"It’s only history if you steal something really large – like a country. Then it’s history". 

Sophiatown is an unusual choice for an ADC main show. Especially as it requires a multi-racial cast, and in Cambridge black actors are notoriously hard to come by. Director Justina Kehinde Ogunseitan, however, has secured the coveted slot, following the sell-out success of her adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough in 2012. 

The play is a life history of the mid-1950s township, Sophiatown, in west central Johannesburg, South Africa; one of the only places at that time where black people could own property. It became a cultural and ethnic melting pot – a vibrant community made up of some of South Africa’s most notable gangsters, journalists, writers, musicians and politicians. That is, until it was declared a ‘black spot’ by the government under the 1954 Group Segregation Act and was destroyed. 

Exploring the relationships between a group of Sophiatown residents, the show was an instant hit when first performed in the 80s and achieved ten return seasons at Johannesburg’s main Market Theatre as well as international tours, including a 20 minute standing ovation in a tent in Zurich. 

It was devised in six months by the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, who began as a group of Johannesburg students in the 1970s. I chatted to Malcolm Purkey, who wrote the play in six weeks at the end of the process. "We wanted to explore what I call the ‘hidden history’ of struggle in South Africa – the stories apartheid was keen to stifle. The trigger came when we came across a piece by Nat Nakasa and Lewis Nkosi advertising for a Jewish girl to come and live with them and apparently one did. How could we convince an audience that this was possible...?"

This character became Ruth Golden, a white Jewish girl from Yeoville who turns up with a suitcase on the doorstep of the explosive journalist Jakes’ Sophiatown residence. The challenge is integration. "We wanted it to be serious but not solemn", says Purkey. The play is interspersed throughout with a capella African close harmony and original songs from the period about Sophiatown, or Kofifi as it was fondly known. 

The ADC production’s director-producer Ogunseitan stresses that this is anything but a token piece about racial equality. "It is important for people to understand that the narrative of black people does not begin and end in oppression. The issues surrounding the identity politics of Apartheid form the backdrop – the play is about human beings first. It’s about relationships, and it’s an entry into the wide canon of African literature that is out there".

The ensemble cast include a diverse range of languages and origins: Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Botswana and the UK. "It’s exciting for the actors to think – 'I’m on stage in Cambridge and I’m speaking my own language'" Ogunseitan reflects. The actors have also had to get to grips with another language, the expressive gangster slang, Tsotsitaal, which is a mixture of Afrikaans, English and several African languages; "like all slang, it is there to exclude as well as include". The play tosses and turns constantly over questions of belonging, ownership, identity and never quite dissolves into a party. 

I asked Purkey how he saw his place as a white man making black theatre, like Ruth, perhaps someone looking in from the outside: "That has been a question facing my career for my whole life. I do it for the love of theatre and for what it can do. You know a play works when the humour works and here, it hit instantly".  

So what conversations does this play generate now, following 20years of freedom from Apartheid and the recent death of Mandela? Integration remains a great hurdle for South Africa. Here in Cambridge, there is perhaps a less obvious story to be told. 

A place steeped in its own history and culture, it can be difficult to see beyond the old stone walls, and it’s possible that tradition is edging passively into cultural hegemony. Humanities courses, for example, are still extremely British and Eurocentric. Isabel Adomakoh Young suggests that change in the theatre world should be initiated by the "big scary theatre committees"; even so, it is for the theatre-going audience to take a seat and be inquisitive. Now that we are presented with such a play on a central platform, let’s see it and talk about it.  

And how does Purkey think we should approach it now? "I want them to get an insight into South Africa, I want them to have a good time, hear the music, marvel that we could make these sorts of things, and I hope it moves people in the way that it used to". 

Sophiatown runs Tuesday 28th Oct to Saturday 1st Nov at the ADC Theatre. Donations from ticket sales go directly to South African grass roots charity iThemba Projects. 

http://www.ithembaprojects.org.za/splash-page.html