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VACATION EXERCISE • Read the Section on South African Theatre in Your Textbook EFFINGHAM SECONDARY SCHOOL GRADE 12 – VACATION EXERCISE • Read the section on South African Theatre in your textbook • Read Sophiatown and download and read the Grade 12 SELF STUDY RESOURCE PACK FROM THE WEBSITE. • ANSWER THE FOLLOWING VACATION EXERCISE 1) Define ‘Workshop Theatre’ 2) List the FIVE steps of the workshopping process 3) Explain the features of workshopped plays. 4) Discuss the collaborative creation process of Sophiatown. 5) Name and explain THREE laws that were passed during apartheid. 6) Discuss the impact the apartheid laws had on South African theatre. 7) Sophiatown is based on the force removals of 1955. Discuss this theme with reference to the text. 8) Write a character sketch for the following characters: 8.1 Lulu, Marmariti, Princess, Mingus, Jakes, Ruth 9) State the agenda for the following types of theatre: a) Protest theatre, The black consciousness movement, Theatre of resistance, Workers Theatre and Community Theatre Sophiatown By Junction Avenue Theatre Company Study the extract below and then answer the questions that follow: Lulu: We watched them move the first street, Toby street, where Dr Xuma was. The rain was falling and we were only a few. The bulldozers were there knocking the pillars of the first house. I don’t remember the name of the people. That was Toby street where Dr Xuma, Bo Resha and Oliver Tambo was there. Mingus: The bulldozers bulldozed five houses: one, two, three, four, five at the same time. As they were bulldozing the houses, the lorries that were supplied by the GG were taking the loads out to Meadownlands. Page 1 of 5 Marmariti: The day my house was removed, it was half past five in the morning. I think it was on a Thursday. They knocked at my door. Three loud knocks. Five tall Dutchmen. They said the day had come. I wished for a special sign on my door, but there was none. Lulu: The lorries were waiting. Even as we packed, the labourers with the Boere were hitting the pillars of the verandah with big hammers. Mamariti: I said to them, I wished they could give us enough time to pack, as I was going to have my cups and plates broken. Lulu: And they said, ‘Jy praat te veel. Moenie praat nie.’ And Ma said, ‘I have this right to talk for my things.’ By eight o’clock we were already moved to Meadownlands. The walls and the floors of the house were rough cement. Everything was awful and we were very much unhappy. Source B 3.1 In what way was Sophiatown different from other townships in South Africa? Give reasons for your answer. (4) 3.2 Discuss TWO social problems that the people in Sophiatown dealt with. (6) 3.3 The extract highlights the theme of forced removals in the play. Write a detailed paragraph on this theme and discuss how it affected the people of Sophiatown. (10) 3.4 Junction Avenue Theatre Company created the play using workshopping techniques: 3.4.1 Define ‘Workshop Theatre’ (2) 3.4.2 Explain how Sophiatown was workshopped using the observation phase to create the play. (4) 3.4.3 Identify TWO dramatic links used in the play. (2) 3.5 If your school had to produce the play Sophiatown, Plan a slogan for the cover of the programme (without using any offensive language) reflecting how the people of Sophiatown would feel about moving, (5) Page 2 of 5 3.6 If you were the director of Sophiatown, discuss your ideas for staging the last scene of the play. Make use of Source B in your discussion. (6) Background and context of Sophiatown Social Sophiatown was a suburb in Johannesburg and is also known as Kofifi or Softown. One of the factors that made it different from other townships was the fact that it was a freehold township, which meant that it was the only area in South Africa at the time that black people could purchase and own land. It was the epicenter of politics, jazz and blues during the 1940s and 1950s. It was vibrant often dangerous and violent but also a place where people of all races met, drank in shebeens talked politics, poetry and life. Sophiatown was like a pressure cooker turning out intellectuals, poets’ writers, musicians and gangsters. It produced some of South Africa's most famous writers, musicians, politicians and artist’s people such as: Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Can Themba, Don Mattera, Ruth First and Father Trevor Huddleston. Sophiatown had character, unlike most townships it was not owned by the Johannesburg municipality and so it never acquired that municipal ‘matchbox’ look. The houses were built according to people's ability to pay, tastes, and cultural background. Some made of brick and others corrugated iron and scrap metal. As mentioned before, Sophiatown was alive with music, dance, drinking, philosophical and political talk. This all set against a backdrop of lawlessness and murder. Sophiatown embodied the best and worst of South African culture. Apart from turning out some of south Africa’s most influential writers and intellectuals it also famously boasts the creation of the internationally acclaimed musical King Kong which was based on a Sophiatown legendary boxer, the musical starred Miriam Makeba and ran on the west end for two years. Sophiatown was also steeped in gangsterism which emerged out of the poverty of the area. These gangsters were city bred young men who spoke Tsotsitaal – a mixture of Afrikaans and English and were about as tough as they come. Russians, Berliners, Gestapo, Americans and the Vultures- were all names of Sophiatown gangs. Interestingly the Gestapo and Berliner gang named themselves as such as a reflection of their admiration for Hitler as he took on white Europe. Political Sophiatown was one of the oldest black area’s in South Africa and was at its peak in the 1940’s and 1950’s and so it therefore its political background falls into pre-apartheid and apartheid South Africa. The term Apartheid was introduced during the 1948 as part of the election campaign by DF Malan's Page 3 of 5 Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP – 'Reunited National Party'), however racial segregation had been in force for many decades in South Africa. From the Afrikaans word meaning 'separation' apartheid was a social philosophy which enforced racial, social, and economic segregation on the people of South Africa. Sophiatown was unfortunately doomed for destruction. The Apartheid government saw the Township as a threat, as it was a place in South Africa where the walls of division that the government were so carefully creating, did not apply. Races mixed freely and ideas and opinions abounded. And so, to quell this so called threat the government passed the Group areas act which basically made the destruction of Sophiatown and the segregated relocation of its inhabitants into a matter of central government vision and strategy. Sophiatown residents united in protest against the forced removals; creating the slogan: Ons dak nie, ons phola hier (We won't move). Father Trevor Huddleston, Nelson Mandela, Helen Joseph and Ruth First played an important role by becoming involved in the resistance. However it has been argued that the resistance was not completely united as some tenants who lived in extremely cramped conditions and were charges extortionate prices thought they may be better off once relocated. However many people of the township relied on Sophiatown for their daily living- house owners and gangsters among them. Whatever resistance there was fell short. Two days before the removals were scheduled to take place, 2000 police, armed with automatic rifles, invaded Sophiatown and started moving out the first families. The armed resistance was nowhere to be seen. That first night, in the pouring rain, 110 families were moved out of Sophiatown to the new township of Meadowlands- in Soweto and the area formally known as Sophiatown, that vital city that had in many ways broken the shackles of subjugation and the walls off separateness was re-named: TRIOMF.The name Triomf creates a sense of anger in me and I’m sure in the uprooted residents of Sophiatown themselves. The National government it seems found it a triumph over an assumed threat based on prejudice and hate whereas what it really was; was the destruction of something beautiful and unique. Historical The land where Sophiatown grew from was originally bought by a man called Hermann Tobiansky. Sophiatown was named after his wife Sophia and some of the streets were named after his three children. However the distance from the city center was seen as disadvantageous and after the City of Johannesburg built Page 4 of 5 a sewage plant nearby, the area was even less attractive to prospective white buyers. By the late 1940s Sophiatown had a population of nearly 54 000 Black Africans, 3 000 Coloureds, 1 500 Indians and 686 Chinese. Page 5 of 5 .
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