The latest offering by Namibian industrial theatre, Severius Majiedt, invited the audience to “Baby Cloete and Sissie Kavendji.” Staged at the NTN, this dramatic comedy oscillated between many realities facing Namibians. These include the search for a better life, alcoholism and poverty.
The protagonist, Baby Cloete, played by Dedrei de Wee, commanded the stage with energetic movement and use of facial and speech projection. This is the benefit of using Afrikaans as a medium because it allows resonance to grow – this mainly because of the identification of the ground consonants like ‘r’ and ‘g’.
Baby, a full-time resident on the streets, took us to her home of boxes and rubble at the Wernhil Park taxi rank in Windhoek. Her actions confessed her love for raising her arm to lift the bottle as she begged for money – to buy alcohol.
The story continued comically as she and her long-0time partner, with the broken ‘machine,’ Zorba engaged in musicality to generate funds to quench their thirst for a ‘dop’ and satisfy their hunger, a feature so reminiscent of street life.
They then meet Sissy Kavendji and her 12-year-old daughter, Linki, who hail from Okakarara. Their journey to find Linki’s father, Jerry Hangula, led them to the Windhoek. And so, with the help of Baby and a journalist, they embarked on the search for Jerry.
The delivery by Linki was a believable enactment of the many street children found in Windhoek and around Namibia.
She truly engaged in an energetic rendition of how uneducated youngsters talk to their parents. With noticeable talent from some of the actors, and with the combination of live street music, the play filtered the many possibilities of theatre. With Afrikaans and English as the pillars in speech, the bilingualism, and skeptic remarks on articulation in the play itself, even dealt with speech as a topic.
What was rather confusing was the decor backdrop, illustrating Windhoek. Problem is, Windhoek does not look like New York, and everybody knows that. Maybe this was deliberate – to try capture the contrast between city life and street life?
What also drew attention were the stagnant characters that were present on the stage at all times. I did not find the need for statue characters. In my opinion, they stole the energy and focal point away from the happening scenes evolving.