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Finding The Truth Behind The Image
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| Forrest McClendon as Buntu, left, and Lawrence Stallings as Sizwe Bansi in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, playing at the Lantern Theater through March 1. (Jeffrey Stockbridge/Lantern Theater Company) |
By Lindsay Warner, The Bulletin
Photographs represent all manner of false identities. We put on a happy face for group photographs, smile for a school picture, glower for a mugshot, stare at the camera for an official passport snap. But at what point are these images representative of who we are, and at what point are they branding us as something we are not?
Sizwe Bansi is Dead, written by South African playwright Athol Fugard 35 years ago during the height of apartheid, is an unsettling, yet mesmerizing tale about identity and representation, both on a personal and official level. Under Peter DeLaurier’s direction at the Lantern Theater, the play is a searing portrayal of the false identities we assume while trying to find our own true image.
The story itself is told through the eyes of enterprising entrepreneur Styles (Forrest McClendon), who breaks free of his carbon-copy life as a factory worker in Port Elizabeth to open his own photography shop. Styles is an amusing and engaging narrator, cleverly branding events with his own humor — an extended monologue about fighting cockroaches with a product called “Doom” is humorously executed with fantastic physical comedy — while laughing at his own resilience and inevitable acquiesence to the white man.
Styles’ monologue monopolizes the first third of the play, and is a direct throwback to the style in which the play itself was written by Fugard and his two script-writing collaborators, actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who improvised much of the play during its first year of performances in order to avoid leaving written evidence of their protest against Apartheid. As a result, Styles’ rambling dialogue has a conversational feel that is both engaging and casual, relieving audiences of feeling burdened by the at times uncomfortable feel of a “political” play.
But just as you settle into the easy relationship developing between Styles and the audience, a young man from out of town walks into Styles’ photography studio, asking for a photo of himself to send to his wife and four children at home. He says his name is Robert Zwelinzima, but after Styles manufactures a portrait of Zwelinzima looking like a highly successful man, we learn that his real name is Sizwe Bansi, and that he is an illegal visitor to Port Elizabeth.
At this point, the script flashes back to a scene in the near past, in which Sizwe Bansi (Lawrence Stallings) is conversing with Buntu (Mr. McClendon again, in a very convincing character switch) about his illegal status in Port Elizabeth, according to his passbook. Sizwe has been officially deemed unfit to stay in Port Elizabeth to look for work to support his family, and must return to his rural village. A marked man thanks to the whim of the passbook agent and his doom-laden “denied” stamp, Sizwe’s situation seems hopeless, until a situation presents itself in which he may plausibly and physically switch places with the “approved” Port Elizabeth resident, Robert Zwelinzima.
At this point, what has been a script toying with ideas of identity and image through Styles’ work as a photographer becomes a full-blown discussion about a black man’s worth in a white man’s country.
Ironically, Styles calls his photography business “a story box of dreams,” meant to forever memorialize the people who are forgotten— but the art of photography is also a means to label and misrepresent. The larger crime here is the white man’s use of a passbook to identify the black man through a number and photo identification, but Styles is also guilty of misrepresentation, as he methodically manufactures the background and subject matter of his subjects in order to tell the story he feels should be revealed through his art.
Yet Fugard makes it quite clear through his writing that the largest issue to debate is whether a man’s pride is worth misrepresentation to save that which is most dear to him. Sizwe Bansi is torn between putting food on his family’s table and giving up his own name in favor of the name of the government-approved name of Zwelinzima — an argument of pride that Buntu rejects.
“What does this book say about me? Does it say that I am a man?” he asks. “You have been circumcised; you have a wife — does that make you a man?”
Yet while Buntu scoffs at the importance of the passbook, he also grudgingly respects its ability to run — and ruin — a life.
Thirty-five years ago, Sizwe Bansi is Dead was a politically aggressive work of theater, asking questions that were unanswerable at the time, and which still invoke questions. Yet one true thing remains: The question of identity is ultimately answered by the who you are and in what direction your priorities lie, not by an image or by a number. It’s an easy conclusion to come to, yet one we still struggle with. Sizwe Bansi feels timeless in this sense, especially as portrayed by Mr. McClendon and Mr. Stallings, who are pitch-perfect in their roles and flawless in their execution of this poetic script.
Lindsay Warner can be reached at calendar@thebulletin.us
Sizwe Bansi is Dead, written by South African playwright Athol Fugard 35 years ago during the height of apartheid, is an unsettling, yet mesmerizing tale about identity and representation, both on a personal and official level. Under Peter DeLaurier’s direction at the Lantern Theater, the play is a searing portrayal of the false identities we assume while trying to find our own true image.
The story itself is told through the eyes of enterprising entrepreneur Styles (Forrest McClendon), who breaks free of his carbon-copy life as a factory worker in Port Elizabeth to open his own photography shop. Styles is an amusing and engaging narrator, cleverly branding events with his own humor — an extended monologue about fighting cockroaches with a product called “Doom” is humorously executed with fantastic physical comedy — while laughing at his own resilience and inevitable acquiesence to the white man.
Styles’ monologue monopolizes the first third of the play, and is a direct throwback to the style in which the play itself was written by Fugard and his two script-writing collaborators, actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who improvised much of the play during its first year of performances in order to avoid leaving written evidence of their protest against Apartheid. As a result, Styles’ rambling dialogue has a conversational feel that is both engaging and casual, relieving audiences of feeling burdened by the at times uncomfortable feel of a “political” play.
But just as you settle into the easy relationship developing between Styles and the audience, a young man from out of town walks into Styles’ photography studio, asking for a photo of himself to send to his wife and four children at home. He says his name is Robert Zwelinzima, but after Styles manufactures a portrait of Zwelinzima looking like a highly successful man, we learn that his real name is Sizwe Bansi, and that he is an illegal visitor to Port Elizabeth.
At this point, the script flashes back to a scene in the near past, in which Sizwe Bansi (Lawrence Stallings) is conversing with Buntu (Mr. McClendon again, in a very convincing character switch) about his illegal status in Port Elizabeth, according to his passbook. Sizwe has been officially deemed unfit to stay in Port Elizabeth to look for work to support his family, and must return to his rural village. A marked man thanks to the whim of the passbook agent and his doom-laden “denied” stamp, Sizwe’s situation seems hopeless, until a situation presents itself in which he may plausibly and physically switch places with the “approved” Port Elizabeth resident, Robert Zwelinzima.
At this point, what has been a script toying with ideas of identity and image through Styles’ work as a photographer becomes a full-blown discussion about a black man’s worth in a white man’s country.
Ironically, Styles calls his photography business “a story box of dreams,” meant to forever memorialize the people who are forgotten— but the art of photography is also a means to label and misrepresent. The larger crime here is the white man’s use of a passbook to identify the black man through a number and photo identification, but Styles is also guilty of misrepresentation, as he methodically manufactures the background and subject matter of his subjects in order to tell the story he feels should be revealed through his art.
Yet Fugard makes it quite clear through his writing that the largest issue to debate is whether a man’s pride is worth misrepresentation to save that which is most dear to him. Sizwe Bansi is torn between putting food on his family’s table and giving up his own name in favor of the name of the government-approved name of Zwelinzima — an argument of pride that Buntu rejects.
“What does this book say about me? Does it say that I am a man?” he asks. “You have been circumcised; you have a wife — does that make you a man?”
Yet while Buntu scoffs at the importance of the passbook, he also grudgingly respects its ability to run — and ruin — a life.
Thirty-five years ago, Sizwe Bansi is Dead was a politically aggressive work of theater, asking questions that were unanswerable at the time, and which still invoke questions. Yet one true thing remains: The question of identity is ultimately answered by the who you are and in what direction your priorities lie, not by an image or by a number. It’s an easy conclusion to come to, yet one we still struggle with. Sizwe Bansi feels timeless in this sense, especially as portrayed by Mr. McClendon and Mr. Stallings, who are pitch-perfect in their roles and flawless in their execution of this poetic script.
Lindsay Warner can be reached at calendar@thebulletin.us
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