Archived 2013 Articles by Pieter-Dirk Uys
COME ADAPT OR FLY WITH ME
– Pieter-Dirk Uys, Cape Times, 19 December 2013
The digital revolution has radically changed our lives and is reinventing itself as we tweet. And yet an actor on a stage has been around for over 2000 years and still can have more influence than a politician on the coin and the stamp.
There are two experiences in life that are LIVE — the Church and the Theatre. The church has one up on us, because there they say: ‘If you don’t come to church, you will go to hell!’
I say: ‘If you don’t go to the live theatre, you stay sane!’
And who wants to stay sane in an insane world?
Thanks to my political scriptwriters of the last 40 years, I am never at a loss for words or emotions. The cracked mirror of our society is there for the audience to peer into and recognise their fears and even themselves. And yet when they leave the theatre, they don’t carry print-outs, discs, pages or files. All they have is a memory and a lasting impression. The only time theatre changed politics was when they shot US President Abraham Lincoln during Act One. But the experience of sharing a story with real people in real time without commercial breaks, breaking news or last year’s repeats can change a point of view.
I was 13 when my English teacher took the class to the Little Theatre in Cape Town to see our set work Shakespeare play, King Lear, performed on stage. Even though that theatre only seated 200 it looked huge. The actors were taller, the colours brighter, the costumes glowed and I could understand the language of the Bard. It wasn’t English, it was Drama! Life, death, intrigue, laughter, tears. Little did I know then that I would perform my first dramatic steps on that stage and soon afterwards call the actors in King Lear –- Yvonne Bryceland, Alan Prior, James Blankenberg and Joyce Birch — by their first names, or just ‘darling’.
Live theatre. So why not live supermarket, live butcher, live chemist or live school? There you also have to pay. There you also have needs. But where is the magic in tins, pieces of meat, pills or going to class? It is said that the theatre chooses its staff, sometimes to become life imprisonment without trial, or becoming president. Too often never playing Hamlet or the Phantom of the Opera. When I wandered into the UCT Drama Department in my second year to add ‘drama’ to my BA degree, I didn’t know that I would never be free to be frightened again. I would always be obliged to give life the benefit of the doubt and surrender to terminal optimism.
Theatre defies logic. There is no reason why so many of us spend so much time preparing for months to perform an action that could only last for a few hours. You’ve got to believe it will work, and maybe run for some weeks. It must succeed! That’s the birth of a weird optimism. And yet no matter how successful the production is, or isn’t, each experience is a best one in your life, good or just frighteningly good.
Laughter in the theatre is a unique balm. Making comedy is sometimes harder than making tears, or as the old joke creaks: Dying is easy; comedy is hard. Every night you work into a sweat to make the audience laugh at something you’ve repeated many times before, analysed and restructured it. Very little happens by chance and if it does, you usually get such a shock, you can’t remember what you did to make that madness work. Adrenaline becomes the drug of choice. That rush of energy and passion can fill a space with over a thousand people all holding their breath.
Why must the show go on? In any other business when sickness, death, pain, sorrow or natural disasters make it impossible to face responsibilities, the theatre gives no sympathy. You go on and do your job. The times I remember having no voice, a raging fever, blood from somewhere, vomit from everywhere, a tummy on fire, tears and fears bubbling under each breath, standing in the wings wanting to die, dreading that fateful burst of light on an empty stage. And you pray because you know you can’t do it alone. But you’re never alone. You are embraced by the millions of theatre gods who have preceded you with snotty noses, hoarse voices, runny tummies and terror in their souls. They have also been in the wings of the stages from Ancient Greece through world history to Broadway, Berlin, Beijing and Brakpan. The audience is there. Dying can wait. The show can’t.
I have arguably performed a one man performance on stage seven thousand times. Starting in Durban with Adapt or Dye in April 1981 and trekking that long walk towards perfection through the stages of South Africa, Europe, Britain, Australia, Canada and the USA. And Brakpan. And if you can’t give your 100% in Brakpan, you will never succeed anywhere else. You will always be as good as the memory of what you gave that audience at the show last night. Sometimes there are 600, 1000 or more in the auditorium. I have known just 12. Never blame those who came for those who didn’t. Cancel a show for that reason and those 12 will never forget their disappointment, or ever come back. Play your heart out to them and they will tell a million people.
It is so much easier to just kick off your shoes on a night after a hard day’s work. Have a whisky and a home-cooked meal. Watch television or a choice of thousands of the greatest movies ever made on DVD. Or you can be brave and set your burglar alarm, feed your Rottweilers, reverse the 4×4 out of the driveway hoping the Nigerian burglars won’t slip in as you slide out. Then risk your life in the traffic where you might become a racist within 40 seconds. Find the theatre, park your car, kiss your car goodbye, buy your ticket and sit in an uncomfortable chair for the next two hours. If you’re bored by what you watch, it will feel like a lifetime and you will never come back. If you’re captivated by the passion, the energy, the images, the drama, the humour, the shock and the awe, you will be back for more. Hell doesn’t come into it. The actors go through that. For the audience, it must be heaven.
So be a mad devil. Adapt or Fly with me and my chorus line of icons, aikonas and the usual suspects at the Theatre on the Bay in Camps Bay from 7th January 2014 is thirty years after Adapt or Dye premiered in a dingy room upstairs in a dusty Durban venue no longer there. The passion is still tangible, as is the energy. And today when nothing is funny in our stressful lives, what a wonderful revenge on pessimism to sit for two hours and laugh at the very fears that made us look away. Your BlackBerry and iPhone can do so much to point you in the right direction with information, news, communication and GPS. But only the Live Theatre can show you how to get there with optimism, hope and often thanks to a good laugh.
So come all ye faithful. It’s not only your money that I appreciate. It’s your time. That is priceless. Let me give you back some of the excitement you have given me by being there every time the curtain goes up and the lights come on. And I swallow my terror, take a deep breath and saunter into your life as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
ADAPT OR FLY at the Pieter Toerien Theatre on the Bay from 7 to 25 January — book at Computicket.