Gabo Legwala made its stage debut earlier this year at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda.
Poet Modise Sekgothe’s critically acclaimed play, Gabo Legwala, made its Joburg debut on Friday night to a great reception and the team behind the play had no nerves about bringing it to Jozi.
“Truthfully speaking, as a crew/team there was more excitement than there was nervousness about bringing the production to Johannesburg,” producer Ketsia Velaphi tells The Citizen.
Gabo Legwala made its stage debut earlier this year at the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Makhanda, formerly known as Grahamstown.
The work assesses the rites of passage that a young South African man undergoes as he grows up without a father figure.
When translated, ‘Gabo Legwala’ means the coward’s home. In full, the title, ‘Gabo Legwala a golliwe’, implies that the coward in question spares his loved ones from tragedy or mourning due to his aversion to combat.
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Tweaks for Joburg audience
Gabo Legwala will run at The Market Theatre until mid-October.
The production’s creative team made a few tweaks for the Joburg run, particularly bringing into focus Sekgothe’s bond with his childhood friends, while fellow cast member Phumla Siyobi had more opportunity to sing in the play, as though giving Sekgothe time to catch his breath after a demanding scene.
“One of the ways we enhanced the production was by focusing on the precise punctuation of certain moments so that they stand out. To the naked eye, it might seem simple, but this attention to detail changes a great deal about the performance and elevates it in very interesting ways,” director Mahlatsi Mokgonyana shares with The Citizen.
Mokgonyana is one-half of the respected The Theatre Duo. The other half is Billy Langa.
The director and theatre practitioner says the Joburg run is also enhanced by the technical tools available to them at the Market Theatre.
“The Market Theatre is well-resourced, which gave us a lot of room to utilise those tools. This allowed us to scale up the production technically, increasing its value and finding new ways for the technology to serve the story both stylistically and aesthetically,” he says.
“In contrast, the National Arts Festival offered a beautiful chance to experiment precisely because we had less. That challenge pushed us to explore the text and our performances creatively with what we had at our disposal, which was incredibly fun,” shares Mokgonyana.
Multi-instrumentalist Yogin Sullaphen, who could be described as a sonic scientist, astutely gave life to each scene with sound.
“I always enjoy playing with minimalism it tests whether the show has heart and if it can work anywhere under any constraints. However, it is also a great joy to have more tools to play with and to expand the show.”
The Joburg audience
The Joburg audience can be quite critical of art, whether in music, visual art or theatre. However, producer Velaphi says this is something they thrived on.
“For a lot of us in the team, Johannesburg is our residential and artistic home and thus, we welcomed the opportunity to bring it here more than we feared it, and in like fashion – welcome the critique,” she says.
The opening night on Friday was well attended by other artists such as poets Mak Manaka, Masai Sepuru and actor Nyaniso Dzedze. Sekgothe’s sister was also in the audience.
Just as it did at NAF, Gabo Legwala received a standing ovation on the night with most, if not all, left blown away.
