Windhoek
What do a pensioner, a high school girl and a poet have in common? They have all been cast for their unique stage skills in the upcoming Afrikaans play, Die Laaste Karretjie Graf, by Athol Fugard that is to be staged in May.
The play will showcase as part of the 37th annual theatre festival of Committed Artists of Namibia (CAN). CAN, the most prolific community theatre group in the country, has secured the exclusive Namibian performing rights of the play, the only Afrikaans stage work ever written by Fugard.
More than 80 established Namibian actors and would-be actors have vied for and auditioned since January for the powerful roles of the seven-character play, ranging from 15 to 60 years old. This socially apt stage work reflects very strongly on gender violence, a pandemic viewed and considered to be a growing African social problem.
True to CAN’s publicly declared policy, new and old theatre faces will feature in this production to the benefit of Namibian audiences and the development of the Namibian theatre fraternity.
The cast consists of veteran actors Elenore Khoa (Ouma Mieta), who performed the lead role in the Afrikaans version of King of the Dump in the late eighties and won the best actress award in the Namibian Youth Theatre Competition, and Shirley Swartz (Sarah) a university researcher who was the second female Namibian actress that performed in Fugard’s Afrikaans version of Boesman en Lena in 1980.
Namibian award-winning playwright and theater director, Frederick Philander, wrote Koning van die Ashoop and translated Boesman en Lena into Afrikaans. The Koning van die Ashoop won the best radio drama category prize in an international award of the New York Radio Festivals. Philander, who is directing Die Laaste Karretjie Graf, has directed other Fugard hit plays such as My Children-My Africa, Play Land, Valley Song and The Road to Mecca over the years.
Other actors in the cast include Rehoboth-based actor, Wayne Beukes, in the main male role of Koot Geduld, a multiple murderer of two wives. Beukes last year superbly portrayed the part of Cheswick, a mental patient in the knockout American play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, also staged by CAN. David Campbell who also acted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 2015 plays the acting role of Pienkies.
Katatura-based actors who have been cast in the play are John Isaacks (Toek-Toek), one of three sons in the Geduld clan. He brilliantly performed the part of Lucky in 2014 in a production of Waiting for Godot also directed by Philander. Sibali Ghobetsi, a published poet and Astrid Dirks a Grade 9 learner at Khomas-Tura Secondary School, are the newcomers to acting in this CAN production for the year.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett is the second play of the 2016 theatre festival, which will be staged in August.