Marthinus Basson and Antoinette Kellermann return to Joburg’s Market Theatre this week for the first time in more than a decade with As die Broek Pas. They spoke to Diane de Beer
Speaking to creative cohorts, director Marthinus Basson and actress Antoinette Kellermann on Skype, the banter between them reminds one of their many seasons of working together as well as both being lecturers at the drama department of the University of Stellenbosch for the past few years.
“She is the only actor who has ever given me work,” says the quirky director who speaks as smartly as he directs. Usually, he says, they come to him, trying to find work, but Keller-mann, who needed a project for her M studies, asked him if he would consider directing her.
“I know he gets bored easily which means he isn’t really keen on solo work,” she says. So she wasn’t sure he’d accept, but luckily he did.
“I’m all about stripping away as I get older,” he says about this and many other decisions.
Having played a few male roles in her time, among others, in two Breyten Breytenbach plays and as Prospero in an Afrikaans translation of The Tempest, all directed by Basson, she was pushed to research and explore what is called breech roles (women playing men) for actresses.
She sticks to teasing mode by saying that she will have to forget lines and reinvent ever more to keep his attention.
They decided to opt for German playwright Manfred Krage’s Man to Man, translated brilliantly by writer/playwright Willem Anker (who won the UJ writing prize for his novel Buys). “I wanted him to stick as close to the German as possible,” says Basson who didn’t want to lose any of the texture of the piece.
“I love that we’re dealing with someone who is trapped in their reality, becomes a prisoner of an earlier decision made out of desperation,” says Basson. Many people can identify with unattainable dreams, he believes.
Another identifying point is that we were a country trapped between too narrow lines and many had to deviate from the law to make their world acceptable.
“I think of her as a bonsai,” he captures the character poignantly. “She has everything she needs, but she’s small and trapped in a pot. It is a clipped life,” he says eloquently.”
Kellermann plays the role of a woman playing a man during the depression in Germany in the ’30s when she takes over the life of her dead husband in order to retain his work as a crane driver.
It’s the time that the play is set that adds to the richness and layers. And what they did this time around, because this is a second revival, was look at a documentary on the life of one of Hitler’s three secretaries, Traudl Junge. He argues that so many of today’s students don’t know much about the past.
“Some aren’t even familiar with the name Hitler,” he says. “One first has to start with a history lesson...”
But he knows that it is important to know about the past. “It is the only way to position ourselves in the world today.” he argues.
That’s also why he loves documentaries and this one in particular for this work. “She’s almost unemotional about her past, except for a few moments,” he explains.
In the past, they have been critiqued about the character in As Die Broek Pas as being “too cold”, so that’s an aspect they’re looking at for the present run. “Not too much, though,” says Kellermann, who feels she might sometimes be going too big. But not so, says her director.
The play was first presented five years ago and Kellermann did runs in Afrikaans and later English and sometimes in both.
With the current rehearsals, she doesn’t quite think she’s moved from woman to man.
“I’m not quite there yet,” she says, amazed five years later how different female movements are to male.
“It’s about how we sit, how we move,” she says. But she knows she will get there.
“Because we were re-looking at the text, we weren’t focusing on the manners.”
She is surprised by how much more they have both discovered this time around in the text. Basson is reminded by something that actor Jannie Gildenhuys had said to him early in his acting career: “An actor doesn’t ever repeat, he reinvents.” And that has been true with this latest version of a play which has won a clutch of accolades for director and actress.
They are a great team. “When I was younger,” explains Kellermann, “I trusted and followed him blindly. Now I still do, but I have a stick!” That’s age and wisdom speaking as this working couple savour some of their best moments.
When it came to directing, Basson wanted to keep it simple. Known for his theatrical stagings, he believes as he ages, he is more confident in allowing the strength of a text to lead him. “One sometimes also uses more tricks when you don’t have someone who quite has the acting chops,” he suggests.
Now he wants to come as close to the nerve endings as they dare.
“It’s been glorious going back once again,” says the actress. Scratching around they’ve discovered new depth, Basson has changed some of the style like removing background film because it was too similar to his Macbeth Slapeloos and he didn’t want that. He has discovered some wonderful photographic material from the time, advertisements and the like, to show the manners that maketh the man.
The play is about a life violated and he has painted it almost like cabaret, in the old German tradition.
“We had to have some stylistic shifts so that it doesn’t just become storytelling.”
Many, he concludes, want theatre to be too much of a circus. When you have this kind of text and an actress like Antoinette Kellerman, it’s a matter of final touches.
Don’t miss the extraordinary work of this dynamic theatrical duo. This is their first time back on Gauteng stages in more than a decade.