Jean-Louis and Prosper are two actors who have little in common apart from their profession. Jean-Louis (played by André Odendaal) is old, white, washed up and indigent; Prosper (Oarabile Ditsele) is young, black, on the rise and affluent. They meet at a casting agent’s office, where they are waiting for a film director who has flown in from the US to shoot an SA western called Six Guns at Sesriem.
Prosper is a minor celebrity and has already been cast as the outlaw. Jean-Louis, hoping to portray the sheriff, really needs this gig — just how much is brought home to us by Felicia (Chantal Stanfield), the agent’s assistant, who has seen plenty of desperate actors arrive in her office and depart still unemployed. Given the quiet heartbreak of these encounters, she finds herself unable to look Jean-Louis in the eye. Like the rest of us, she would rather not engage with what it means for there to be so many ageing, out-of-work actors in the country.
Slabolepszy undertakes an admirable form of advocacy here. Bitter Winter was inspired by the Theatre Benevolent Fund, which assists those in SA’s arts and entertainment industry who are experiencing financial difficulties due to old age or ill health. Being an actor is a notoriously precarious vocation. It is unusual to be successful enough, for long enough, to achieve financial stability.
Jean-Louis was once at the top of the thespian ladder. At first, his warnings to Prosper about the slipperiness of fame and fortune fall on deaf ears — understandably so, as Prosper does not need lecturing on how hard life can be. He may be a star, but he is also an orphan who has known poverty.
He is, however, intrigued by the madala’s acting chops. Prosper is not impressed by influencer-actors and his fellow stars of the screen; he is hungry for Jean-Louis’ stories about live performance, whether onstage or in the middle of nowhere with a travelling troupe. This backstory allows Slabolepszy to sketch the life of a white actor working for one of the provincial performing arts repertories of the apartheid era.
It’s not the straightforward tale of complicity that might be expected. Jean-Louis was in the company that performed Breyten Breytenbach’s Afrikaans translation of Shakespeare’s gruesome play Titus Andronicus, staged by the German director Dieter Reible in 1970 as a direct affront to the Calvinist apartheid establishment.
In fact — and I must admit that this is a niche interest of mine — Jean-Louis’ career tracks the factional fighting within white Afrikaans theatre over Shakespeare’s cultural authority and political status. As a boy he saw Andre Huguenet and Anna Neethling-Pohl in Macbeth, speaking the text of LI Coertze, the first person to publish Afrikaans Shakespeare translations. Now, in the winter of his life, he regrets that he never got to play the villainous Richard III and give the iconic “winter of our discontent” speech.
Prosper recognises this. The two find common intergenerational ground (for Bitter Winter is also very much a play about fathers and sons) and Jean-Louis is ready to depart the scene, giving the younger actor his blessing. Nevertheless, Prosper insists that the veteran receives his royal dues.
Jean-Louis, like Shakespeare’s Richard, is “deformed”: witness his ailing body, his shabby clothes, his embarrassing decline. Still, his Afrikaans Richard lends him dignity and even transcendence — if only for a moment. Then the lights go up, leaving Prosper, Jean-Louis and Felicia in limbo.
CHRIS THURMAN: Scars of life both hidden and on display
Latest Paul Slabolepszy play is at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town until June 14
Image: Supplied
If you’re a character in a Paul Slabolepszy play, the chances are you’re misunderstood. You might seem like a recognisable SA “type” — maybe even a caricature. Yet as the play unfolds, you reveal hidden depths, both to your fellow characters and to the audience.
From 1982’s Saturday Night at the Palace to The Return of Elvis du Pisanie and Mooi Street Moves a decade later, from sports-themed farce to psychological realism, Slabolepszy’s plays depict characters who have seen a bit of life; they’ve got the scars to prove it, though they don’t like to show them off. But the truth will out.
So it proves with Bitter Winter, which opened in Johannesburg earlier this year and is at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town until June 14.
A new masculinity
Jean-Louis and Prosper are two actors who have little in common apart from their profession. Jean-Louis (played by André Odendaal) is old, white, washed up and indigent; Prosper (Oarabile Ditsele) is young, black, on the rise and affluent. They meet at a casting agent’s office, where they are waiting for a film director who has flown in from the US to shoot an SA western called Six Guns at Sesriem.
Prosper is a minor celebrity and has already been cast as the outlaw. Jean-Louis, hoping to portray the sheriff, really needs this gig — just how much is brought home to us by Felicia (Chantal Stanfield), the agent’s assistant, who has seen plenty of desperate actors arrive in her office and depart still unemployed. Given the quiet heartbreak of these encounters, she finds herself unable to look Jean-Louis in the eye. Like the rest of us, she would rather not engage with what it means for there to be so many ageing, out-of-work actors in the country.
Slabolepszy undertakes an admirable form of advocacy here. Bitter Winter was inspired by the Theatre Benevolent Fund, which assists those in SA’s arts and entertainment industry who are experiencing financial difficulties due to old age or ill health. Being an actor is a notoriously precarious vocation. It is unusual to be successful enough, for long enough, to achieve financial stability.
Jean-Louis was once at the top of the thespian ladder. At first, his warnings to Prosper about the slipperiness of fame and fortune fall on deaf ears — understandably so, as Prosper does not need lecturing on how hard life can be. He may be a star, but he is also an orphan who has known poverty.
He is, however, intrigued by the madala’s acting chops. Prosper is not impressed by influencer-actors and his fellow stars of the screen; he is hungry for Jean-Louis’ stories about live performance, whether onstage or in the middle of nowhere with a travelling troupe. This backstory allows Slabolepszy to sketch the life of a white actor working for one of the provincial performing arts repertories of the apartheid era.
It’s not the straightforward tale of complicity that might be expected. Jean-Louis was in the company that performed Breyten Breytenbach’s Afrikaans translation of Shakespeare’s gruesome play Titus Andronicus, staged by the German director Dieter Reible in 1970 as a direct affront to the Calvinist apartheid establishment.
In fact — and I must admit that this is a niche interest of mine — Jean-Louis’ career tracks the factional fighting within white Afrikaans theatre over Shakespeare’s cultural authority and political status. As a boy he saw Andre Huguenet and Anna Neethling-Pohl in Macbeth, speaking the text of LI Coertze, the first person to publish Afrikaans Shakespeare translations. Now, in the winter of his life, he regrets that he never got to play the villainous Richard III and give the iconic “winter of our discontent” speech.
Prosper recognises this. The two find common intergenerational ground (for Bitter Winter is also very much a play about fathers and sons) and Jean-Louis is ready to depart the scene, giving the younger actor his blessing. Nevertheless, Prosper insists that the veteran receives his royal dues.
Jean-Louis, like Shakespeare’s Richard, is “deformed”: witness his ailing body, his shabby clothes, his embarrassing decline. Still, his Afrikaans Richard lends him dignity and even transcendence — if only for a moment. Then the lights go up, leaving Prosper, Jean-Louis and Felicia in limbo.
You might also like....
CHRIS THURMAN: Drama musical is not simply a parable with an easy moral
CHRIS THURMAN: Rediscovering the ordinary as the world burns
Chris Thurman: Othello reclaims his language, gods and heritage in Foot’s reimagining