Read this Q&A interview with Tiisetso Mashifane, writer and director of Neighbourhood.
Plus: Win 1 of 5 Double Tickets to see her play, Neighbourhood, at the Baxter Theatre on 5 August.
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The title of a creative work is the first point of call for an audience to get an idea of what they’re about to dive into. Why the title, Neighbourhood?
The play is about the effects of spatial apartheid and the fight for affordable housing in urban areas. Politically, metaphorically and literally, I was dealing with questions of what constitutes a home? Four brick-and-mortar walls or four sides of a cardboard box? Is a home the people who live in it? Or a neighbourhood that is defined by how green the grass is or how dark the streets are?
With this in mind, the play was initially titled, Where the Heart Is, a play off of the phrase, ‘Home is Where the Heart Is’ but I felt like it was too warm-hearted for how I wanted to approach the subject matter, so I used it as a working title until one day, during my many research rabbit holes, I was watching a YouTube video and the title of the video was something along the lines of ‘[redacted], one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in South Africa’ and I had a light bulb moment. I was dealing with a story of two very different neighbourhoods that exist in the way that they do because of spatial apartheid and thus, with stone cold clarity, Neighbourhood became the title.
Neighbourhood investigates the fight for affordable housing in urban areas through the relationship between two fictional communities, Lindela and Everwood, before the audience ventures into these neighbourhoods, tell us a little about what characterises each neighbourhood?
Lindela is a fictional informal settlement that I named after the Lindela Repatriation Centre in Krugersdorp, a deeply controversial detention centre for undocumented migrants in South Africa.
The name and what it meant stuck with me, lindela is a word that means ‘ to wait/waiting’ and like the undocumented migrants at the centre, the residents of this fictional community have been waiting. Whether it’s waiting for transport, waiting for employment, waiting for street lights to be fixed or more specifically to this play, waiting for affordable housing. The South African dream hasn’t arrived for the people of Lindela and once they realise that it’s not coming, we see them try and take matters into their own hands.
On the other hand, Everwood is a fictional upper middle class neighbourhood and whenever I think of what is considered a neighbourhood that people aspire to live in, one of the first things I picture is perfectly manicured evergreen gardens. So Everwood is a place that represents everything that is ‘evergreen, blooming and flourishing’. How could the people of Lindela not want to build a life there?
Land injustice and affordable housing is the kind of subject matter that can easily fall into ‘good guys vs. bad guys’ territory. What was your approach in how you depicted the various people involved in the issue?
There are many players in the complex land and housing fight: the disadvantaged, the privileged, government, civil service, property developers, police etc. and all of them have some sort of stake in the game so I told myself to make sure that every character, wherever they fall into the picture, gets their moment of humanity. Gets their time in the sun. Big or small, dramatic or comedic, it must be there.
That’s how I’m hoping to stay away from the very obvious ‘ heroes vs. villains’ troupe but it might still come out. There might be characters you warm up to more than others, but at least you get to see everyone in the daylight.
Land Justice and Spatial Apartheid is a sensitive subject in South African society and one that has been addressed in other plays. What lens will you use to tell this story?
I knew very early on in the research phase that I was not going to write a story of hope. There was nothing hopeful about this dire situation. It’s wrought with politics and people’s livelihoods are collateral. So I opted to write a story about the fragility of everyday living and the ecosystem in which that life is lived.
I always tried to remember that politics (as they currently are) are a means to maintain a particular ecosystem where basic human rights seem to be a negotiation and where humanity is but one small step from inhumanity. I’ve purposefully designed the play to set up a world where everyone happily plays their role within the ecosystem until the inevitable cracks start to show and we’re suddenly seconds from disaster. But we’ve always been seconds from disaster. Most South Africans are living on the precipice, are one or two disasters, decisions or mistakes away from being down and out.
Neighbourhood is a research-based play, what did that process look like? How did you go from research to fictional play?
In early 2023, Baxter CEO and Artistic Director, Lara Foot called me one afternoon and said ‘I have something for you to look at’. She had been in conversation with Ndifuna Ukwazi, a land and housing activist organisation, about building occupations in urban areas and she was concerned and thought that a play had to be made about this.
She very kindly thought it would be up my alley because it was a story that required a strong research component. And listen, any chance I can get to put my Carte Blanche/3rd Degree hat on? Call me Devi Sankaree Govender because I’m on the case.
The research phase consisted of two simultaneous actions:
(1) Interviewing people about their life experiences and how they fit into the housing crisis ecosystem.
(2) Exploring rabbit holes and creative impulses that stemmed from those interviews.
From May 2023, on and off, totalling probably about three months, I oscillated between those two actions and gathered a lot of information. A lot. You’d think I was writing a thesis.
Then in November 2023, I had time to properly sit down with all of this information and wade through the tsunami. I slowly pieced together bits of dialogue, shadows of characters and experimented with different narrative combinations. I delivered bits and pieces of a big first draft between March and May 2024.
That first draft was over 300 pages and almost 50 000 words long. That is basically a novel. And I think it’s my favourite first draft of a play I’ve written so far. I was a machine, a one-woman newsroom and writers room because the Baxter afforded me the time to sit and think but also…. a 300-page play is just ridiculous, so I’ve archived that longer draft for another medium and embarked on a second draft that was purely an exercise in spring cleaning, throwing away what I thought was unnecessary.
That second draft was then read live with the cast and from that I gained clarity on my choices in writing a third draft to go into rehearsals with.
Are there any creative works that you looked to in making the play?
Neighbourhood was driven by music. Music helped me figure out that I wanted to play around with domesticity and ‘everydayness’ as my storytelling lens so that directed how I created storylines and dialogue.
A lot of the music I listened to all had a lilt, a lightness to it but also kind of made me sad. Two songs in particular were Agape by Nicholas Britell and Ordinary People by John Legend. The latter song made me tear up when it came on as I was driving somewhere and casually watching people go on about their day. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening but I was just so painfully reminded that people are living their lives and doing-their-best.
Your last play, Delela was characterised by distinct storytelling devices, can you speak to the storytelling devices you use in Neighbourhood?
Where I can, I love experimenting with storytelling devices. It just depends on the story. My last play, Delela, used scene repetition and a narrative that purely relied on character perspective.
Neighbourhood is divided into two distinct parts that are defined by tone: Light idealism vs. Dark realism. The play is also largely an exercise in parallels and simultaneousness. Quite a few pieces of action happen at the same time with very particular scenes playing in parallel to each other to highlight similarities and more importantly, differences.
What visual tools are planning to use to tell this story?
I’ve decided to experiment with a very particular aesthetic: A storybook, ‘once upon a time in a land far away’ kind of aesthetic in the play’s marketing content, set and costume design.
The visuals of the play reflect a colourful, symbolic and idealistic world that is at tension with the sobering reality embedded in what the characters actually do and say. We’re peeping into the ideal of ‘the grass is greener in that neighbourhood’ but the cold hard reality of what makes up that neighbourhood is always under the surface. The aesthetic philosophy is that of for some, issues of land or the effect of spatial apartheid is something that happens ‘over there…mostly, in a township far, far away’.
An example of this is how class is symbolised in the costume design by Michealine Wessels. Instead of indicating which economic class the characters may find themselves in through the quality of their clothes, their class is indicated through colour coded clothing. If you live in one neighbourhood you wear red and if you live in another neighbourhood, you wear blue. What that means symbolically is up to interpretation.
What was the most challenging part of writing Neighbourhood?
The most challenging part was also the most rewarding and that was in the handling of people’s lives. It’s one thing to find fictional characters and you go down rabbit holes discovering things about their lives, it’s something else completely to have a life that has already been lived, is still living and exists in a particular way depending on particular politics.
I’d leave after interviewing people like I had a diamond in my bag and everyone knew it. So that was what was the most challenging part, sitting with people’s lives and knowing that it’s your job to tell the story to others for others but it’s exhilarating too because, like Viola Davis said, being an artist is the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life and wow, what an honour that is, right?
What does Neighbourhood say about the South Africa of today?
There’s a metaphor that I love from American journalist and author, Isabel Wilkerson in her phenomenal book, Caste and I think it’s fitting for this particular play (I’m paraphrasing here): America [In this case, South Africa] is an old house that has been inherited by you and me. An old house always has something that needs to be fixed and choosing to ignore what needs to be fixed is at your own peril. It will only get worse and make the house more dangerous to live in for the next owners (in this case, the next generation) and in that regard? Any faults lie with you. Neighbourhood says that South Africa currently has a leaky roof and a storm is coming.
Award-winning playwright-director Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni’s new play, Neighbourhood, will have its world premiere at the Baxter Studio from 2 to 24 August 2024 at 8pm with Saturday matinees at 2.30pm. Booking is now open at Webtickets online (www.webtickets.co.za) or at Pick n Pay stores.
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