Les Blancs (The Whites)
Fri Sep 27, 19:29 - Sat Sep 28, 21:35
Hiddingh Hall
ABOUT
Les Blancs (The Whites) a play by Lorraine Hansberry was first and foremost a riposte to Jean Genet’s The Blacks which Hansberry felt was a cliched evocation of the subjugation of Black people.
Set in a white Christian mission in an African country and occurring over the duration of just a week, the play sees the dawn of a revolution. Tshembe Matoseh, child of a respected leader comes home from London to bury their father. Soon sucked into the conflict they meet with Morris an American journalist, also a recently arrived traveler. Around their central conversations about nuances of race, service and revolution, several characters emerge - ranging from the radical Black freedom fighter Petra, who also works as a maid in the mission, to the liberal minded and guilt-ridden White surgeon DeKoven who works in the mission hospital to the arch colonialist Major Rice. In addition, Tshembe’s brothers Abioseh, a devout but politically conservative Christian, and Eric (whose mixed-race heritage is the result of a violent sexual assault by Rice), evoke a spectrum of views, passions, and ideas across several characters.
The production directed by Jay Pather, for UCT’s 4th year Acting students is essentially that:
12 students take on a heady, intense play about race written in 1970, set in 1950, working through these characters and ultimately considering themselves in relation to it.