When Swallows Cry at Market Theatre, Johanneburg

The setup of the play is very unusual, even to the eye accustomed to theatre appreciation, in that there are two lights dancing lazily atop – with three screens installed above the stage. The audience filled the recently named Laager Theatre in the honour of Mannie Manin, the co-founder of The Market Theatre. When Swallows Cry is a stage piece written by Mike Van Graan and Lesedi Job makes a directorial debut. This play takes on the shape brilliance – fiercely scripted, luminously performed and intensely directed.

Image Taken from The Market Theatre Website

When Swallows Cry is a stage piece that tells different stories from three different continents. Here you are confronted with turbo-charged realities most Africans face when traveling to Europe and America, where they are subjected to ethnic profiling in the little room insider border control, here you are able to witness grown up people, especially from Africa, being interrogated to tears, whereas Europeans and Americans have such challenges and humiliation relaxed to cater to their privileges. The transitional accent of English language, (owned by actors) from different parts of the world makes this trilogy playset profound.  The relation between language and power is incredibly interwoven in this piece.

The sound of someone breathing heavily echoes from the theatre speaker, punctuating the difficult subjects the play delves. Warren Masemola, who plays the role of ‘KOMMANDA’ walks on the far top right of the theatre stairs speaking in a language not familiar to many ears, seemingly a Nigerian language on the phone. He immediately go down stage and the scene opens with a captured white man played by Christiaan Schoombie, with KOMMANDA’s junior called SOLDIER played byMphoOsei-Tutu.

Right from scratch, audiences are taken on a journey of most difficult themes many directors or playwrights wouldn’t engage in; migration, racism, inflation, poverty and inequality. The captured white man by the name of Charles, is a son to one of the mining guru from Europe and he came on a mission to help Africa, a concept which totally made no sense to the capturers. In their dialogue, it seems impossible for a wealthy son to come help Africa without minerals he is benefits from. “I came to help free your people from poverty,” argued Charles. He is reminded that his help is not needed for her benefits from the exploitation of mineworkers who toil to make him and his family wealthy.

Those who follow African literature closely, they find themselves echoing blatant questions asked by NgugiWaThiong’O’s when he said: “Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa's souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind? How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go? How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?” These are questions Mike Van Graan and his team bounce at us. Whether we are able to answer them is another question from being aware of these truths.

This magnificently performed trilogy navigates the real human living conditions with poignancy and touches of humour. Van Graan then takes us on seamless transitions, routing between body dialectal and narratives, socio-political and multidimensional religious landscapes, vocal and intonation prowess. The transitional switch by actors comes naturally, at this stage we are presented by the reality that ensues to the immigrants who fled their motherland for greener pastures on a self-imposed exile.

Masemola and Tutu are now illegal refugees in European country from Zimbabwe. They are treated with greatest duke of humiliation and disgust. After they survived death on a boat to London, they are once again faced with migration crisis. They are being positioned at a glare of humiliation and dehumanisation. They are told that they stink and are easily related to baboons by an official at the custom control of immigration unit.

Unfortunately the officer is overpowered after a fight that ensued and he found himself captured. There are disagreements and frictions emerging between the capturers, Warren Masemola and MphoOtsei-Tutu, the illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe. Tutu wants to shoot the officer while on the other hand Masemola pleads with him for justice to the captured. Masemola frequently knelt down for God’s help which Tutu doesn’t conquer, implying that the very God Masemola he is praying to, made it possible for their fellows to die and be thrown into the sea on their way to London.

As an art practitioner himself, Van Graan tells these storiesin a more compassionate way than making statistical references on the realities. He probes deeply into the human lives, beyond facts and figures as presented by media. In his work, we become aware of the treatment most Africans get at pass control offices in Western part of the world. We are reminded that poverty, inequality and injustice – though man-made as they are, they are beautifully designed or crafted to maintain the status quo, where the rich remain richer and the poor remain poorer. It shows that racism will take a long time to be dealt with so long as people as viewed from the prism of colour bar not on their human presences.

Khehla Chepape Makgato is a Johannesburg-based independent artist and arts writer, regularly contributing articles to ART AFRICA and The Journalist. He is the founder of Chronicles of Ideas blog, aimed at publishing anything ARTSY. He works at Assemblage Studios and is the founder of Samanthole Creative Projects & Workshop, a community-based art organisation focusing on arts and literacy youth programmes. Chepape is the ImpACT Award WINNER for Visual Arts 2016 from the Arts and Culture Trust of South Africa and The Mapungubwe Visual Artist of The Year 2016.