THE PLAY THAT TURNED INTO A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

I first met Iain Ewok Robinson ten years ago at the World Slam Championships in Rotterdam. He was the first white South African who I met who I got on with. It could be that we just got on, or maybe it was because I was in a situation where I was forced to interact, so I gave him time,  I would not normally give to a white South African, harsh but true. 

I am going to be honest here, even if honesty in it's full glare of the written word is ugly I endeavour to speak the truth. Travelling through poetry had started to open up my world and this was the start of mixing with people from all over the world, I would not normally mix with. 

The World Slam Championships was an intense experience, we were both new into our spoken word careers. It was a big trip for both of us and until this day one of the best spoken word festivals I have been invited to.We bonded over our nerves and excitement. 

Who knew that we would come together again ten years later to create a piece of work which would shake both our foundations. 

January 2015 I received an email from Ewok asking if I would be interested in coming to South Africa to create a spoken work theatre piece around race, my experiences of a Black African European and his experiences as a white African.

We had met a few times over the years at festivals across Europe and had always got on. It sounded like an exciting challenging project, it would also be my first time in Africa, there was no reason not to accept! A project  organised by Iain to bring me out to South Africa a couple of years previous had failed to materialise so when the chance came again, I jumped at it. 

Over the next few blogs I will try and break down the process of what took place, this process turned into more of a social experiment and what happened outside of the stage ended up being just as interesting an intense as what took place on the stage. 

I will be as honest as I can about what took place, my fears, my anger, my tears, my doubts, my weaknesses and my strengths, as I do on the stage,  I will put it all out there. 

The process is so intense

We do not talk again until the next day

We debate, discuss, argue, go away write, 

and then face each again.

We do not socialise,

We have no desire to be in each other’s company

After hours of debate and discussion

We do not want to hear each other’s voices.

Are sick of each other’s voices

I discover he is not as far along in his understanding 
of race as I thought he would be.

His wife, the director, even less so.

This is going to be a hell of a lot harder than I imagined,

Baby steps, but I do not know how take do baby steps

When it come to race.

Many things I see here, feel here, unnerve me

Trying hard to make sense of it all

Whilst trying to write a play on race

with a white South African

I am afraid I have made a big mistake

Bitten off more than I can chew

That I will embarrass myself

Let my people down.

I thought I knew white people

But these white people are something else…