A Sell-by Date Q&A with PDU
– 23 July 2024
You began your theatrical career as a playwright, actor and stage director in the late 1960s. How does the PDU thespian of those early years differ from the PDU who steps onto the stage in Sell-By Date?
PDU: For me every performance is the first and the last. Which means one adapts to a daily energy without too much focus on a future. The result is: a future! I sometimes wished I had the trust and hopes that helped me believe that the world was a better place. Difficult nowadays with the reality of bad news breaking in the palm of your hand.
You ultimately established yourself as a one-person-show phenomenon. Many performers find solo performing a very lonely endeavour. How have you sustained this solitary art form (that many fear and actively shy away from) with such apparent joy and determination?
PDU: During the 1970s and 1980s I had to be on my own so that only I could be blamed, arrested, killed or ignored. Including others would be too much of a responsibility. So it became a habit and a career. I never feel lonely on stage. The audience is the crowd in my life.
If you could tell your younger start-out thespian self one thing, one great piece of creative advice, what would it be?
PDU: Besides what Sir Noël Coward gave as advice: ‘Speak clearly and don’t bump into the furniture’ — my advice … no, my suggestion is this: enjoy it; believe in it; be careful of listening to too many stabs of advice; don’t be scared of cutting half and then losing 50%. In other words, be in charge and take the blame and the embrace.
What was the moment when you knew that political commentary would be a central component of the type of theatre you create?
PDU: During the years of apartheid, every time I saw a sign that said WHITES ONLY, I knew what I had to do. Every time the apartheid government banned a play of mine, I wrote two more. The moment they tried to frighten me into silence, I rolled on red lipstick and let Evita Bezuidenhout handle it. While politics is, after all, the local drug that makes us all addicts, politics is also here today and gone tonight!
Your shows usually have a satirical angle to them, with something political or social presenting itself as the catalyst. What inspired you to create Sell-By Date?
PDU: I looked in the mirror and said: Hello, are you still here? Yes, 78 isn’t always the new 55, but experience helps me to keep relevant. I have no intention of sticking to a sell-by date, but chillingly we are all pushing our democracy to the edge of a cliff. Humour helps to confront the unspeakable. And a title is a very important burglar alarm to alert the audience that both fun and fear will be sorted out here!
As you have evolved over the years, surely your audience has too. What’s the biggest difference in audience reaction that you’ve identified over the years?
PDU: Every audience is the first and the last reaction to a show. Every audience varies in recognition and focus. That’s why it’s LIVE, which is the most important contribution drama can make in all our lives and not streamed from a cloud. The funny bone is always there to be tickled. Too often it gets beaten up and then there is no more fun.
Do you think the political and social climate at any given time makes your audience more or less receptive to satire?
PDU: Satire was once defined as: tragedy plus time equals satire. Today it can’t work in South Africa because there is too much tragedy and just no time. So I try to reflect the optimism and hope in the cracked mirror of our daily existence. It’s touch and go — touch means laughter; go means listen. I always see a difference between comedy and humour. Comedy is the joke you remember to tell someone else, while humour is a fingerprint. Everyone has a unique sense of humour to laugh at fear and make that fear less fearful. It is still lethal, it can still kill you, but at least you’re in charge. Got your eye on it! It will never be bigger than you. And laughing at corrupt politicians is the first step to their disintegration. Ha ha ha? BOOM!
You have your finger on the pulse of the nation in South Africa, bringing hope, sanity and even a sense of calm in the chaotic storm with your shows. What do you think people need most from a PDU show in the current climate?
PDU: To stop worrying about the electricity loadshed at their homes that makes batteries go flat and kills the burglar alarm system. Try and sit back and have a nice time! And then be surprised that you have laughed at the things you don’t even want to think about.
How do you pick your characters when creating a show? Is there a process by which you balance inclusion of your well-known and much-loved characters like Evita Bezuidenhout with the challenge of introducing someone new to your repertoire when deciding on the format of the show?
PDU: Somehow the characters decide to join my chorus line. Evita is my Liz Taylor. Nowell Fine, my Jewish African Princess, is my Bette Midler. Evita’s sister, chanteuse Bambi Kellermann, is my Cher, and they’re all in the new show! The usual noisy Vladimir Putins and Donald Trumps are in the wings, but they usually fail the audition.
You have made 25 of your plays and collections of your one-person-show texts available on your website free of charge for people to read for pleasure. Why is it important to you to share your vision in such a generous way? (http://pdu.co.za/OneManShows)
PDU: We are all in the same boat, having experienced so much together, even though in different cities and countries. I want to share the story of where I come from, reflecting the realities of other lives as well. And most importantly, to remember where we come from, so that we can celebrate where we are going. My three volumes of One Man Shows have made their mark internationally.
Even though your shows have strong elements of social reflection, there’s always a bit of true PDU in them too. Especially with a show like The Echo of a Noise, which was a very funny yet tender memoir. Sell-By-Date looks to have that same personal touch, as you are describing it as your retreading moment. What does that mean? Are you recalibrating in a way after the noise of the last few years has settled? What can audiences expect of the post-COVID tongue-in-cheek PDU realness?
PDU: A great question fat with demands! The pandemic, lockdowns, vaccinations, masks, fear, cancel-culture, #MeToo, load-sheds, Gaza, Putin, climate change and most concerning of all, is our democracy now at its sell-by date? Every new show is my last. I have plans for the future, but all pencilled in. You never know what happens tomorrow!
It has been announced that you will be at the Soho Theatre with Sell-By Date in mid-August. Having given many years of marvellous laughs to the arts, what inspires you to still (after this and many other well-deserved successes) return to the stage time and time again with such commitment?
PDU: I love performing in London to an audience of my generation, and also to the social media TikTok adventurers. I’m an entertainer who tries to stick to the recipe of 49% anger versus 51% entertainment — not the other way round. It’s been a full-time job. Sometimes it feels as if I’m just starting!