at dances and other
functions, a tradition that continued into the era of British domination after
1806.
The minstrel carnival, held in Cape Town every New Year, is a flamboyant
tradition going back to the early 1820s.
The Carnival which is similar in
style to that of a British marching military band, has coloured bands of
musicians and dancers parading through the streets, as well as variety acts
and comic skits.
Missionaries & Choirs
The penetration of missionaries into the interior over the succeeding
centuries also had a profound influence on South African musical styles. In
19
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
the late 1800s, early African composers such as John Knox Bokwe began
composing hymns that drew on traditional Xhosa harmonic patterns.
In 1897, Enoch Sontonga, then a teacher, composed the hymn Nkosi Sikelel'
iAfrika (God Bless Africa), which was later adopted by the liberation movement
and later became the national anthem of a democratic South Africa.
The missionary influence, plus the later influence of American spirituals,
spurred a gospel movement that is still very strong in South Africa today,
with artists who regularly achieve sales of gold and platinum status.
The choirs, combined with the traditional vocal music of South Africa also
gave rise to a mode of a capella singing that blend the style of Western hymns
with indigenous harmonies.
This tradition is still alive today in the isicathamiya form, of which
Ladysmith Black Mambazo are the foremost and most famous exponents.
This vocal music is the oldest traditional music known in South Africa. It was
communal, accompanying dances or other social gatherings, and involved
elaborate call-and-response patterns.
Though some instruments such as the mouth bow were used, drums were relatively
unknown. Throughout the nineteenth century, instruments used in areas to the
north of what is now South Africa, such as the mbira or thumb-piano from
Zimbabwe, or drums or xylophones from Mozambique, began to find a place in the
traditions of South African music-making.
The development of a black urban proletariat and the movement of many black
workers to the mines in the 1800s meant that differing regional traditional
folk music styles met and began to flow into one another. Western
instrumentation was used to adapt rural songs, which in turn started to
influence the development of new hybrid modes of music-making (as well as
dances) in the developing urban centres.
20
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Marabi
In the early years of the 20th century, the increasing urbanisation of black
South Africans in mining centres such as the Witwatersrand led to the
development of slums and shanty towns where new forms of hybrid music began to
arise.
Marabi was the name given to a keyboard style (usually played on pedal organs,
which were relatively cheap to acquire) that had something in common with
American ragtime and the blues, played in ongoing cycles with roots deep in
the African tradition.
The sound of marabi was intended to draw people into the shebeens (bars
selling homemade liquor or skokiaan) and then to get them dancing. It used a
few simple chords repeated in vamp patterns that could go on all night.
Associated with the illegal liquor dens and with vices such as prostitution,
the early marabi musicians formed a kind of underground musical culture and
were not recorded.
But the lilting melodies and loping rhythms of marabi found their way into the
sounds of the bigger dance bands, modelled on American swing groups, which
began to appear in the 1920s; it added to their distinctively South African
style.
Such bands, which produced the first generation of professional black
musicians in South Africa, achieved considerable popularity in the 1930s and
1940s: star groups such as The Jazz Maniacs, The Merry Blackbirds and the Jazz
Revellers rose to fame, winning huge audiences among both blacks and whites.
So successful were some of these bands, in fact, that jealous white musicians
used the regulations against racial mixing and the liquor laws to hamper their
progress.
21
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Over the succeeding decades, the marabi-swing style developed into early
mbaqanga, the most distinctive form of South African jazz, which has given its
flavour to much South African music since then, from the jazz performers of
the post-war years to the more populist township forms of the 1980s.
The beginnings of broadcast radio intended for black listeners and the growth
of an indigenous recording industry helped propel such sounds to immense
popularity from the 1930s onward.
A truly indigenous musical language was coming into being.
Kwela
One of the offshoots of the marabi sound was kwela, which brought South
African music to international prominence in the 1950s. The term "kwela" is
derived from the Zulu for "get up", though in township slang it also referred
to the police vans, the "kwela-kwela". Thus it could be an invitation to join
the dance as well as a warning.
The primary instrument of kwela, in the beginning, was the pennywhistle, a
cheap and simple instrument which was taken up by street performers in the
shanty towns. Part of the popularity of the pennywhistle was based on the fact
that flutes of different kinds had long been traditional instruments among the
peoples of the more northerly parts of South Africa, and the pennywhistle thus
enabled the swift adaptation of folk tunes into the new marabi-inflected
idiom. It is said that the young men who played the pennywhistle on street
corners also acted as lookouts to warn those enjoying themselves in the
illegal drinking dens of the arrival of the police.
Playing Through Repression
Jazz was played in South Africa during the years of severe repression. The
1980s saw the appearance of Afro-jazz bands such as Sakhile and Bayete,
22
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
marrying the sounds of American fusion and ancient African patterns, to
considerable commercial success.
New Directions
Others, such as the band Tananas, took the idea of instrumental music into the
direction of what became known as "world music", creating a sound that crosses
borders with a mix of African, South American and other styles; this versatile
and inventive group is now one of South Africa's best-loved, and least easy to
categorise.
As the 1970s drew to a close, however, the mood began to change, and the
echoes of Britain's angry working-class punk movement began to reach South
Africa.
Springs, a poorer white area on the outskirts of Johannesburg, proved to be
the breeding ground of a new generation of rockers - rockers as unimpressed by
the commercial blandishments of the mainstream industry as they were
disillusioned about South Africa's repressive white regime.
Bubblegum to Kwaito
While white rockers expressed their angst to largely white audiences during
the 1980s, the black townships were held in thrall by what came to be called
"bubblegum" - bright, light dance pop influenced by American disco as much as
by the heritage of mbaqanga.
Forebears of this style were groups such as The Soul Brothers, who had massive
hits with their soulful pop, while artists such as Brenda Fassie, Chicco Twala
and Yvonne Chaka Chaka drew huge audiences for their brand of township dance
music.
23
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Kwaito
In the 1990s, a new style of township music grabbed the attention and the
hearts of South Africa's black youth. That music was kwaito, probably now the
biggest force in the South African music scene. Just as township "bubblegum"
had drawn on American disco, so kwaito put an African spin on the
international dance music of the 1990s, a genre loosely referred to as house
music.
Miriam Makeba is beyond dispute one of South Africa's true legends and the
first African singer to win a Grammy Award. She was born in 1932 in
Johannesburg, and was only 21 years old when she began performing with the
Manhattan Brothers. It didn't take long before Miriam Makeba's career was
brought to another level; in 1959 she received a Grammy Award for the album
An Evening with Harry Belafonte & Miriam Makeba. Her fame increased when she
released her international hit Pata Pata.
Makeba used her voice to entertain, but also to give a voice to millions of
oppressed fellow South Africans who suffered as a result of the Apartheid.
The price she had to pay for her actions was high, namely her South African
citizenship. After she appeared in an anti-Apartheid documentary in 1960,
the South African government banned her from returning to her home country
and took away her citizenship. The event didn't stop Mama Africa from
raising her voice against the Apartheid regime. Between 1964 and 1975, as a
United Nations delegate of Guinea where she was granted asylum, Miriam
Makeba addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations regularly on
what was happening in South Africa.
Meanwhile she carried on singing, a process in which she put South African
24
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Audio Links – it is possible to download or buy the music mentioned in this
pack from the following websites:
http://www.abdullahibrahim.com/start.html
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/card/0,,464168,00.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/onyourstreet/msdave3.shtml
http://www.cmgworldwide.com/music/parker/
http://dizzygillespie.org/
http://www.nutsie.com/music/Ladysmith%20Black%20Mambazo
http://www.3rdearmusic.com/order.html
6. LANGUAGE IN A CHRISTMAS CAROL
South Africa has eleven official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele,
Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho (Southern Sotho), Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho),
Setswana, Swati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga. The mostly widely spoken languages
are English and Afrikaans, followed by Xhosa. In A Christmas Carol two
languages are spoken - English and Xhosa.
The Afrikaans language grew out of the Dutch colonisation of South Africa in
the 17th century. Afrikaans still retains some features of the Dutch langauge,
together with vocabulary from various Bantu and Khoisan languages and also
from Portugese and Malay. Language became a political struggle in South Africa
25
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
when the National Party tried to introduce Afrikaans as the leading language
in schools in the 1970s.
This lead to the Soweto Revolt in 1976.
Today
Afrikaans is spoken by a large proportion of both white and coloured people.
The Xhosa language is spoken by about 6.5 million people and it is South
Africa’s most widely spoken African language. It is a member of the
Bantu/Nguni family of languages. Among its features, the Xhosa language
famously has fifteen click sounds, originally borrowed from now extinct
Khoisan languages of the region. The three basic click consonants are a dental
click (using your teeth), written with the letter "c"; an alveolar click
(using the roof of your mouth), written with the letter "q"; and a lateral
click (allowing air to escape either through the mouth or the nose), written
with the letter "x." Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa is a
Xhosa-speaking member of the Thembu people, and Miriam Makeba, the famous
Xhosan singer is famous for her Click Song #1 (Qongqothwane in Xhosa) and
Click Song #2 (Baxabene Oxamu).
Even today in South Africa, language is a sensitive issue. At present Xhosa is
used as the main language of instruction in many primary schools and some
secondary schools, but is largely replaced by English after the early primary
grades, even in schools mainly serving Xhosa-speaking communities. The
language is also studied as a subject. The language of instruction at
universities in South Africa is English or Afrikaans, and Xhosa is taught as a
subject, both for native and non-native speakers.
Examples of Xhosa
Molo - hello (to one person)
Unjani? - how are you? (one person)
Ndiphilile - I am well
Enkosi - thank you
Uxolo - excuse me
Ngxesi - sorry
Nceda - please
26
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
7. THE ORIGINAL STORY
A Christmas Carol is a Victorian morality tale about an old and bitter miser,
Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the
course of one evening. Scrooge is a money-changer who has devoted his life to
the accumulation of wealth. He holds everything other than money in contempt,
including friendship, love and the Christmas season.
In keeping with the musical analogy of the title, A Christmas Carol, Dickens
divides his literary work into five staves instead of chapters.
Stave I – Marley’s Ghost
The story begins by establishing that Jacob Marley, Scrooge's business partner
in the firm of Scrooge & Marley, is dead — the narrative begins seven years
after his death to the very day, Christmas Eve. Scrooge and his clerk Bob
Cratchit are at work in the freezing cold counting house. Scrooge's nephew,
Fred, enters to wish his uncle a "Merry Christmas" and invite him to Christmas
dinner the next day. He is dismissed by his relative with "Bah! Humbug!" among
other unpleasantness, declaring Christmas time to be a fraud.
Two portly gentlemen, collecting charitable donations for the poor, come in
afterwards, but they too are rebuffed by Scrooge, who points out that the poor
laws and workhouses are sufficient to care for the poor. When Scrooge is told
that many would rather die than go there, he mercilessly responds, "If they
would rather die ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population".
At the end of the workday, Scrooge grudgingly allows Cratchit to take
Christmas Day off. Scrooge returns to his home, an isolated townhouse formerly
owned by his late business partner, Jacob Marley.
When he unlocks his door,
Scrooge is startled to see the ghostly face of Marley instead of his door
knocker. In his bedroom he eats his gruel by the fireplace and thinks he sees
27
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
the carvings on his mantlepiece transform into the image of Jacob Marley's
face. All of the bells in the house begin to ring loudly. When they stop he
hears a clanking noise and Marley's ghost passes through the door and appears
before Scrooge.
Marley has come to warn Scrooge that his miserliness and contempt for others
will subject him to the same fate Marley himself suffers in death: condemned
to walk the earth in penitence. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a chance to
escape this fate through the visitation of three spirits. Scrooge is shaken
but not entirely convinced and goes to bed thinking that a good night's sleep
will make him feel better.
Stave II - The First of the Three Spirits
Scrooge wakes in the night and the bells of the neighboring church strike
twelve. The first spirit appears and introduces himself as the Ghost of
Christmas Past. This spirit leads Scrooge on a journey into some of the
happiest and saddest moments of Scrooge's past, events that would shape the
current Scrooge. These include the mistreatment of Scrooge by his uncaring
father (who did not allow his son to return home from boarding school at
Christmas), the loss of his sweet heart due to his devotion to business, and
the death of his sister, the only other person who ever showed love and
compassion for him. Unable to stand these painful memories and his growing
regret of them, Scrooge covers the spirit with the large candle snuffer it
carries and he is returned to his room, where he falls asleep.
Stave III - The Second of the Three Spirits
Scrooge wakes and again the clock strikes midnight. After more than fifteen
minutes, he rises and finds the second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present,
in an adjoining room. The spirit shows him the meagre Christmas celebrations
of the Cratchit family, the sweet nature of their lame son Tiny Tim, and a
possible early death for the child; this prospect is the immediate catalyst
for his change of heart. They also show the faith of Scrooge's nephew in his
28
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
uncle's potential for change, a concept that slowly warms Scrooge to the idea
that he can reinvent himself. To further drive the point, the Ghost reveals
two pitiful children who huddle under his robes which personify the major
causes of suffering in the world, Ignorance and Want, with a grim warning that
the former is especially harmful. At the end of the visitation, the bell
strikes twelve. The Ghost of Christmas Present vanishes and the third spirit
appears to Scrooge.
Stave IV - The Last of the Spirits
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come takes the form of a grim spectre,
completely robed in black. This spirit frightens Scrooge more than the others,
and harrows him with visions of the Cratchit family bereft of Tiny Tim, of
Scrooge's own lonely death, and the cold, avaricious reactions of the people
around him after his passing. Without explicitly being said, Scrooge learns
that he can avoid the future he has been shown, and alter the fate of Tiny Tim
— but only if he changes.
Stave V - The End of It
In the end, Scrooge changes his life and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted
soul he was in his youth before the death of his sister. He anonymously sends
the Cratchits the biggest turkey the butcher has and spends Christmas Day with
Fred and his wife. The next day after Christmas, Scrooge arrives at work
early. Cratchit is late and Scrooge pretends at first to be his old selfish
self, but then tells Cratchit that he is going to raise his salary. Cratchit
is shocked and Scrooge wishes him a Merry Christmas.
29
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
8. THE NEW STORY
Ikrismas Kherol, although based on the original story by Charles Dickens, has
some very big changes.
This is the version told South Africa style.
The story opens on the night before Christmas in the fictional Atlantic Gold
Mines in South Africa.
Miles underground, in searing heat and with the crash
of machinery all around them, each and every worker is listening out for the
bell to let them know their Christmas holiday has begun.
As the miners celebrate Christmas with traditional songs and dances, one of
the miners, Cratchitt, is visited at the pithead by his sick daughter, Tiny
Thembi, who is looking for sponsorship for her education.
She sings for the
miners as a way of thanks for their support.
uScrooge, the tough fearsome executive director of Atlantic Gold Mines,
arrives at the pithead and breaks up the party atmosphere.
Her presence
chills the miners who all exit for their Christmas holiday apart from
Cratchitt and his daughter.
uScrooge has come to meet with Cratchitt, who claims he has frequently been
visited by uScrooge’s deceased business partner Jacob Marley, now a wondering
spirit with a message for uScrooge.
uScrooge is sceptical that Cratchitt has indeed been visited by the Ghost of
Marley until Tiny Thembi is possessed by the Spirit of Marley. Marley informs
uScrooge that at the stroke of midnight she will be visited by three Spirits
who while try to help her mend the error of her ways.
uScrooge still doesn’t truly believe anything will happen and goes to leave.
She is stopped by her niece, who invites her for Christmas lunch. uScrooge
rejects her and tells her to leave.
30
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
At that very moment uScrooge meets the first ghost who transports her back to
her tough upbringing in the South African township she grew up in, and reminds
her of the innocence of youth.
The ghost conjures up images of uScrooge’s
life projected onto an enormous screen mixed with the chorus adding the sound
effects to the ghostly quiet of the film.
uScrooge has hardly time to recover when the second ghost appears.
She is a
Mother Africa figure whose colourful and cheerful songs and dances quickly
evaporate when she confronts uScrooge with the realities of her present life
and the harsh struggles of those around her that she ignores on a daily basis.
uScrooge is left haunted with the image of dying babies and children all
around her when the third ghost silently appears.
She takes on the earthly
form of uScrooge’s dead sister, and whilst surrounded by the silent and
imposing dead, shows uScrooge the grim view of her future, if she doesn’t
change her perspective on life.
The third ghost finally succeeds in convincing uScrooge that although giving
her money away to the poor is the right thing to do, it is not enough.
uScrooge must also reform her attitude and learn compassion.
uScrooge is suddenly transported back to the moment where she sent Tiny Thembi
on her way without her sponsorship money. uScrooge’s transformation is
complete when she sponsors her whole education fee.
31
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
9. CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
CAST
Miner and Man (Film)
Fikile Thani
Miner
Mhlekazi Andy Mosiea
Miner
Khanyiso Gwenxane
Miner
Xolani Momo
Miner
Malungisa Balintulo
Miner
Sibusiso Matshikiza
Young Cratchitt / Miner
Crachitt
Luvo Rasemeni
Luthando Mthi
Security Guard
Zamile Gantana
Tiny Thembisa
Poseletso Sejosingoe
Scrooge
Pauline Malefane
Mrs Cratchitt
Winifred
Asanda Ndlwana
Busisiwe Ngejane
First Ghost
Zanele Gracious Mbatha
Mother (film) / Township Woman
Thozamo Mdliva
Drunken man (film) / Miner
Sonwabo Ntshata
Pumla (Film/stage) / Third Ghost Nolunthando Boqwana
Nosisi
Siyanda Ncobo
Fezziwig (Film) / Miner
Simphiwe Mayeki
Scrooge (film)
Lungelwa Mdekazi
Bheki (Film/stage)
Clyde Berning
Jacob Marley (Film) / miner
Zebulon K Mmusi
Second Ghost
Mbali Kgosidintsi
Township Woman
Martha
Bongiwe Mapassa
Thomakazi Holland
Township Woman
Philisa Sibeko
Township Woman
Tembisa Mlanjeni
Township Woman
Nolufefe Mtshabe
Township Man
Mzwandile C Kambule
32
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Township Man
Mandisi Dyantyis
CREATIVE TEAM
Director
Mark Dornford-May
Words and Music
Mandisi Dyantis, Mbali Kgosidintsi, Pauline
Malefane, Nolufefe Mtshabe
Designer
Dan Watkins
Choreographer
Lungelo Ngamlana
Lighting Designer
Mannie Manim
Costume Designer
Leigh Bishop, Annamarie Seegers
Assistant Directors
Gbolahan Obisesan, Simelia Hodge-Dallaway
Music Coach
Albert Combrink
Voice Coach
Lesley Manim
33
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
10. INTERVIEW WITH DAVID LAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE YOUNG VIC
What is the history of Isango and how did these two shows come about?
The history of Isango starts with Mark Dornford-May. Mark had for many years
ran Broomhill Opera based at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London. In about
2000, he was invited to do a show near Spier, outside Cape Town, in a theatre
a wealthy South African businessman built. Mark put a company together out in
South Africa called Dimpho Di Kopane (DDK) with Charles Hazlewood, a young
British conductor, as his music director, and put on The Mysteries. It was a
hugely successful show both in South Africa and when it came first to Wilton’s
Music Hall and then the Queen’s Theatre in the West End. It went on to tour
internationally.
After this, Mark decided he was going to live and work in South Africa, and
married Pauline Malefane [uScrooge and Queen of the Night]. Until 2007, Mark
directed DDK – which means ‘bringing together of talents’ – producing The
Beggar’s Opera, Westside Story, The Snow Queen and then Carmen. Both The
Beggar’s Opera and Carmen came to Wiltons, and Carmen was also made into a film
U-Carmen eKhayelitsha which won the Golden Bear for Best Film in the Berlin
Film Festival. He then went on to do another film, The Son of Man based on The
Mysteries.
It was around about this time – in 2005 - that Mark and I met for the first
time. We decided that the Young Vic and DDK should do a co-production that
would play in South Africa and in London. The original idea was that the show
would tour around Africa, but then the financer who had been backing DDK
suddenly withdrew his support. He had got a taste of the film world and wanted
to continue to work in that area. This was a pretty bleak time for Mark and
DDK as without financial backing the company were unable to continue working.
However, I was able to bring Eric Abraham [Portobello Productions] and Mark
together. It was agreed that Eric would pick up the finances of the company
34
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
but under a new name – Isango, which means ‘the people’. Many of the same core
artists were still involved, such as Pauline, Nolufefe Mtshabe, Zamile Gantana
and Charles Hazlewood. Mark also held new auditions all over South Africa
recruiting for the new company. The company consists of a mixture of people
who have training and experience, such as Pauline, Nolufefe and Zamile, and
many who have no or little training. Half of the company have never been on
stage before until these two productions of A Christmas Carol and The Magic
Flute.
Mark and I came up with the idea of The Magic Flute but soon realised that due
to the physical strain of opera, it would only be possible to do four
performances a week, so we would either have to create two companies who would
share the performances or create two shows. Eric suggested the idea of doing a
Dickens’ novel and Mark and I hit upon A Christmas Carol and discussed how we
would be able to make such a classic work of Western literature South African.
Mark then recruited a young South African music director, Mandisi Dyantis, for
both shows, anticipating that Charles Hazlewood would be the main musical
director. But due to Charles’ work and personal commitments in England, he was
unable to commit. Mandisi, therefore, became the overall musical director.
Rehearsals started and we haven’t looked back since!
How does Isango compare to other South African theatre companies?
It is unique.
On the one side, there are various state opera companies, which are beginning
to recruit their singers and musicians from all the communities in South
Africa, but they are old fashioned theatres, producing standard Western
repertoire. On the other hand, there are the commercial South African exports,
such as the Soweto Gospel Choir, which although very good, are commercial
enterprises for an already existing market.
35
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
The whole point of Isango as a company is the creative people in it – they are
always developing and creating very bold work and taking risks. An example of
that is our co-production of The Magic Flute – Mark was adamant that the
company should learn the whole of the overture, even though most of them could
neither read music nor play the marimbas, so that the audience knew that this
was not a gimmick – it was not about how clever it is to play Mozart on
marimbas – but that we were being serious in our adaptation. Good music is
good music after all.
36
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
11. INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR, MARK DORNFORD-MAY
What was the process of getting from the original story of The Christmas Carol
to your version at the Young Vic?
I read the book aloud many times. I then set up a reading group comprised of
myself and four of the actors from the company. We wanted to work out the
connections with modern South Africa and came up with a list of possible
scenarios. We then did several workshops with fifteen of the actors in the
company working on and developing our ideas. Mbali (also Second Ghost) then
wrote the script which we took into rehearsals and which was constantly
evolving through the rehearsal process.
What was the biggest challenge you had to deal with?
As The Christmas Carol was written as a novel, we had to work out how to stage
Dickens’ many long passages of description. When you read a novel, these
passages tell you the setting, the history of characters and also what we are
meant to feel about certain characters. The actors have to get this emotional
connection across all the time they are on stage.
The original story of The Christmas Carol deals with the unfair treatment of
the poor in Victorian times. How has this lent itself to being set in South
Africa?
There are a lot of similarities in the gap between the rich and the poor in
Victorian times and in modern day South Africa. Poverty is never far away.
Most of the company were born, brought up and live in townships and all have
various experiences of poverty. Pauline (uScrooge) didn’t have shoes until
after she left university. This shared experience helped us in not making the
production too sentimental – poverty is stark.
What were the reasons for incorporating film into the story and how do you
feel it has enhanced the production?
37
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
It is difficult dealing with the past on stage. In books, you can describe it,
but in theatre it is more difficult. So we decided to use film as there is
something slightly magical about it. Also, people do now film family occasions
and it is quite normal to have a filmed past. However, we wanted to keep the
immediacy of live performance, so we got the company to do all the sound
effects for the film.
Did you combine European and African theatre styles when creating the pieces
or lean towards one of them?
It is definitely a combination. I’m British, but the whole company is South
African; the choreography is South African but the staging is more European.
It is all very mixed up, and ultimately, so is the music in both productions.
What was the process of choosing when and where to include the various
languages?
The main consideration was where we were going to be performing the
productions – both in South Africa and in London. Also, another language can
make a piece stronger as it is only one element of story telling. When we
watch theatre, we are also watching the set, body language and so on –
sometimes another language can make us really focus on those other aspects of
storytelling to understand what is going on.
There were also some practical considerations too – only one member of the
company has English as a first language. In The Magic Flute we started the
rehearsals by singing in English and speaking the dialogue in Xhosa until
people felt more comfortable.
The piece starts with the actors on stage whilst the audience enter. What was
the reason for that?
There were two reasons. Firstly, it is for the actors to feel like they are
part of the space that the audience are coming into. They can feel the
audience before they start performing – it makes the audience a little less
threatening!
38
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Also, for the audience it shows them that we are telling a story. The audience
sees the actor first before seeing the character they play.
What are the difficulties in directing two productions at once?
Time! There are just many, many things to remember and to tackle. You get
involved in one of the productions for a while, and in the meantime you forget
what you have just worked on in the other one. It would have been impossible
if we didn’t have the same company of actors, as the two productions are very
different in style. The singing in particular, is very different – operatic in
The Magic Flute and traditional South African in A Christmas Carol.
39
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
12. INTERVIEW WITH MBALI KGOSIDINTSI, ACTRESS AND CO-WRITER OF A
CHRISTMAS CAROL
What was your process of rehearsing for A Christmas Carol?
I play the second ghost in A Christmas Carol. For me the most important part
of the process was the change in my character.
was much older and very serious.
When she was first written she
As we went through the rehearsals we decided
she should be younger and happier which would contrast with the message she is
giving.
What challenges did you have?
The idea of the ghosts.
but we aren’t.
piece.
How did you overcome them?
Traditionally, you think of something supernatural,
We have specific messages and bring a more human touch to the
We let the lights and music give us the supernatural feel.
What is your favourite scene in the performance?
Why?
Absolutely the skipping rope dance scene – it’s so much fun!
I still enjoy
doing it every time.
What are the challenges of performing in two different pieces at once?
At first I was really worried about it.
my lines but I have found it great.
I was concerned that I would forget
It keeps the piece fresh.
On a long tour
you find you stop worrying about your lines and the play can get stale.
Working on two pieces means I am constantly thinking about what I am doing and
so brings the play a great energy.
Has the play changed much from when it was performed in South Africa?
Yes!
It changes everyday.
Mark (Dornford-May, the director) changes a lot
but we have got used to it now.
interesting.
He is always making it better and more
It also helps keep it alive and fresh. It also means our family
and friends can see it over and over and not get bored.
40
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Has the reaction in South African and British audiences been different to the
production?
Definitely.
In Cape Town, people from the Townships connect very closely;
other South Africans connect on a different level altogether. In London, the
audiences know the story and as a result are looking at the style and
presentation, rather that what it is about.
They end up getting a new idea of
the story which shocks them, which is good. There has been great appreciation
everywhere though.
41
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
13. INTERVIEW WITH MUSIC DIRECTOR, MANDISI DYANTYIS
How did you start setting this version of A Christmas Carol to music?
There were three parts in the process.
First came the actual story itself.
From that it was obvious where we should add songs – for example, people sing
before prayer or at a celebration so we let the story dictate where the songs
would go.
to tell.
Next we edited the plotline to make it fit with the story we wanted
Finally we looked at the colour of the music.
Each Ghost has their
own style of music which creates an atmosphere or tension.
Where did the inspiration for the sound effects for the film come from?
The images led to the sound.
The cast would see the footage and then create
the sound effects by using objects that were lying around or by using their
voice.
It came very naturally to the cast as in the townships there is a lot
of music – wherever you stand you may hear ten different groups singing or
creating music.
What was the biggest challenge you had to deal with?
Making the story ours.
I wanted the production to feel like A Christmas Carol
but wanted to make it also South African.
We had to be very specific.
The
British audiences know this story really well and have probably seen it at
least ten times, so we had to make it very different while still keeping the
ideas that Dickens included.
Did you combine European and African musical styles when creating the pieces
or lean towards one of them?
My training was originally classical and then I moved onto jazz before joining
an African band - these influences are brought out in the piece.
Obviously it
has a South African sound but I have drawn on all my training and playing of
instruments in creating the music.
Does it sound how you imagined it would?
42
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Not completely.
Originally I asked for 30 trained musicians to play but we
ended up getting the cast to play instead.
This has brought an amazing
quality to the piece and now that they are getting more confident they are
happy to experiment and try new ideas so the piece is changing all the time
which is great.
43
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
14. MOZART AND DICKENS TOWNSHIP STYLE - ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN BY
KWAME KWEI-ARMAH
Mark Dornford-May’s 2005 film adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, called U-Carmen
eKhayelitsha, was set in South Africa’s largest township, with a cast made up
of local talent. I was immediately struck by the authenticity of his
treatment. The bleakness of the environment, juxtaposed against the joyous
brilliance of his cast, made me stamp with joy throughout many an aria.
Two years later, I received an invitation from the Young Vic’s artistic
director, David Lan, to visit Cape Town to peep into the rehearsals of
Dornford-May’s latest works: Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Dickens’ A Christmas
Carol, adapted for his company of young black performers from the hinterland
of Khayelitsha. The plays were scheduled to open at Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre
before moving to London. I was a little wary of the invitation. I knew Lan
vaguely and had read somewhere that he was South African. Two hyphenated
artists – Dornford-May white African, and me black-British – on African soil
had all the ingredients of a weekend filled with self-validation and guiltalleviation on both sides.
The second, and probably more profound, reason for my wariness is my
scepticism about the concept of black ‘versions’ of white European classics.
Even the most innovative adaptations run the risk of shoring up notions of
European literary superiority – how often do you see white versions of black
classics? Yes, images of South African blacks dressed in European breeches
singing in a fashion I perceived to be ‘received’ filled me with dread. Why
not perform the South African dramatic narratives from the grand tradition of
the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, I asked myself – the new Woza Albert!, the
new Sizwe Bansi is Dead, or the Athol Fugard classics. The narratives that are
exported from South Africa of late all seem to be musically based. Despite my
scepticism, however, I decided to go.
44
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
The first person I spoke to was the producer Mannie Manim, now artistic
director of Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre. Back in 1974, he created Market
Theatre with playwright/director Barney Simon. This was an astonishing company
committed to non-racial theatre – no mean feat during the heat of the
apartheid years. It was incredible to hear him recite the history of the
company, from the discovery of the old listed building in the ‘Indian Market’,
to finding the legal loopholes that allowed integrated audiences and
performers to work under one roof, to the excitement and fear of creating
narratives that challenged the personal and the political.
But when I asked Manim my question about why the South African theatre that is
exported seems to have lost its dramatic edge, his response was very
interesting. Although he acknowledged that fine dramatic work was once again
beginning to emerge, finding audiences for those types of narratives was
difficult. Cape Town audiences in particular, he said, were still quite
tribal. White audiences go to see European classics; ‘coloured’ audiences got
to see narratives that reflect their interests and specific culture; and
blacks – well, it was hard to get them into the theatre, full stop. He did
say, however, that a great black play somehow united all the audiences.
What he didn’t say, but what I began to get a sense of, was that many South
African artists felt that the end of apartheid had taken the fight out of a
generation of writers. With no big bad wolf no longer there, what was there to
talk about? The demise of opposition had somehow contributed to the demise of
a grand theatrical tradition, one with its roots in the work of Herbery Dhlomo
(the first South African playwright to be published in English back in the
1930s). All the same, I came away with a list of new and exciting playwrights:
Lesego Rampolokeng, Xoli Norman, Mondi Mayepu, Heinrich Reisenhofer and Oscar
Petersen, Fiona Coyne, Mark Lottering, Nazli George, Craig Freimond, and
Rajesh Gopie to name a few.
My next stop, the rehearsal hall, was a little way out of town and I arrived
just as a few company members were returning from lunch. Two gangs had been
45
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
shooting at each other across the street, something these people were all very
used to, so it was a source of much hilarity. Not a great place to create art,
I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Once they started rehearsing a
section from The Magic Flute, I was transported to a place far beyond the
reach of such trivial matters as gang gunfights.
Pauline Malefane, the singer who starred as Carmen in Dornford-May’s film, was
singing the part of the Queen of the Night. Now, I don’t know my opera theory
terribly well, but I know enough to recognise that Carmen is an alto and the
Queen of the Night is a soprano. The same voice is not meant to be able to
sing both parts. But there she was, hitting the top F with ease and beauty.
Then there was the young singer Mhlekazi Andy Mosiea, playing Prince Tamino.
Dressed in his trendy baggy jeans and hoodie, he looked like the R&B singer
Usher – only he wasn’t singing the popular music of his day, but that of
Mozart’s.
Here's the thing, though - not only about Mosiea, but the entire cast: they
sang the score in a fashion that was unique. It met all classical
requirements, but added something extra: something distinctly black South
African, something soulful. These were not young people imitating the genre;
they were singing opera on their own terms. This terrific authenticity was
aided by an orchestra made up exclusively of marimbas.
I asked Dornford-May why he chose to leave his native England to work in South
Africa, and his reply couldn't have come more quickly: the talent. He
explained why Pauline could sing both Carmen and the Queen of the Night, and
why he could have open auditions in Khayelitsha and discover all these
wonderful young singers: it was because of the strong choral traditions of the
black South African churches. Many of these performers had been to classical
colleges, but only after years of rigorous church choir training.
Any notion I had that this would be another blacking-up of a European
narrative to serve notions of superiority was disabused. In this The Magic
46
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Flute, the story has been transposed to the ritual that young Xhosa boys go
through when they come of age.
But my biggest learning curve was my relationship with David Lan. It was
fascinating to have a white African honestly introduce me to his homeland. I
had been to South Africa before, but never had I seen it through Caucasian
diasporic eyes. He took me to the rich and predominately white parts of Cape
Town, followed by a visit to the townships upon whose shoulders the wealthy
white community stands, but whose poverty is sometimes beyond belief. It was
then that I saw the real magic in that rehearsal room: the ability of art to
separate circumstance from artistic excellence.
I cannot explain the level of poverty, nor the pain I felt upon seeing it and
realising that many of the artists I had just been applauding slept on
concrete floors. Many were looking after sick or dying members of their
families, before and after gruelling rehearsals. Many lived in dwellings made
of corrugated iron, which freeze in the winter and boil in the summer. None of
that was present in the rehearsal room, or evident in their wonderful voices.
Instead, I saw a company of performers who were giving their all in the
pursuit of dramatic truth.
My only hope is that in a world where the reputed No 1 R&B singer is Justin
Timberlake, and the reputed finest rapper is Eminem, maybe the time is
approaching when the world's finest opera singer will come out of a South
African township such as Khayelitsha. And maybe by then the horrors of many of
their kinsmen's existence will also be a thing of the past.
47
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
15. MOZART FROM THE TOWNSHIP - ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT BY DAVID LAN
I am the artistic director of London's Young Vic theatre, but I am in Athlone,
a suburb of Cape Town, in a church hall just off the Klipfontein Road. This is
one of the classic apartheid-era urban highways, built wide and straight to
get tanks into the townships quickly to quell uprisings. But now is a time of
peace, and it's a work of peace that is going on here: rehearsals for a new
production of The Magic Flute.
It's a production with a difference. For a start, there's no orchestra. The
singers are accompanied only by marimbas, and Mandisi Dyantyis, a slight 25year-old, is coaching the players – "Let's go, two, three, four" – slipping
between speaking Xhosa and English. The director, Mark Dornford-May, in search
of a musical director, heard about him at the church that his wife, Pauline
Malefane, attends – "we know a guy who knows a guy who knows something about
music..." And here Dyantyis is, fresh out of music school, recreating bar by
bar the original orchestral parts for eight marimbas, a pair each of soprano,
alto, baritone, and bass.
They're at work on the overture. Malefane pounds away stylishly at the bass
marimba. She also sings the Queen of the Night, and plays a female Scrooge in,
A Christmas Carol, which the Young Vic is also co-producing and bringing to
London for Christmas. She sang Carmen for her husband on stage and in his film
UCarmen eKhayelitsha (which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival).
She has just been named Best Actress at the South African film awards for her
part in Son of Man, Dornford-May's second film, based on his hit production
The Mysteries which transferred from Wilton's Music Hall to the West End and
then to Broadway. She is an extremely well-known South African musician but,
before these rehearsals, she could play the marimba no better than any of the
others in the 30-strong company.
Recruited from all over South Africa, they are distinguished by two things:
musical talent and poverty. Dornford-May auditioned more than 1,500 – and how
48
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
hard it is to say "no", time after time, when the probable consequence is that
their families won't eat. We calculate that three hundred people are dependent
on the money that this company earns. Rehearsals end an hour before sunset to
allow time to return home to the townships – mostly Khayelitsha, one of the
biggest in South Africa. The streets are poorly lit and darkness brings
danger.
Dyantyis raises his baton. They play. It's extraordinary. It's Mozart alright,
but forget Vienna and sachertorte, and think sunlight dappling the sea.
Simon Rattle, on holiday in Cape Town, heard a performance and was bowled
over. He gave us a quote: "Mozart would have been surprised and then
delighted." And that's exactly right. It takes a moment to adjust, and then
you get it, and you grin. It's gorgeous, touching, slightly rough, slightly
jokey, as though the score is being made love to and ever so gently sent up.
And then you have to ask yourself: "Why am I in tears?"
They finish to whoops of pleasure. And then Dornford-May's second inspiration.
So far they've learnt only the first part of the overture – about two and half
of the total six minutes. "Great, guys", he says, "now let's learn the whole
thing.
In performance at the Baxter Theatre an odd thing happens. They play the first
section of the overture and the audience is rapt. They reach the climax, it
sounds as though it's over, and the audience applauds. But, cutting through
the applause, they play on. And the audience, thrown off-balance, suddenly
understands: this is not a gag or a pastiche. There is no orchestra, no
expensive sets or costumes, but it's serious. For now the music gets much more
difficult and the musicians need real skill to carry off its elegant, bouncy,
heartbreaking delicacy. Can they sustain it? They can! Prolonged applause, and
the audience settles down for a remarkable recreation of this supreme work of
music theatre.
49
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
What is also serious is this company's potential. Some members of the Isango
Portobello company, with whom we are co-producing the show, are universitytrained, while others have had most of their experience in church choirs.
There are pros and cons in both. The trained voices can sing the more
demanding parts but, often, with their training, come artificial stage habits
which have to go.
Dornford-May's luck has been to find generous backing from Eric Abraham's
Portobello Productions, while his genius is to find the perfect context in
which all the company can shine.
Our Christmas Carol begins in the shaft of a gold mine where Marley's ghost
possesses Tiny Tim – or, in our case, Tiny Thembi – to warn Mrs Scrooge, the
new mine-owner, not to allow her wealth to isolate her from her moral
community. In our Magic Flute Sarastro is a Mandela-like leader who struggles
to reconcile the Queen of the Night to the new realities born of the love
between her daughter Pamina and the foreign-born Tamino.
In these productions the performers speak about their own lives but they hold
our hands with such a light touch that you feel closely in contact with
Dickens's London and Mozart's Masonic fairy tale at the same time.
The well-reported tragedies of South Africa – the health crisis, above all –
mask a simpler dilemma. It's false, I believe, to think of talent as bedded
into the DNA, as a force that will realise itself come what may. Talent is a
relationship – with a parent, a friend, a teacher. Four of the strongest
singers in the company owe their careers to Nolufefe Mtshabe, an inspired
choir-leader, who spotted them when they were young. But where are all the
other teachers, companies, schools, and well-wishers needed to create the
hundreds of thousands of relationships to activate the tremendous creativity
there could be?
At the Young Vic we have many ways of working with the people who surround us.
In shows such as Tobias and the Angel we put our neighbours on our stage
50
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
alongside a company of leading singers and musicians, each group enhancing
each others' pleasure, and that of their audience. Living as we do in a world
city, intimately and powerfully connected in one way or another to virtually
every other community, we feel that to make shows for London we have to
engage, in our own tiny way, with "others" in "other places". Hence, for a
start, these two shows with these brilliant South Africans in whose company
whom we learn each day something new about what it is to be human.
Back to the church hall in Athlone. They're approaching the end of the opera:
"The sun has arisen/ Goodbye to the night/ The whole world is shining/ In
glorious light". Then comes the joyous final chorus. I dial the Young Vic and
hold out my mobile phone so they can hear: "Listen to this. Just listen to
bloody this..."
51
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
16. ASSISTANT DIRECTORS’ REHEARSAL DIARY
Gbolahan Obisesan and Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway - two young directors on the
Young Vic’s Genesis Directors Network – went out to Cape Town in July 2007 as
assistant directors to Mark Dornford-May on the two productions A Christmas
Carol and The Magic Flute. Rehearsals took place in the Athlone district of
Cape Town at the Methodist Church.
Week One
When we arrived in South Africa some members of the company had already taken
part in workshops to explore musical ideas and script development.
But the
first day of rehearsals was the first time that the full company had got
together to begin work on this very ambitious adaptation of both The Magic
Flute and A Christmas Carol (although the script of this was still in the
process of being completed).
Mark Donford-May the director led a sing-through with marimba accompaniment
with the principle characters of The Magic Flute – mainly Tamino, Pamina,
Queen of the Night Sarastro, Papageno and Papagena. The rest of the company
spent time learning various sections of the individual arias and the very
intricate notes of the opening overture.
Whilst all of the cast are extremely talented singers a limited number werer
able to read music.
Consequently Music Director Mandisi Dyantyis had
transposed the whole score of the opera into tonic sol-fa – a mamouth
undertaking.
Tonic sol-fa is a method of teaching sight-singing – ie without
written musical notation. Every tone is given a name according to its
relationship with other tones in the key: the usual notation is replaced with
anglicized solfege syllables do, reh, me, fa, so, la, te, do.
Many of the performers, although familiar with the musical version of Mozart’s
The Magic Flute, were finding it difficult to sing their arias with the music
52
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
played on the marimbas.
Given the pressure of time Mark planned to run all
the music in the first act of The Magic Flute by the Saturday of the first
week. This added to the actors’ challenge and level of pressure.
Through the week the cast worked incredibly hard with many sessions outside of
the regular 10am – 6pm rehearsals for extra coaching and cramming.
On
Saturday the sing through of the first act of The Magic Flute lasted about 45
minutes.
There were a few tricky moments and we have yet to resolve some
musical parts, namely the unique sound of the magic flute and Papageno’s
bells.
Week Two
We followed on from where we left off the previous week. Mark now set about
ensuring the company would be able to sing through the second act of The Magic
Flute with all the musical accompaniment. I continued to work closely with
Zamile, now rehearsing his arias, dialogue and intentions for clarity and
understanding. Simeilia (the other assistant director) worked with the three
spirits on clarity and intention, especially in the scene in which Pamina
thinks she has been jilted by Tamino, the young man she loves, and tries to
commit suicide. Most of our rehearsal time was shared with Mandisi’s marimba
classes which either required a principle individual to play a marimba section
for one of the many arias or to rehearse the March of the Priest which opens
the second act of The Magic Flute.
By the Saturday everyone, although slightly nervous as to what Mark was going
to make of their performance and still not totally musically secure, was
prepared for the run through of the second act.
Only a few performers were
still referring to their music score for words and notes. After a somewhat
shakey run through of the music in the second act Mark emphasised that each
individual, including the marimba players, are important in the telling of the
story. The audience must have a clear understanding of the story that is being
53
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
played out in front of them and if they do not understand an aspect of the
piece, it compromises the integrity of the work that everyone has invested
into bringing to life and putting on stage.
Week Three
Mark was concerned that some of the scenes with dialogue scenes were too long
or were being performed too slowly to sustain the audience’s concentration. He
suggested that they should be cut down to pin point the necessary information
within the scene.
So we looked at what information was vital – whether names
or dialogue detailing plot themes – and just kept what needed to be stressed
in order for the audience to follow the story. This work was extended to
working with the actors delivering these lines to ensure clarity.
We also asked some of the Xhosa, tSwana and English speaking performers and
collaborative writers - Pauline Malefane, Mbali Kgosidintsi and Zamile - to
translate the text into fitting words and appropriate dialogue to enhance
character interaction and audience understanding.
Simeilia and I really relished the opportunity to express our thoughts on
specific scenes. We talked about how we could change the writing in a scene or
the rhyme in an aria to help an actor play the scene with stronger intentions
or sing with more feeling by using more active verbs. We slowly worked through
the list of problem scenes, words and rhymes that Mark felt were ineffective
or overstated. By the end of the week, we proposed our newly restructured
scene solutions and plot queries, (such as how to refer to Sarastro and his
followers), to Mark for confirmation.
Week Four
This week David Lan, the Artistic Director of the Young Vic, visited
rehearsals.
David had commissioned Isango/Portobello productions to put the
shows together and bring them to the Younc Vic for this Christmas. David Lan
had also been involved in the early ideas behind a South African version of
54
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
The Magic Flute and had also collaborated in writing some of the libretto
(words) for the music.
The main reason for David’s visit was to see how the
pieces were progressing, but David was soon became involved in finding
alternative wordings to specific rhymes and placement of some of the more
complicated narrative plots. David, along with Pauline and Mark, worked
specifically on rewriting Tamino’s love aria so that the words became more
affectionate and gave the character and the actor Mhlekazi the feeling of
being unsure about the consequences of expressing Tamino’s emotions for
Pamina.
Mark was keen for The Magic Flute to have an authentic South African musical
identity so he started working on incorporating a more earthy African sound by
devising the music made by the men in Sarastro’s camp in Act Two.
He wanted
to give the music a sense of African folk and ritual tradition. Mandisi also
worked on layering the Motown style of the Three Spirits and the duet between
Pamina and Papageno. By now Simeilia and I realised that with a project so
large it is difficult to oversee all the detail, so Mark would ask us either
to watch the performers for emotional commitment in their performance, or
clarity and understanding in the delivery of words. Although some of the
company had had a formal musical education at the University of Cape Town,
only a handful have had previous acting experience. Having not had any
previous experience of the operatic style of music and language of
performance, our ears quickly adjusted and our eyes searched for meaning and
understanding in any tiny moment made by an ensemble performer or one of the
principle actors.
Week Five
We were still waiting for the revised third draft of A Christmas Carol
translated as Ikrismesi Kherol in Xhosa. We endeavoured to carry on working
through The Magic Flute, which was now being split into marimba calls and
specific scene calls to be loosely staged and blocked.
This was done in such
a way so that each dialogue scene and each classical musical number was
55
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
roughly linked to the last so the performers could start creating a journey
for their characters throughout the piece. Mark by now had also started
working on the set pieces within The Magic Flute, in which the company would
rehearse and block major movement in the big ensemble scenes. The
choreographer, Lungelo Ngamlana, was constantly at hand to work with
performers on creating a dance, or some accompanying movement for a particular
moment that demanded chorus participation. The cast were fitted for the
prototypes of their costumes, and measured for new costume requirements. Mark
was still undecided about how the Queen of the Night was to be dressed, and it
was this week that we discovered what the three ladies – the Queen of the
Night’s attendants - looked like in soldiers’ uniforms [although this has
since been changed]. It was also decided that Sarastro’s traditional African
garment needed to be more lavish and commanding.
As time loomed on we did a sing through of Act One and Act Two.
We received
the rest of the new words for the from David Lan, which were promptly
distributed to the singers concerned so they could begin to learn them before
the run at the end of the week. Mark and Mandisi had also decided that the
sound of Papageno’s magic bells should be played on wine bottles filled with
water. At this stage, they had also decided that the sound of the magic flute
should be created on a clarinet.
Throughout this week, rehearsals proved somewhat difficult, as for a few days
local gangsters cut the power lines to our rehearsal hall, leaving the cast in
the dark, bleak cold of the South African winter with only the dim
illuminating glow of candle light.
Rehearsals were stopped earlier than
normal for the health and safety of the company. By the Saturday, the
electricity was back to normal and we ended the week with a slow but
meticulous sing through of Act One and Two of The Magic Flute.
At this stage
we were very behind our original production schedule.
56
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Week Six
The third draft of A Christmas Carol script was now ready and we read through
it with Mark in advance of distributing it to the company. Pauline, Mbali,
Mandisi, Nolufefe and Mark all read while we listened to this new South
Africanised adaptation.
We were excited by the wealth of difference in the
story and themes that both of us had been quite familiar with. The story had
been changed dramatically to suit and reflect a more South African context but
still retained most of the universal elements that make the story such a
classic morality tale. The character of Scrooge was now called uScrooge, a
female business women, who is an executive director at a gold mine in
Johannesburg. Tiny Tim was now a girl called Tiny Thembi and although ill has
the gift of a beautiful voice.
She would be possessed by the Ghost of Marley
to warn uScrooge to change her ways. The three ghosts were now also female and
the first ghost would use film to transport uScrooge back to her youth. The
script seemed like a gift and seemed to need limited changes.
We began to look at creating a sound-scape for the film by starting with the
idea of a Sergio Leone classic western, in which the atmosphere is created
with the sound of tumble weed blowing down the street and swing doors opening.
We wanted to explore how accurately we could evoke real sounds by using
percussive material and how vocal music and sound could set the mood for the
scene being played out on stage.
Putting these ideas to one side, we then began to explore the sound that could
accompany the possession of Tiny Thembi by the Ghost of Marley. Above all, we
sat down with the cast for many hours throughout the week going through each
line, word by word, giving meaning to unfamiliar words, while Mark would
explain its contextual placement within a line or sentence so that the company
understood the conventions of the piece and the moral importance of any
message it carried or had to offer in a modern context.
57
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Week Seven
At the beginning of the week, David Lan returned to see our progress. Simeilia
and I sat down with both him and Mark to discuss and cast the roles within A
Christmas Carol. Our minds were inclined on casting, or at least considering,
individuals that were playing smaller or chorus parts in The Magic Flute for
more substantial roles in A Christmas Carol, but ultimately our casting
decisions were still based on experience, talent and ability. After an hour
and a half of discussion, we finally agreed on a cast list that was to be
announced and posted up for the company the following day. The conversation
then turned to casting the characters in the film section of the first Ghost
within A Christmas Carol that transports uScrooge back into the innocence of
her past.
We were very keen to start rehearsals as soon as possible, but we still needed
to hear the script read out by the full company and so the Wednesday morning
was elected as the morning we would sit down and read the full script. After
much deliberation Mark thought it would be a good idea to watch previous
interpretations of the same story both as a film and as a cartoon. This
illuminated various possibilities of interpretation to a room of South
African’s who were not familiar with the classic English fable and sparked up
a heated debate about humanity and moral obligation. The following day we
began to improvise around scenes in the first draft of our script, such as the
grave-robbers, the aid worker, charity organiser, and the Cratchitt Family
with the actors cast in those particular scenes to try and see what different
staging potentials arose out of different interpretations. It was decided that
the Cratchitt Family scene worked the best, so the others were later cut in
the final draft of the script.
Meanwhile, rehearsals for The Magic Flute were scheduled to continue as
Mandisi still neded many of the prominent marimba players to learn new musical
arrangements.
Some of these actors were also required by Mark, who was going
to be doing split calls on scenes in A Christmas Carol to work on text. We
58
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
devised a rehearsal call that all the creative members had collectively
negotiated and agreed on that allowed Mandisi to have key marimba players at
specific times throughout the day between 9am – 6pm, while Mark could also
work with those actors he required for uniting1 and actioning of text in the
larger scenes.
Simeilia and I were then given free reign over smaller scene’s in A Christmas
Carol to work with actors to get a sense of truth from the scenes whilst also
colouring them with cultural heritage and language by adding songs or changing
some of the dialogue into one of the South African languages, namely Xhosa.
Week Eight
By now we had worked through most of the scenes in A Christmas Carol, which
were now loosely staged with a few special effects to accompany certain
scenes. We were also getting prepared to shoot the film section of A Christmas
Carol by rehearsing the carols sung at a school concert when uScrooge is 12,
the Money song to signify the moment of uScrooge’s success, and the Pata Pata
song for when uScrooge is singing in a Shebeen. Along with rehearsing these
songs with Nolufefe, Mandisi was still running marimba calls for The Magic
Flute to get people off their music scores. Since the dates of the filming
were now looming closer by the day, Mark frequently had to pop out to have
meetings with the production manager, Laura, or go to the Waterfront Studios
to meet with the film editor, Raneel.
Charles Hazelwood, a music director Mark had previously collaborated with,
spent three days in rehearsals to bring a fresh eye and to see how the pieces
had progressed. He came to the rehearsal room like a storm and left having
helped to layer our bold South African adaptation of The Magic Flute and A
Christmas Carol with extra subtle musical nuances that re-ignited the pieces.
Unit-ing – in addition to the scenes indicated by the writer the action can be
divided up within the scene to indicate where there is a change of subject or
intention.
1
59
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
What was particularly interesting was his suggestion that the magic flute
could easily be considered as a magic drum.
Week Nine
The week of the shoot had finally arrived and we began filming at our scouted
location for that day at 8am. Our first day of shoot was in the township of
Guguleto, the township home of uScrooge as a child, as her drunken father
leaves and her resilient mother cradles an upset uScrooge flanked by
uScrooge’s stoic older sister, Pumla. The second day of filming was at the
clothing factory in which uScrooge worked before she dedicates her life to
making money. The following day we shot the silent movie were Marley offers
uScrooge the chance to buy out the factory. This day of shooting also included
the death of Marley and uScrooge attending his funeral at a church. The third
day of the shoot included the children’s orphanage and the school choir
concert that half of the company had been tirelessly rehearsing for. On our
fourth day, we started to film the musical section in the shebeen.
Mine and Simeilia’s roles changed slightly - aside from working and watching
closely the role of a director on set, we had to assume the role of continuity
supervisor, make-up assistant, and guest performer supervisor. The filming
wrapped up without too many problems and the company was now reassured that
once we had the finished offline edit we could polish and fix the sound-scape.
Simeilia and I spent time with Reneel, the editor, and went through the order
of the shots and Mark’s requirements for each edit.
Week Ten
The editing began in earnest while rehearsals of both the shows continued.
Much time was spent on the second and third ghost as the company and Mark
waited patiently for the DVD imagery of the silent film. Upon receiving the
offline edit, the sound was slowly applied, but we soon discovered that one of
the more significant images in the factory scenes in the film was out of focus
and that moment had to be re-shot.
An unwelcome added pressure!
60
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
We were now also had more frequent visits from Mannie Manim, (lighting
designer and executive director of the Baxter Theatre where we would play in
Cape Town), Charles Hazelwood and David Lan.
On this visit David was also
accompanied by writer and actor Kwame Kwai Ahmah, who had agreed to write a
piece about the project for The Guardian.
They all cast a complimentary but critical eye on the work we were developing
for the opening night, which was now no more than a week away, with a few
hours to spare between the get-in into the Baxter Theatre and performing in
front of a live paying audience. Fortunately, we were able to re-shoot the
unfocused scene the next day, and two days later edit it into the appropriate
point in the factory section.
By now, we had also decided that the sound of the magic flute would be played
on a trumpet by Mandisi on stage behind Tamino.
Week Eleven
We finally moved into the performance space at the Baxter Theatre and everyone
in the company was very excited.
The first part of the week was spent plotting lights, building the set and
ensuring the special effects were under control. We also looked at the actors’
entrances and exits so that they were easily accessible in-between playing the
marimbas and costume changes in The Magic Flute and producing a sound effect
and being in place to come on for a scene or a set piece in A Christmas Carol.
All of these things moments had to be carefully worked out, as we were aiming
to have an uninterrupted dress rehearsal performance for both shows, as they
would be watched by invited Baxter and Young Vic staff, plus the executive
producer, Eric Abrahams.
61
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
Although we were still waiting for the graded online DVD version of the film
section, A Christmas Carol dress rehearsal played out with just a few late
entrances, and after some direction notes from Mark, we began to make
structural changes to the narrative. We also made some drastic creative
decisions to cut some scenes in A Christmas Carol, because we felt they slowed
down the pace and did not really add anything extra to the overall story. Some
of the songs were also changed or enhanced to have a more dynamic effect when
accompanying a scene. After all these things resolved A Christmas Carol
started its previews with audience numbers building as the performances
progressed and the press night ended with a rapturous response from the
audience.
The dress run of The Magic Flute on Saturday proved more demanding because of
some complicated lighting states that took a great deal of time to plot.
Furthermore, some of the more technical effects in the show were not working
properly so we were only able to run act one of The Magic Flute to the invited
guests.
Week Twelve
On Monday we reworked some sections of the play and then worked tirelessly to
revise scenes and costumes.
We also worked on changes in the music that had
been suggested by Mandisi and Charles Hazelwood.
These changes continued to
be rehearsed in the day while we did previews in the evening.
By press night a lot of changes had been made and the new musical arrangements
and character developments had greatly enhanced the show. The whole company
now felt they had an original and exceptionally dynamic second show to present
to audiences in Cape Town - a sentiment shared by renowned classical composer
and conductor Simon Rattle, who paid us a surprise visit. With his confidenceboosting approval, The Magic Flute press night ended with rousing audience.
The two opening nights proved that all the hard work should see two hit South
62
Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
African adaptations of The Magic Flute and A Christmas Carol transfer to
London.
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Eric Abraham and the Young Vic present an
Isango/Portobello – Young Vic production
A Christmas Carol / Ikrismas Kherol
By Charles Dickens adapted by Mark
Dornford-May
17. RESOURCES
Books:
Drabble, Margaret (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 1997,
London: Oxford University Press
Louw, P. Eric, The Rise, Fall and Legacy of Apartheid, 2004, Praegar
Slater, Michael, Dickens, Charles John Huffman (1812-1870), Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography, 2004, Oxford University Press
Thompson, Leonard, A History of South Africa, Third Edition, 2001, Yale
University Press
Pinchuck, T and McCrea, B The Rought Guide to Cape Town, 2002, Rough Guides
Ltd
Websites:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/dickens_charles.shtml
http://www.lafi.org/magazine/articles/marimba.html
http://www.mozartproject.org/
http://www.sahistory.org.za/
http://www.sfopera.com/opera.asp?o=254
http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/culture/music.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRdickens.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org
All websites are correct at time of going to print in December 2007.
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