Making its return to The Bahamas for the first time in over 30 years and featuring a Bahamian cast for the first time ever, "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" blew audiences away in the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts Black Box Theatre during the sixth annual Shakespeare in Paradise Theatre Festival (SIP). Directed by SIP Artistic Director Philip Burrows, "Sizwe Banzi's" two-man cast starred COB Professor Mark Humes as Sizwe Banzi and IT professional Dion Johnson in a double role as Styles and Buntu.
The co-stars had acted in previous SIP seasons and knew each other from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". "Sizwe Banzi's" return was spurred by Johnson's interest in testing his talents onstage.
"I normally try to play comedian-type roles. I wanted to challenge myself with this type of role because it's not so often you can actually portray something that is serious, significant and historical," he said.
Johnson presented the idea of a one-man show to Burrows in 2013. Advising that such a production would be "something he really needed to research, workshop and spend quite a bit of time working on", Burrows suggested "Sizwe Banzi" in lieu.
"I said, 'Well I do know there's this play if you want to do a one-man experience; there's like a 40-minute monologue that opens the play, if you want to work on that'. And we started to discuss 'Sizwe Banzi' as a possibility," explained Burrows.
Having experience working with Humes, whose stage presence he admired, Johnson decided to consider the roles of Styles and Buntu, acting opposite Humes as Sizwe Banzi.
Written during the apartheid era in South Africa, "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" is the product of a collaborative effort by South African activists and playwrights Athol Fugard, Winston Ntshona and John Kani. The play tells the story of Sizwe Banzi, a black South African man in search of work in Port Elizabeth. Originally from King William's Town, Banzi travels on a passbook, which gives him permission to look for work in Port Elizabeth for a finite period. With his - what could essentially be called a visa - expired, he is told that he must return jobless to his family in King William's Town. After an evening of drowning his sorrows with his friend, Buntu, Sizwe Banzi encounters the body of a dead man whose passbook gives him permission to stay in Port Elizabeth. Sizwe Banzi deals with internal conflict and an identity crisis in a world that defines him by the government stamps on a book. With the unwitting help of photographer Styles, Sizwe Banzi 'dies' when he replaces the picture in the dead man's passbook with his own.
"The reason I wanted to do 'Sizwe' is because, when I read the background information on it, based on apartheid, I realized the connection that it has, especially with regard to the ending of apartheid and to our own prime minister, the late Sir Lynden Pindling," explained Johnson.
The Bahamas voiced its disproval of the apartheid system in 1985, at a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting held in Nassau. The Nassau Accord was drafted at Lyford Cay and called on the South African government to strike down the apartheid system and "initiate... a process of dialogue across lines of color, politics and religion". Upon his release from prison, Mandela traveled to The Bahamas to thank the Bahamian government for its activism.
Humes noted the story's relevance in a current day Bahamas: "We (he and Johnson) were so concentrated just on learning the lines that, that was the main focus; you really didn't get the essence of it when you were learning the lines and rehearsing. But there was one day in rehearsal when we did the scene where we saw the dead guy, and Bantu was actually going to walk off, that it really hit me. I have never experienced anything like that in my life - it really shook me - and I started to actually cry. To feel that, to have that possibly happen to you - and I've seen many Haitian persons in our community just struggling to get an identity... I've seen several people in the Haitian community here who just walk around with this whole bunch of papers. And it hurts. It really does hurt to see that there are people living in our society like that. And it was kind of real to think about it."
The show's director also observed other linkages in curiously coincidental ways.
"It's very much a connection [between The Bahamas and South Africa]," said Burrows. "Things kind of happen very strangely. I had set the dates for "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" having no idea that the date that we opened was 40 years to the day that it opened in South Africa. These kinds of things sort of just happened as it came up. It (2014) was the year of the 20th anniversary of Mandela being released."
Eerie happenings aside, "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" was well-received by the Bahamian public, who congratulated the cast and director on the show's closing night with a standing ovation. By popular demand, Burrows, Johnson and Humes have decided to bring the play back to the black box theater for three nights only. Those who missed "Sizwe Banzi" during the Shakespeare in Paradise Festival will now get a chance to see it performed from November 13 - 15. Tickets will be on sale at the Dundas next week.
To reserve tickets, contact the Dundas on 393-3728 or visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/thedundas. To find out more about "Sizwe Banzi is Dead", visit the Shakespeare in Paradise website at http://shakespeareinparadise.org/.

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