The Line was created and directed by Georgina (Gina) Shmukler, with Charl-Johan Lingenfelder creating the music and Niall Griffin as production designer. The play was first presented at the Wits Arts and Literature Ex- perience (WALE) Festival in May 2012, before an invitation was issued to perform at the Barney Simon Theatre at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. An earlier version of the work, based on an interview with a Mozambican national Eliza, was initially presented at the Wits Theatre. During the attacks, Eliza’s spaza7shop business was looted, her family brutally tortured and her young niece raped and killed along with her husband and her brother. Eliza’s testimony was presented as a work in progress under the title Nobody’s Baby
at the Wits Theatre. According to John Nauright (1990), Nobody’s Baby is an earlier nickname for the township of Alexandra where Shmukler gathered her testimonies.
Alexandra is infamous for its gang violence and for being the epicentre of the mass violence targeting African foreigners and those profiled as foreign per- sons in 1994, as well as in May 2008 and 2015.
The Line is one of the eminent works on screen or stage to explore, in depth, the social and psychological consequences of the mass violence against for-
7 South African term for an informal convenience shop business, usually run from home, also known as a tuck shop.
eign nationals that swept across South Africa in 2008.8The Line captures the impressions and testimonies of victims, perpetrators, instigators and media persons who interacted with these parties. The mass violence is often attrib- uted to xenophobes and can be considered as one of the most harrowing episodes of post-Apartheid South African history. The 2008 and 2015 riots were particularly striking not only in scale but also in extent, insofar as they involved and implicated the whole country.
The reach and impact of the riots was not confined to a single racial or social community, and this study suggests, given the media coverage and multiple nationalities involved, that the riots struck a chord beyond the borders of South Africa for the active participants and for those who watched the vio- lence unfold in the news media. It is arguable that the riots changed percep- tions of South Africa from within and from without. According to Shmukler, through the play she sought to explore what Jonathan Shay (1994) calls the ‘fragility of goodness.’ Shmukler says the play was her exploration of what turned ‘neighbour to violent foe and attempts to re-humanise both perpe- trator and victim whilst investigating what makes good people do bad things and how one crosses ‘the line’’ (2013: 8).
Shmukler’s usage of verbatim theatre to explore definitive historical mo- ments in the post- Apartheid era is not without precedent. The playwright’s efforts echo Jane Taylor and William Kentridge’s seminal work Ubu and the Truth Commission (1996) and regionally, Milo Rau’s Hate Radio (2011), a re-enactment of broadcasts by the Radio Télévision Libre Des Mille Collines Station before and during the Rwanda genocide.
Synopsis
The Line is set against the backdrop of the mass violent attacks against for- eigners in May 2008 and explores the nature of citizen-foreigner interaction during and after the riots. The play is primarily, but not singularly, about the mass violence. The text is a compilation of six of the twelve testimonial monologues of people the playwright interviewed in her five months of field- work research towards a Master’s of Art in Dramatic Arts in the townships
8 According to a 2008 IRIN report, ten days after the Alexandra incident, with the death toll estimated to be 23, the then president Thabo Mbeki approved the request to reinforce police operatives with armed military details on 21 May 2008. Figures of displaced persons are hard to ascertain and verify. The death toll went on to rise to 63 according to official figures, before
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of Johannesburg. The playwright interviewed people who were affected, wit- nessed and/or carried out the attacks or a combination of these. The Line
presents and re-stages the playwright’s encounters and testimonies with the interviewees, who recounted from memory their experiences of the riots. The playwright writes herself into the play as the researcher character. Shmukler opens the play with a performer playing the playwright stating:
I am starting interviewing tomorrow. In Soweto. I met with Patty – she was referred to me by my supervisor; I’m a Master’s student. She has done a lot of work with refugees and I am meeting her to give me advice regarding the interview process (2012:73).
From this placement and through her questions – which are taken out of the performance, but implied in the responses – the playwright provides a narrative link for the testimonies and interviewees. This line of interviewing creates the guiding timeline, and the through line that ties the events. Using a voice over the researcher character, the playwright introduces the inter- viewees by giving a running biographical commentary of the interviewee’s age, gender, occupation and her impressions of the character and meeting place. The playwright, thus positioned as the character in the text, abrogates what Michel Foucault (1972) terms her ‘enunciative function’ and authority to the other characters that experienced the events first hand. The disembodied voiceover enhances the play’s authenticity and clinical detachment claims. The playwright casts the interviewees as the legitimate speakers of the mass violence. The testimonies are played in direct audience address and are in- terspersed with flashbacks of attack scenes. The playwright juxtaposes the interviews and staggers them in order to comment on the other testimonies, where the interviewees touch on a common subject or theme. The playwright as researcher and solicitor of the testimonies does not seek to explain the basis of the mass violence or to fix blame; instead, Shmukler attempts to hu- manize the representation of all the interviewees.
Structurally, The Line can be understood using the metaphor of water ripples: in the outer ring is the performance, in the present, where the actors embody the playwright who sets up the points of reference for what we are about to witness. In the inner ring, the audience is invited to accept and meet the in- terview subjects through their verbal testimonies, which the actors deliver in monologues. In a further inner ring, the playwright sets the monologues in dialogue with each other, by presenting opposing arguments or lines of
thought, one after the other, with the multiple characters commenting on the same or similar events. In an inner ring the actors presenting the monologues set up a dialogue, or dialogic moments, where the exchanges are shorter, or staccatos of one line, and flashbacks and re-enactments of the attacks.