Theatre Rebel Rages On: MEDEIA a call to arms

As I cannot attend tonight's Opening Night of Brett Bailey's Third World Bunfight Production of MEDEIA, I was afforded the priviledge of attending the Final Dress Rehearsal of MEDEIA.

Brett Bailey is the Fairy Godfather of ODIDiva, my mentor and my idol. His fearless submergence into the volatile, contradictory complexities of South AFRICAN culture are commendable for their sheer audacity and unapologetic artistic insouciance.
I will never forget him enthusiastically trying to coax me into playing a part in his play, like any lascivious suitor in Bronx, Cape Town's legendary gay bar. Only he didn't want to seduce me to climb into bed with him, he wanted more to possess, manipulate and form my very artistic definition and therefore its trajectory. Somehow I knew that this man was more dangerous than any other player in the room. I turned down every enquiry, defended every advantage dropped
"you have a great voice"
"thats why I got the big applause and the complimentary shooter"
"I am a theatre director and would like you to be in my play"
"How did you know I was an actor?"
"I am writing a play that will open in Amsterdam overseas"
"Okay, just in case you are for real I'll give you my number"

"...by the way whats this play about?"
"Idi Amin..."
"Idi Amin!?...now why would you wanna do a play about the shame of Africa!?"

Months later after a World Premiere in Amsterdam on the eve of our Opening Night in Grahamstown, I would read his account of our meeting in his journal with those words,
"why would you wanna do a play about the shame of Africa!?"
written in bold.
Brett Bailey had never been asked that question and not especially by a black South African youth. Idi Amin was never in our Apartheid history text books. I derived my information purely from my parents experience of living through his reign of terror reading and soaking up all news and rumour at the time. Even my words of alarm and disdain were echoes of my fathers very summation of Idi Amin.

My parents informed me of two deeply wounding African historical hurts. Nonqawuse and Idi Amin. Brett Bailey had already the tackled the former and was about to take on the latter.
The protestations from bourgeois black South African society were hysterical. Yet, for their white counterparts and the black youths in general, it was an opportunity to have our history front, centre and in the open.
Believe me when I say the same protestations are still be repeated against Deborah Patta whose 3rd Degree programme behaves in an all too similar vein as Bailey's work. Exorcising the colonially inflicted and internalised inferiority complex of black South AFRICA.

Brett's early work, his PLAYS OF MIRACLE & WONDER was our collective "Coming Out" party. His Afro-Gothic aesthetic and Shack Chic dazzled and over powered the fact that his work was and is blatantly political, intellectual and cunning.

ODIDiva was created to highlight and perplex the audience at the zenith of Amin's power and brutality with the extravagantly violent musical extravaganza, FIRE IN UGANDA the before interval showstopper of BIG DADA: The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin dedicated to President Robert Mugabe.

The organisers of HIFA (Harare International Festival of the Arts) took their cue from this, coup'd resistance in New South African political theatre, to invite Bailey to direct the festivals sold out 3000 spectator strong, opening ceremony concert.
Brett Bailey accepted the challenge with rebellious aplomb. With a cast of hundreds of international arts form all the continents of the world and Zimbabwe. The "L'Enfant Terrible" of South African Theatre created gloriously opulent and barely unsubtle satires and critiques of Mugabe's reign of terror. Not once but for 4 consecutive year's.

So then it is no surprise that we happen to arrive at this MEDEIA, his second incarnation of the Greek Tragedy, as the South African Graduation of his HIFA studies.
This is Fela Kuti, Bob Marley & The Wailers meets Iggy Pop and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The chorus is a fusion of  the delirium of Voodoo High Priestesses,  the choreographic disciplined Luther Vandross Backup Singers and the comical verbosity of Mahotella Queens. MEDEIA herself is played like shes possessed with the soul of Brenda Fassie and Grace Jones in all their vulnerable, petulance and passion.
Frank Paco's is a dynamo on the drums the beating heart of this always menacing tale. The soundtrack is an eclectic disjointed mix of songs and genres from pop, to rock to African world music. Music lyrics pepper and form clever if sometimes gimmicky barbs in the script.

The script is one super funked up Slam Poetry sermon, a holy black African preacher man critique of the many  diverse, divergent and symbiotic social, historical and contemporary issues of our South
Africa.
There are too many to count but enough for every person in the audience to feel recognise and feel affinity to some.

This is imperfect, entertaining, intellectual gorilla township theatre on a grand scale. The director is fanatically ambitious.
Technically Brett Bailey's productions have always have been a nightmare for Sound and Lighting crews the world over. Frustrating even the most sophisticated first world technicians with their own precise actor linked choreography.

MEDEIA is a gift from the heart, the soul from Third World Bunfight to South Africa. See it before its definition is diluted by overseas arts sophisticates, for whom it was not intended and lets hope more work of this visceral nature will flow. ALUTA CONTINUA