This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

8th March 2008

View online here

You had to feel for Dawn Lindberg. She didn’t see it coming.

The fifth edition of the Naledi Theatre Awards (Lindberg’s “baby” – she is the Executive Director) had gone as well as could be expected. Some of the celebrities who were announcing the awards had botched their reading of the nominees; the presenters had made their fair share of shoddy jokes; a number of the recipients were not there to collect their awards; but, on the whole, a good time had been enjoyed by all.

Most importantly, in between the artificial smiles and unconvincing glitz attendant on awards ceremonies, there had been some remarkable live performances of numbers from recent or current musicals. Michael Richard’s rendition of “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof was flawless, Aubrey Poo and Nkoto Malebye sang an uneven but powerful duet from Soweto Story, Tamara Dey gave the audience a taste of The Rocky Horror Show, and the Bala Brothers joined the Soweto Gospel Choir for the now-legendary “Circle of Life” from The Lion King.

The cast of Hairspray (performing “on home ground” at Gold Reef City’s Lyric Theatre) offered the best possible advertisement for their production with three numbers, including the fantastic Harry Sideropolous and Mike Huff as the odd parental couple, and Mara Louw demonstrating that – irritating though her public persona may be – she knows how to belt out a song. In between, Danny K held his own in a reprisal of the “Homeless” / ”Something Inside So Strong” medley that he perfected in partnership with the double Grammy-winning SGC for last year’s 46664 concert. This segued into an appropriate tribute to those members of the theatrical community who passed away in 2007.

So everyone, it seemed, was feeling entertained and satisfied that the evening wasn’t just an exercise in self-congratulation, but a necessary platform for recognising South Africa’s stage talent. And then came the final prize, the Joan Brickhill Award for Best Production of a Musical. This was obviously planned as the climax of the evening; when Lindberg, accompanied by her husband and long-time singing/songwriting partner Des, announced that the winner was The Lion King, the stage was bombarded by confetti cannons and the audience obliged with a crescendo of applause.

The Lion King was produced in South Africa by Lebo Morake and Pieter Toerien, and it was “Lebo M” who walked to the stage to accept (or, as it turned out, decline) the award. He began with a few vague comments that seemed to be heading towards the platitudes typical of acceptance speeches, but his tone changed mid-sentence when he said that the Naledis made him “proud but angry” to be a South African. The gist of his complaint was that the awards weren’t racially representative – that, essentially, there hadn’t been enough black theatre practitioners recognised on the evening – and, in retrospect, this needn’t have been an outrageous observation.

The way in which Morake expressed his gripe, however, smacked of egotism and grandstanding. He boasted about his international VIP profile in order to moan about the way in which he had been treated by the organisers of the event, being “forced to sit at the back”. He also betrayed his self-involvement when he claimed that he was the only black person to win an award on the night – in fact, Zwai Bala, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom and Welcome Msomi had already collected accolades, the latter for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre. (If the BEE codes were being strictly applied, “coloured” actors Christo Davids and Bronwyn van Graan could also be added to that list.)

But this line of defence did not occur to the Lindbergs. Des made a snide remark about Morake neglecting to mention his co-producer Toerien and departed stage right, leaving his wife to mutter a few words that were part apology and part sarcastic comeback: “If Mr Lebo M had arrived on time, he would have been able to take the seat that was reserved for him in the front row” (despite tickets being made available to the public, the event was not as well attended as expected, and some re-shuffling was required to create the effect of a packed Lyric Theatre for the TV cameras).

Lindberg tried to recover some decorum and end the evening on a grand note but the lights dimmed and the curtain fell on her as she did so, leaving Mark Banks to match his stumbling “warm-up act” of earlier in the evening by making banal jokes about hairpieces and Crocs while the finale was prepared. After the Hairspray cast had done their best to undo the overwhelming sense of bathos, MCs Leanne Manas and Tumisho Masha made a few empty remarks and let the audience, many of whom were squirming in their seats by this point, escape to the twin comforts of cash bar and cocktail snacks.

Thespians enjoy a good controversy, but the way in which the response to Lebo M’s speech shifted from scattered applause and voices of endorsement to round, multi-racial boos indicated that the members of the theatrical community present at the Naledis did not approve of his attempted hijacking. If South African theatre has a racial problem, it lies more with ghettoised audiences and venues than within the industry itself. A survey of the names of nominees in the various categories shows that there could easily have been two or three times as many black Naledi recipients, and the organisers can hardly be blamed for the preferences of a panel of 20 judges (Lindberg gestured towards this in her teleprompted speech earlier in the evening: “Theatre awards will always by their very nature be provocative. They are, after all, a subjective reflection by secret ballot of the opinions and judgements of a [select] group of people.”) 

Morake’s indignation could have been aimed at those who voted, but perhaps it should have been vented in a manner that more eloquently highlighted continuing injustices in the broader social context within which South African theatre practitioners operate.

Those wishing to catch the awards on TV can tune in on the 27th April. It will be interesting to see how SABC 3 edits the broadcast version of the ceremony, which lost some of the gloss’n’glamour they were no doubt hoping for when they agreed to screen it.