Huguenet André - Exits and Entrances

BOOKS BY ATHOL FUGARD AVAILABLE FROM TCG

Blood Knot and Other Plays

INCLUDES:

Boesman and Lena
Hello and Goodbye

The Captains Tiger

Cousins: A Memoir

Exits and Entrances

A Lesson from Aloes

Marigolds in August and The Guest

My Children! My Africa!

Notebooks: 19601977

Playland and A Place with the Pigs

The Road to Mecca

Sorrows and Rejoicing

Statements

INCLUDES:

The Island
Sizwe Bansi Is Dead
Statements After an Arrest Under the Immortality Act

Valley Song

PRODUCTION HISTORY

Exits and Entrances received its world premiere in May 2004 at The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles (Deborah Lawlor and Stephen Sachs, co-artistic directors; Simon Levy, producing director/dramaturg). Stephen Sachs directed the production; the set design was by David Potts, the lighting design was by Kathi ODonohue, the sound design was by David B. Marling, the costume design was by Shon LeBlanc and the prop design was by Goar Galstyan; the production stage manager was Casey Decanay. The cast was:

The play received its South African premiere in July 2005 at the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town. Janice Honeyman directed the production; the design was by Saul Radomsky and the lighting design was by Mannie Manim. The cast was:

CHARACTERS

THE PLAYWRIGHT : twenty-nine years old in 1961; twenty-four in the flashback Labia Theatre scene. At twenty-four, he has all the conceits of youth and inexperience, but not offensively so.

ANDR HUGUENET : fifty-five years old in 1961; fifty in the flashback Labia Theatre scene. A grand actor. Behind his imperious and commanding manner and sharp tongue is an insecure and lonely man.

SET

The main items are a table and chair that serve as the playwrights table in his Port Elizabeth apartment in 1961; a dressing-room table in the Labia Theatre, Cape Town, in 1956; and a dressing room table in the Port Elizabeth Opera House in 1961. There is also a costume rack with the various costumes that will be used in the play. At the directors discretion, there could also be a tired old armchair such as one finds in theatre dressing rooms the world over.

AUTHORS NOTE

Thanks to Professor Marianne McDonald for her translation of Oedipus the King, made especially for use in this play.

Exits

and

Entrances

Exits

and

Entrances

To Gavyn,

From his oupa

1961. The Playwright, twenty-nine, at his table in Port Elizabeth. It is late at night and he is making an entry in his notebook. After a few minutes of writing, he puts down his pen and reads what he has written:

PLAYWRIGHT:

June 1961. My usual late-night walk around the parkfull moon, the air heavy with dew and autumn fragrancesdamp soil, moldy leaves and at one point a seductive whiff of jasmine. I was back in bed, lying awake in the dark, smoking a pipe, when church bells began to toll. It was midnight and I suddenly realized I was listening to the birth cries of the new Republic of South Africa. A few seconds after the bells, an engine whistle started up, down in the marshaling yardssome patriotic Afrikaner, no doubt, who kept it going for at least three minutes. By this time a few motorcar hooters had also joined in. All in all a celebration even more dreary than the few desultory noises that usher in the New Year here in the windy city. By 12:45 it was all overthe night left once again to the moon, the empty streets and sleeping houses, the crickets in the hedges and the dew falling drop by drop from the roof gutter.

This morning I caught a snatch of the inaugural ceremony on the radioa DRC minister, in tones of deep and exaggerated reverence, thanking God for our young republic. When the commentator announced that the ceremony had now reached the most solemn moment of all, I switched off. So there you have itgood-bye to the Union of South Africa and welcome to the young republic, out goes the queen and in comes our first Staats president. Arrivals and departures! And at a personal level as well: my dad off to hospital, where I think he will die; my three-week-old daughter newly arrived in my life from that same hospital; my new play out of my life and on its way to Johannesburg... and another small and unobtrusive exittwo inches at the bottom of an inside page of todays newspaper, reporting the death of the great Afrikaans actor, Andr Huguenet... found dead in his sisters home in Bloemfontein. No mention of the circumstances of his death, which doesnt really surprise me. I think I know what happened.

(From this point on he slips easily into a direct relationship with the audience.)

Impeccable timing, of course! Nothing would have made Andr happier than to stand up and walk out on that sanctimonious dominee thanking the Almighty and telling the volk that they were Gods chosen people. His exit coincides so neatly with the birth of our Republiek I could almost believe he planned it that way. Because if there was one stage skill that Andr had truly mastered, it was timingthat instinct for the perfect moment, the precise second for the word, the action, the gesture, or in an instance that I will never, never forget: the cry. It was that moment in Oedipus the King when the old Shepherd puts the last piece of the puzzle into place, and as a result, Oedipus knows that he has murdered his father and slept with his mother, that his children are also his brothers and sisters. The Shepherds last line to him is: If you, Master, are that man, then you are indeed the most miserable of all men.

Andr, as Oedipus, standing at the top of the steps in front of the doors of his Theban palace, became very still, and we ordinary mortals held our breaths and waited. In those terribly silent seconds it seemed as if the whole world was waiting, and at the point when you thought you could no longer endure it and would have to scream, at that precise moment, not a second too soon or too late, Andr opened his mouth and out of it came the most awful cry that any member of that audience had ever heard. It sounded as if he had somehow reached down deep into himself and was dragging his genitals up through his body and throat and hanging them out of his mouth for all of us to spit on and curse. And that was not just one memorable performance! Oh no. Andr knew it was the moment of the play, so he hit that mark with uncanny accuracy virtually every night. I know what I am talking about because I was there onstage with him. Five years ago, the Labia Theatre in Cape Town. In those days the pool of local acting talent was very shallow so poor Andr had ended up having to cast me as that old Shepherd who clung so desperately to his ankles every night imploring him to stop his questions. I was twenty-four years old and my only stage experience had been in a couple of amateur productions.