Reza de Wet

In 1985 when playwright Reza de Wet unleashed her creative vision, fully formed and perfectly pitched, on an unsuspecting and quite impotent South-African theatre scene, she presented a subtle but radical alternative to the agitprop and comfortable entertainment seen on South African stages at that time. Right from the beginning of what had become a sustained and prolific career, she proved to be able to unnerve and amuse in equal measure while tapping into a dark and richly subversive vein, mining both gold and puss from a festering Afrikaner psyche.

South Africa in the 1980s was a very different place from the country of today.

Black schoolchildren were marching in the streets, protesting against a repressive system of Apartheid and a second rate education in Afrikaans (then called 'the Language of the Oppressor'). The police were shooting at these children. Young white men, on the other hand, were expected to pass into manhood and citizenship by a two-year rite of passage fighting a senseless and indefensible terrorist war on our borders. Mothers organised knitting circles to make socks for their sons and sent Christmas-parcels (that invariably contained rusks and a Bible) to a mysterious 'front' somewhere up north. The State-controlled radio and television quite successfully fed us a sanitised version of the truth and from the pulpits of the Dutch Reformed Church religious leaders extolled the Nationalists' version of 'loving thy neighbour as thyself' in the comforting guise of 'separate but equal'.

And apart from the occasional bump up against reality, many whites could still pretend that the world they lived in was relatively safe, sound and perhaps even moral.

Censorship was the order of the day. In 1985, one of the great Afrikaans playwrights, Bartho Smit, had effectively been silenced and the work of another important playwright, Pieter Fourie, was constantly being emasculated. For a time, he was reduced to writing farces.

To counter the drought that hit Afrikaans Drama, the Afrikaans Language and Culture Organization (ATKV) started an annual Campus Festival to stimulate new student drama, and it is here that Reza, the actress from the small town of Senekal in the Free State, then a Professor of Drama from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, staged her first play. From this debut it was immediately clear that a major new voice had announced itself.

African Gothic (Diepe Grond, 1985) understandably sparked off intense debate. Using a technique of literary model or reference that has served Reza de Wet well over the years, (an entire thesis could be constructed around her use of fairy tales, Christian myth and references to the works of Poe, the Bröntes and obviously Chekov) African Gothic was a knowing subversion of a popular Afrikaans children's story set on an idyllic farm; a South African Eden where the parents were good and responsible, the children safe and sound, the black nanny a second mother and friend, the workers smiling and happy and a benevolent God ever-watchful and at home in Heaven.

With one perverse and masterly gesture Reza de Wet killed off the parents who built the world we grew up in and made the lovers doomed to re-enact key incidents from their childhood to pass the time. A mainly silent black nanny, who has become both mother and God, watches with great love as her former employer's children self-destruct. Even the order of day and night are reversed. Frikkie and Soekie go to sleep at sunrise and rise at sunset to start their work. Where crops used to grow from neatly ploughed furrows, the farm now lies fallow as they burrow through the floor of their room in a futile attempt to strike a source of life-giving water.

Here was a play that clearly overturned every single rule and moral principle that upheld society and were accepted as the norm by the very people that set up the Campus Festival, a new type of Afrikaner. Just a year later the Rock movement known as 'Voëlvry' (meaning; to be declared an outlaw) launched itself as a populist form of protest and gave voice to a rebellious generation of Frikkies and Soekies who, through music, happily killed their parents and what they stood for.

RE-DREAMING Anton Chekhov Rehearsal 2001

Reza de Wet's last three plays have drawn on Russian author Anton Chekhov as inspiration. DRIE SUSTERS TWEE (THREE SISTERS TWO) have the characters of Chekhov's THREE SISTERS moving to the structure and rhythm of THE CHERRY ORCHARD. The shadowy undertow of UNCLE VANYA, so carefully concealed behind Chekhov's lively dialogues, became the expressionistic spirit in the award-winning YELENA. This year, opening at the National Arts festival, de Wet's ON THE LAKE borrowed from THE SEAGULL, recalling the life of the actress Nina, who longs for freedom; Madame Arkadina, losing the battle against the passing of youth; and Polina, whose life consists of dashed hopes.

But it would be simplistic to view these plays by Reza de Wet as mere Chekhov sequels. This is only a guise. For de Wet, the plays have been an investigation into the way Chekhov envisaged theatre, and a grappling with the process of transformation.

While Chekhov has now become a favourite among the realist classics few productions seem to take heed of his vision of what theatre could and should be. A recent acclaimed production of THE CHERRY ORCHARD in London played for over three hours; but de Wet's research revealed that Chekhov had intended the third act to last for only fourteen minutes. Chekhov's deriding of Stanislavsky's directing and acting of THE SEAGULL is now famous: “The stage demands a degree of artifice … What would happen if you cut the nose out of one of Kramskoy’s paintings and substituted a real one? The nose would be ‘realistic’ but the picture would be ruined.” It seemed that Chekhov intended a different style of acting, more rhythmic, lighter on the psychology … almost like a farce or vaudeville.

“I feel that Chekhov intended elements that are still not explored in productions and understandings of his plays," said de Wet. In his conversations and correspondences with Meyerhold and Gogol – also renowned Russian theatre practitioners – Chekhov proposed a radical vision for theatre performance that is not character-driven, but focused on the actor's presence, atmosphere, and the ritual and musical pattern of the play.

As Meyerhold wrote: “For Chekhov, the characters … are the means and not the end … Chekhov’s art demands a theatre of mood.” Shrouded in mystery, the power of Chekhov lies not in the manifest dialogue and scenes of the visible world; they are plays written in the margin of other events,” said de Wet.

ON THE LAKE virtually revolves around the one absent character: Kostia, whose suicide ten years before still leaves indelible marks on the women of the play. The yearnings, regrets and memories of Kostia haunt them – particularly Nina, whose dreams of art and freedom, once centred on Kostia’s revolutionary theatre, are now jaded amidst her disillusionment. Instead, the play’s “heroine” spends most of the play listening to the other characters’ complaints, entreaties and manipulations – another entity standing on the margins of events.

As the play's director as well as playwright, de Wet's investigations were even more significantly revealed in the acting. Grethe Fox's Polina was like a wind-up doll, exploding in grievances until the energy winded down – then violently gushing out again. Her wailing reminded one of incantation, a ritual of mourning; and her character's deep grieving arose not so much from the believability of circumstances or from the words she spoke, but from some doomed spirit of loss that was at once pathetic and moving.

Brink Scholtz's rehearsal of Nina was based on images from Alice in Wonderland, and the expressions and postures of "Victorian maidens in distress," said de Wet, who appreciated that the clichés of popular culture could, in a peculiar way, evoke identification and resonances.

As de Wet wrote in the programme: ON THE LAKE is an exploration ... of non-literary forms of public entertainment which transcends the narrow confines of realism ... the magic of the pantomime, the vaudeville, the tragic clown, and the poignant mystery of the marionette who wipes away the tear while holding the handkerchief just a little away from its face.

Puppetry and the clown figure, closely relating to the grotesque, featured prominently in Meyerhold's theatre – and, as de Wet's research showed, Chekhov was extremely sympathetic to Meyerhold's approach. At one stage, Fox rehearsed with arms tied in splints, and Annelisa Weiland with her hair bands tied around her fingers, as if her Arkadina was a marionette. De Wet wanted to bring about a meeting of Chekhov and Meyerhold's work, appropriating elements of vaudeville, commedia d’ell arte and the “fairground booth” (the title of Meyerhold's famous essay on theatre), and Japanese Noh theatre, and to search for a theatre performance text.

ON THE LAKE thus sets out to be a performance of “purely theatrical poetry, blending with the grotesque and the ritualistic aspects … it is densely atmospheric,” said de Wet. “For me this resounds much more than realistic characterisation – they have a simplicity which gives much power.” – Like the mechanical gestures of the marionette wiping the tears, which nevertheless wields the power of mystery. Anyone remember the puppeting sequences in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH?

De Wet is aware that they play created certain confusions for audiences. South African audiences have tended to expect theatre resembling literature, to become timid and unimaginative, said de Wet. Such responses would be expected of audiences wanting to see characters and stories but being offered instead a theatre of infectious atmospheres. “Unfortunately there is no time for ‘peeping-tom theatre – as Artaud described it – its really dying on its feet!”

De Wet's theatre does not mirror nature or Chekhov. Her plays are distorting magnifying glasses that reveal quintessence, the exhilarating of theatre. "I feel more than ever that the theatre event should be other-worldly; it should enthral, being both realistic and highly theatricalised. Theatre is the best metaphor for the world that exists on the cusp between reality and dream.," writes Reza.

Realistically speaking, her new explorations will require a new audience willing to follow, de Wet said, and audiences have such precise expectations. Like Nina's stage that flies away at the end of ON THE LAKE, de Wet felt that she has been left a little suspended. Kostia's search for "new forms" is accompanied by a fundamental irony and sadness: the artist is aware of the limitations.

But ten years on, the dreamer, Nina, would revisit the stage and liberate the theatre that failed for Kostia, and so win her freedom. Dreaming of the dreamer's flight, de Wet's ON THE LAKE grapples with the essential wellspring of living: the loss and the renewal of inspiration and artistic creation.

She died on 27 January 2012 from leukaemia at her home.

• http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/commentary/2012/02/05/obituary-reza-de-wet-playwright-who-sought-hidden-truths
• http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10137548.2012.754082#.UrHWVtJdXIc