Writer: Nondumiso Msimanga | Artwork: Slovo Mamphaga

An Introduction:

Growing up in a South African township is a distinguishing experience. It is to grow taut, held like a fist ready to defend yourself, while leaky due to the lack of space between neighbours. Whereas the rural landscape is defined by a sense of spaciousness suburbs are known by their high walls. For worse, the township milieu is a puzzle of co-exposure to neighbours where each household is a puzzle piece that fits tightly into a composition of apartheid’s architecture. For better, in as much as Black people have had to make homes for themselves where they are, township life is a dynamic place of wounding and healing, sometimes simply bandaging and continuing to move whilst laughing at the wound as a coping mechanism.

For Kgomotso MoMo Matsunyane, ‘Comedy is tragedy’s cousin.’ In Matsunyane’s township playground, comedy and tragedy are close kin who share a mattress in a living room and call each other sibling. But they are not the same. Matsunyane works with the foils of comedy to reveal the systems operative in the continuation of township tragedies. She writes comic-tragedy rather than tragicomedy. Tragicomedy does not pursue the critical systems-based analysis of growing in the township which Matsunyane’s plays do. Tragicomedy shares the experience. It arguably gives in to the absurdity of consistent wounding. Matsunyane’s influences in Township Theatre are those theatre-makers and writers who did not give up on the mission to shake their society out of complacency or despair. Her assessments of the banal violence of living in a wound are self-referential and at times metatheatrical. She refers back to the politically or socially engaged works of Bra Gibson Kente, Bab’ Mbongeni Ngema and Ntate Selaelo Maredi as well as Paul Grootboom, as she speaks of them. She takes from their works, a keen interest in locale and satirical practice and yanks at the threads of their writings to make a tense theatrical experience which implicates audience members in the ways the plots unfold. Having worked with Ntate Maredi on a show about a girl named Maserole, who is arrested after having killed a man who was trying to harm her, Matsunyane realises that she carries a township existentialism into each of the works of this trilogy; impacted as much by her own early development in different locations as much it is by the forms of storytelling which developed her innovations of the form.

This introduction is written with an agenda. It carries a spirit of Matsunyane’s writing and the elected publisher’s philosophies. The agenda is a desire to have the work couched in the particularities of history, thematic and stylistic influences which inform the plays presented, so as to share within the discussion that these works pursue. Matsunyane’s trilogy is an invitation to not only watch her works, perhaps consume them, but to also read with her and consider the critical frames by which she operates as integral to the fashioning of Township Theatre that she pursues. Consider her invitation, with its agenda to exercise some socio-political influence, an opportunity to join in the co-creation of stories from and of the township space. By entering this theatrical experience in reading or re-producing the works of this trilogy, the call is to imagine sharing a playground, backyard, streetcorner or even church yard and play side-by-side with the characters through maskitla or some other favoured form of youthful township storytelling. Maskitla is how Matsunyane created the characters, how she worked out their tragic plots and the ways she decided on just how brazenly to articulate the situations around them and the situations they find themselves in. To tell their stories with unabashed humour. Through this storytelling strategy, the works create a call to respond whilst inside the theatrical engagement itself. Maskitla allows Matsunyane to write in an expectation for the reader or audience to improvise along with the play and provide an alternative, even as she denies this opportunity to enter the story and change it. Her works ask for critical distance to be maintained so that discussion can happen about how the story relates to social ills. She maintains, an innocence and denial of innocence to give each character their paradoxes, their complexities. These contradictions mean that no simple, single action will change the reality Matsunyane portrays. The characters must face death. Audiences and readers must deal with what causes the township landscape to be one of constant dying. Few situations of existence can parallel the contradictions of living in a township.

Writing from a wound and not bleeding is profoundly important work. It requires stepping away to observe the situation of woundedness, the possible causes of wounding and the reasons for continued non-healing to change the situation and not just the individual’s conclusion. Matsunyane offers a way to observe the impact of apartheid’s architecture in township worlds by looking at social relationships. Relationships that are broken. Relationships in need of mending, and relationships which she challenges viewers and readers alike to continue fighting for in real ways.

There is a network of too-close but not-close-enough existence in the location. It is a network of scarring and weakening of skin. Thick skin is not ideal for social life and people need porous membranes. Thick shells are for survival, but thick shells do not regrow when harmed. They leave those who have had to harden far more vulnerable to death not only because thickened membranes crack irreparably but also because those who have become hardened do not have others to count on. They are alone. Deep aloneness permeates the cracked streets of each relationship that Matsunyane explores in this trio, and yet, her invitation is to share the playground with the characters, to see them tell jokes and keep daring to dream. In this way, the actor playing the characters must exercise a verfremdungs effekt or alienation technique, as can be attributed to a Brechtian political style of reminding the audience that they are watching a play. The audience should not be so immersed in the story that they forget to draw connections with the wider world. The actor, as such, must balance between the reality presented and the distancing techniques which Matsunyane writes into the work. With township-coded ways of encouraging critical reflection, Matsunyane, herself, refers to a Brechtian influence as much as Township Theatre in her upbringing. She is also strongly inspired by a Shakespearean model of writing that relishes in the tool of having a play-within-a-play or using prologues or asides to speak directly to the audience and think about the action taking place onstage. But, where maskitla offers Matsunyane’s storytelling its structure, it is stand-up comedy that provides the tools for an actor to play whilst sitting alongside the characters to show how they play on their field of cracked dreams.

The trio of plays of here, Penny, Unlearn, and Ka Lebitso La Moya are joined by thedesire to share township dreams. The protagonist, Penny makes use of an instructional or how-to foil from the stand-up comedy tradition to speak for herself and picture a different future other than the one she finds herself in. Unlearn takes on the stand-up comedy act itself with a self-revelatory knife’s edge to laugh at the ways that a young woman’s future is stolen in different ways. And Ka Lebitso La Moya mobilises news reportage as its contextualising reflective tool for what unfolds around a young girl of great promise and equal naivety. In each of the plays, the genre is satire, but a kind of satire which pushes the element of critical distance to the level of confrontation.

There is much to be said about Matsunyane’s deployment of stand-up comedy as tool for reflective practice, providing a context to the world of the play whilst holding the audience in a steady refusal of the illusion of plays. Far more can certainly be researched into the ways that the tradition of stand-up in South Africa has addressed society with themes prevalent in this trilogy and how this writer combines the stand-up comedy tradition with theatrical impact yet, without succumbing to spectacle which makes township existence a mere punchline. The delicate, stylistic experimentation here, is tender in the ways that Matsunyane strategically uses stand-up comedy to actively critique even the very desire to laugh and make bitter realities more palatable. In these ways and more, the gendered task of the plays at hand, is skilfully presented as entertainment of a confrontational type. One that jolts the mind for critical awareness, social engagement, and cathartic recognition. This introduction, itself, may only mention the above and observe that it also does not touch on many other possible aspects of discussion regarding the trilogy. For the purposes of this introduction, only specific instances in each text will be discussed, in the hopes that others may take up further exploration and analysis of the work in this publication and other works by the playwright. For performers of the plays, the agenda is simply the hope that this brief preface may serve to open further curiosity into this world.

A warning: do not get seduced by the humour. In Penny, Matsunyane describes the character as having “a tendency to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, which is also seen through the style and non-linearity of the narrative.” Penny is the first play written by the playwright. In it, performance is a theme. The theme of performance runs through all the works, where lines between reality and fiction are always in contest; unsettled and restless. Stylistically, this theme demands an authentic approach that requires vulnerability, not as a coping mechanism (all coping mechanisms in the plays are challenged) but as a means to confront self and other because the relationship between actors and audience needs to be a mutual affair of looking at the wound and attempting to unpack the parts of the wounding.

In Unlearn, the protagonist says,

“Anyway, my parents don’t know that I do stand-up. Well, my mom knows but my dad doesn’t. Quite frankly I’m happy because he’s got the sense of humour of a fucking corpse! I mean sure I’m talking about the violence I grew up witnessing at home and being terrified of him especially since cops are amongst the most violent people in our country, but they’re just jokes right? They’re just jokes… (awkward silence) But erm, my parents are proud of me. Yeah. I really became something… (uncomfortable silence).”

There is always a critical understanding of the function of humour in the plays themselves. This allows for deconstructing the character’s own internal coping mechanisms to reveal how society relies on the tool of humour to escape pain and cope with the structures that prolong dysfunction in townships. Communicating realities about the location itself, Matsunyane uses language to pointedly articulate character for those in the know, demanding then, a certain intimacy with the characters and their attitude toward a world of constant threat of demise. All characters have found ways to manoeuvre this way of living, especially through language which holds a sense of their approach to life, whether it be of boasting or denial or apathy or brotherhood and so forth.

In Ka Lebitso La Moya, Pastor Modidi is a man of many names, and it is notable that nowhere else is a scathing critique of a character as sharply named as with this figure in contemporary South Africa. It is important, however, not to be swayed by the characters themselves either as they are roles which permeate township existence, but – in the ways presented – to offer critique of the systems creating such characters and attitudes to others. Figures such as Pastor Modidi feed off broken relationships, internal imbalances, financial instability and political distress.

Broken (social) relationships, imbalances of mind and spirit, unstable political surroundings and general distress are a result of ever-impending violence or demise. These point to a dysfunctional society propelled by structures inherited from the past. The structures of the location perpetually reinforce that this is a place where people do not matter to society at large – be it because of neglect of services such as water and electricity, rampant corruption or a number of economic deficits – township people are left behind in national transformation agendas. This place is where people are killed by neighbours and police alike. It is where people have to take justice into their own hands and where people can be burned for being traitors. Townships are the most feared of places in democratic South Africa and, where Matsunyane is concerned, this is a place where relationships struggle to bloom, where dreams are disavowed, and individuals are forced to exist in homes where the nuclear family is a force of apartheid’s aftermath. In the worlds illustrated by Matsunyane’s barefaced playfulness, characters represent realities which are fractured and where life is brief but fought for. Only radical change can shift these circumstances. Relationships are the first site for this to be plausible, according to Matsunyane’s writing. Each play presents a kind of bildungsroman or coming-of-age tale, but where violence is the initiation. Without ways to confront the depth of obstructions to life which these dangerous township playgrounds host, each play ends with a similar threat: death.

Matsunyane says, ‘The reward is always part of the style of the writing.’ The languages, play on words, rhythms, relatability of characters, playing inside and outside of the world, song-like storytelling, sometimes songs themselves, and the responsibility to bring the audience onto the playing field along with the characters whilst excising dirt from a wound – all are rewards in the fulfilment of the plays’ intention of enacting a collective catharsis. Matsunyane does not shy away from an agenda in her works, she stares at issues with the curiosity of a child seeing a dead body and attempting to understand how a person can be so bereft of life. ‘What better way to understand yourself than to laugh at yourself or to place yourself in situations – whether hypothetical or in the real – where your moral compass is questioned,’ says Matsunyane. Without laughter as critical tool, the reward of this work is missed, and without critical distance the point of the laughter is lost. Finding a way to play on Matsunyane’s dangerous playground is a reward worth the confrontational risk.

*This introduction is from Plays by MoMo Matsunyane Vol.1, the debut anthology by Kgomotso MoMo Matsunyane. The book is available for sale at Lit.Culture, 29 Chiswick Street, Brixton. Operating hours are 09:00 to 16:00, Tuesday to Sunday.