This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

12th September 2009

Recently I met an American actress who had been in South Africa for a few months and was considering relocating. “I’d love to live out here,” she said, “but I expect it would be difficult to secure work. It seems many actors here finish each show with few guarantees of what they’ll be doing next. You guys have hardly any rep theatre companies!”

Indeed, ‘rep’ (short for repertory) is hard to come by in this country. The principle is a centuries-old one: a fixed group of performers – sometimes a travelling troupe, but usually a resident company – builds up a broad repertoire of plays that are produced in rotation. Various factors, however, inhibit the development of local professional rep theatre.

For one thing, there are substantial overheads involved, including multiple production costs, the salaries of a large cast and crew, and the expense of obtaining performing rights for well-known plays. To cover all these and still make a profit, rep companies must bring in large audiences each night of the week; but, as actors have been reminded recently, theatre is considered a dispensable luxury during economic slumps.

It’s anomalous, then, that a Cape Town-based repertory theatre group should be flourishing in the midst of a recession. “The Mechanicals” came together in 2008 for a season of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. They followed these American Pulitzer Prize-winning plays with the 2009 “British Lines Tour”, staging various iconic twentieth century pieces from the other side of the Atlantic: Decadence (Steven Berkoff), The Zoo Story (Edward Albee), The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde), The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter (Harold Pinter) and Blasted (Sarah Kane).

The Mechanicals have a strong connection to the Hiddingh Campus of the University of Cape Town – they perform at its Little Theatre Complex, and a number of the company’s members are either alumni or staff of the drama school. For Christopher Weare, who is an Associate Professor in the Drama Department and who has directed four of the plays performed by The Mechanicals, this provides the opportunity to fuse theatre-making and educational imperatives: “We’re able to expose students to great plays and great performances. Of course, each professional production I do informs my teaching; but with, for example, modern classics like Buried Child on university book lists, in producing these plays we’re able link theoretical courses directly to what’s on stage.”

The enthusiastic reception of the company’s work extends far beyond the university community; more and more Cape Town theatre-goers are becoming ‘regulars’ during The Mechanicals’ repertory seasons. “People have responded positively,” Weare notes, “because they’re not just enjoying individual shows but revelling in seeing the same cast in three different plays. With rep, there is much more discussion of craft. We’ve fielded some interesting questions, from the mundane – ‘How do you remember all those words?’ – to more substantial enquiries into how actors change roles night by night. They say every second person you meet is a part-time Springbok rugby coach. Perhaps we’re making people part-time theatre directors!”

Despite all the hard work involved, being part of The Mechanicals is also a kind of indulgence, insofar as members of the group are able to put on their own favourite plays. Weare, for instance, is an ardent Sam Shepard fan; following on the success of last year’s Buried Child, he is now directing Nicholas Pauling and Tinarie Van Wyk Loots in Cowboy Mouth, which Shepard co-wrote with Patti Smith in the early 1970s. “Not a lot of people have been exposed to his early work,” Weare says of Shepard, who has subsequently become better known for as a film writer, director and actor. “Nick and Tinarie’s enthusiasm for the play has renewed my own ... I’ve seen it with fresh eyes.”

Van Wyk Loots and Pauling are finding their Mechanicals experiences equally gratifying. Unlike my American friend, neither of them looks to rep theatre for career stability (“There’s no such thing as job security in this business!” quips Van Wyk Loots). On the contrary: both of these rising stars of the South African stage – and screen – have had to find time in already-busy schedules to join The Mechanicals, exchanging more lucrative work for the risks and thrills of rep.

“Doing film and TV helps you make enough money to do what you really want to on stage,” Van Wyk Loots explains. “A number of us have become frustrated with the fact that the theatre we want to see is not being performed. It’s important that new works are created, that there is constant innovation, for South African theatre to develop. But at the same time, we shouldn’t ignore great play texts that are already out there.”

“Maybe there’s a general phobia of ‘selling out’ by not trying to create new work,” adds Pauling. “When you’re always writing and performing your own material, however, the writing can become precious or overpowering. As The Mechanicals, we’re a group of actors and directors, not writers (although many of the members have also written plays). We’re working with amazing scripts; we know the writing’s good, there’s no need to fiddle with the text during rehearsals.”

He waits a moment, then adds in typically self-demeaning fashion: “Or it could just be sheer laziness or cowardice on our parts!”

Yet Pauling and Van Wyk Loots are not exhibiting false modesty. When asked what characterises The Mechanicals’ theatre-making process, they both affirm that having fellow-actors who are also close friends takes the “ego” out of rehearsals: “When you’re working with someone for the first time, you have to get to know them as a person first, and only then as an actor. Here, however, the work becomes immediately vital. We can start making choices straight away. We tell each other when we think something’s crap.”

For Pauling, these sorts of theatre-making relationships are “Rare anywhere in the world – as actors, we’d do it for free – and the ideal is that the work is not just supposed to be good, but world class. I sometimes think, when walking out of a theatre, ‘I spent R150 and that was terrible!’ Often in SA we celebrate mediocrity by dismissing shows or praising them based on taste, rather than product. Hopefully The Mechanicals is starting to be an antidote to that trend. Rep challenges you, as a performer, not to slip into habits or to reproduce a particular style just because it’s popular – I think this can often happen to veteran actors.”

Pauling cites Guy De Lancey as someone who rigorously avoids that trap. De Lancey, the most experienced performer among the Mechanicals, joined Pauling in Pinter’s two-hander The Dumb Waiter and also filled the role of Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s famous comedy of manners (both productions were directed by Luke Ellenbogen). The same may be said of Scott Sparrow, who played opposite Pauling in Albee’s Zoo Story, then swapped class-conscious 1950s America for class-conscious 1980s Britain with Emily Child in Berkoff’s Decadence.

Following these actors performing different characters each night is complicated by the somewhat disjointing experience of seeing them play less glamorous roles on their nights ‘off’: pouring drinks at the bar or doing front-of-house duties while their fellow Mechanicals prepare to go onstage. This kind of collegiality and friendship makes for a unique thespian team.

Pauling and Van Wyk Loots are, as the saying goes, ‘more than friends’ – something that may add an element of frisson for audiences of Cowboy Mouth. They’ve appeared on stage together many times before (from Amadeus to The Tempest, quite apart from a number of plays in The Mechanicals’ repertoire), but the curious history of Cowboy Mouth adds an unusual dynamic.

Shepard and Smith created the play in the midst of a tempestuous love affair. Shepard had left his wife, actress O-Lan Jones, to pursue sex, drugs and rock’n’roll dreams with Smith (who, as singer-songwriter and poet, would later become known as “the godmother of punk”). Legend has it that they composed Cowboy Mouth by passing a typewriter back and forth in a verbal-emotional battle. As a result, the characters of Slim and Cavale bear more than a passing resemblance to Sam Shepard and Patti Smith – who performed the roles for only a few nights in 1971 before Shepard decided to return to his wife.

Van Wyk Loots is wary, however, of over-emphasising this aspect of the play: “We’ve researched the history, but often as an actor you do research in order to throw it away. Nick and I are not Smith and Shepard. We’re approaching the play through the characters rather than the autobiography.”

Still, as Pauling observes, “It’s a lucky situation to be in. If Tinarie and I weren’t together, it would still be a privilege to work with her; I don’t know of another actress who could play the role as she is. But it helps that we don’t have to establish boundaries in rehearsal. And it’s fun, because we don’t have that kind of turbulent relationship!”

For Weare, the challenge is to “reinvent” Slim and Cavale so that their dilemma – “being in the right place at the wrong time” – speaks to contemporary audiences. And he’s pleased that Cowboy Mouth, in adding to The Mechanicals’ repertoire, will give Pauling and Van Wyk Loots a chance to exhibit other skills. They’ve worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company; they’ve done Edward Albee and John Patrick Shanley (Pauling in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Van Wyk Loots in Doubt); now they’re immersing themselves in the turmoil, idealism and desperation of drums, guitar and 1970s rock culture.

* Cowboy Mouth is at the Intimate Theatre from 15 September to 4 October.