DIRECTOR: Lara Foot Newton
CAST: Mncedisi Shabangu, |Kholeka Qwabe
SCENOGRAPHY: Gerhard Marx
LIGHTING: Wesley France
DATES: Until Sunday
Having seen Tshepang four times, I wasn't expecting the same emotional kick, but the play is so powerful and brilliantly constructed with all the elements coming together so strikingly, that it simply knocks you sideways - over and over again.
Even though it took three years to reach Pretoria, it's a stroke of genius to stage it as part of the 16 Days of |Activism against Women and Child Abuse campaign.
Motivated by the story of baby Tshepang (who was raped at the age of nine months) and "20 000 true stories", Foot Newton wrote this painful account in an attempt to break the silence.
How can a country watch as this kind of thing happens over and over again? We're experts on looking the other way because perhaps if we don't witness something it does not exist.
But there are people whose lives are mirrored in this haunting, horrifying work.
Starting with the story and direction to the innovative and telling addition of the scenography, Shabangu and Qwabe's performances complete the emotional impact of this insightful play.
As the narrator, Shabangu talks for almost 90 minutes as he relates the story of a dismal town and its lost people who have been forgotten by the world only to catch the spotlight when something so shameful happens, it makes headlines around the world.
"Nothing ever happens here," is his plaintive echo throughout. Yet when something does, it has repercussions as with Alfred, the young man who was savagely beaten as a child. These cycles of violence are on-going unless something changes.
Shabangu's nuanced performance keeps evolving and is so delicate that the story keeps pounding in your head long after the performance.
And with Qwabe's strong, silent presence in the background, the sheer misery of what happens in ordinary lives every day is quite overwhelming.
Tshepang is not easy to watch. The brilliance of the production, the importance of the message, the searing performances throughout make it well worth battling through the harshness of today's world.