Dishing up a diamond in ‘Dirt’

At this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, Joburg-based actor/writer James Cairns performed in two plays, Sie Weiss Alle and Dirt, and received rave reviews for both. Sie Weiss Alle (She Knows Everything) – a two-hander set in Berlin at the end of World War II – won the coveted Silver Ovation Award and is to be staged in Cape Town next year. Dirt, a one-man comedy, is on for 12 shows at the Baxter from Tuesday until August 27.

Dirt was first staged last year at the Kalk Bay Theatre. It went to last year’s National Arts Festival and the cherry on the top was a Fleur du Cap for Cairns. Due to a bungle in tallying the votes, the award was taken away, but he did get to keep the R15 000 prize money. Bizarre but true.

The plot of Dirt doesn’t sound like much: three men and a dog on the road. But on stage it is a sizzler. It is funny, bizarre, elegiac and sweet. It is rooted in our landscape of paranoia, fear and hope and yet it is also a universal story of people looking for friendship, love and happiness. Much of the magic is due to Cairns’s masterful grasp of theatre craft – gesture, silence, expression. An array of objects is used as props and visual triggers for scene and character changes.

The props were put together by Jenine Collocott, who is also the director. She works mostly in Joburg so most of us may be unfamiliar with her productions. She first hooked up with Cairns when she asked him to be in a show she was directing for the 2009 Out the Box Festival of Puppetry and Visual Performance. Through Collocott, Cairns met her husband, Nick Warren. The British-born Warren came to live in South Africa about 15 years ago and his plays have been staged to acclaim in Britain and the US, but he packed away his theatrical pursuits and devoted himself to earning money and raising a family.

When he met Warren, Cairns had already done several one-man shows with an on-the-road theme. Cairns is intrigued by the notion that on the road we are free from our routines and expectations. Anything can happen. He spoke to Warren about doing another play on the road theme, and Dirt was conceived, with Warren as its writer.

It was a welcome return for Warren to the world of theatre after a decade of working in advertising. Cairns says he hopes to collaborate with Collocott and Warren on a sequel.

Meanwhile, Cairns is busy on other projects. He recently finished shooting a film in Joburg about Cosatu with Simon Gush, a fellow of the Gordon Institute for Performing Arts.

In December, he will be writing for the Miss South Africa pageant. It is a gig he has been doing for four years and involves talking contestants and presenters through questions and what they might say in front of the camera. Sounds like something he could write about and make a play out of.

In the meantime, don’t miss Dirt. It is a stunning piece of theatre.

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