Product Description

Woza Albert! is based on one dazzlingly simple idea - that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ should take place in present-day South Africa. This brilliant two-man show from the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, took the Edinburgh Festival then London by storm in September 1982, playing to standing ovations every night. It was also seen in Berlin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia and twice on BBC TV. 'A satire played with devastating energy in a brilliantly witty staging.' Guardian 'The most politically potent show ever staged in South Africa.' Observer This edition contains a new introduction by Yvette Hutchison

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403116 in Books
• Published on: 1983-08-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 84 pages

About the Author
Percy Mtwa was born and bred in Wattville, Benoni. In 1979 director Gibson Kente gave him a role as singer/dancer in Mama and the Load, which played at the Market and Baxter Theatres and toured South Africa. Mbongeni Ngema was born in Umkumbane, Durban. He wrote and presented a play, Too Harsh, appeared in Kessie Govender's Working Class Hero, then wrote and, with Kessie's help, directed The Last Generation. In 1979 he came to Johannesburg and approached Gibson Kente for work, finally getting a character role in Mama and the Load, where he met Percy Mtwa. Barney Simon, founding Artistic Director of the Market Theatre, was born in Johannesburg. After backstaging for Joan Littlewood in the late 1950s, he joined Athol Fugard in Johannesburg's Dorkay House Rehearsal Room where The Blood Knot was first staged. He directed Fugard in Krapp's Last Tape and the first production of Fugard's own Hello and Goodbye. In 1974 he founded the Company with Mannie Manim, which made its home in Johannesburg's old Market in 1976. He was the three-time winner of the Breytenbach Epathlon for best director. Barney Simon died in 1995.

Customer Reviews

The Opposite of Absurd
By the time Woza Albert is finished, there is a celebratory series of resurections, and one comes to realize that this is the opposite of a play like Waiting for Godot or The Bald Soprano: it is a play that emphasizes the community--the necessity of community--in an oppressive modern culture. The oppressors are the absurd ones, they read out of Becket, but the hereos Morena, Zulu Boy, and all the victims of arpartheid in general are portrayed as knowing what they're doing. They react against the bourgeouis prejudice and taste that created a system in which corruption and lechery rule. They find and make beauty, if only for a moment, in something natural, out of something that came to them only by chance. In so much, the play emphasizes the creative principle over the destructive one, the play recognizes the sincerity of those eeking out a living and not the barking of those without any discernable purpose for living, and this play, in short, does put the fun back in Christian Fundalmentalism.