Lydia Weir

140-2, 23

Review #1

1 February, 2018

As Kemati J. Porter described past audience reactions as those of an older generation

who were eager to speak and full of remembrance, those of a younger generation who only

said “did that really happen?” and those of all generations who seemed to be able to do

nothing but sit in stunned silence, I fell firmly into the lattermost category. And so, for much

of the talkback following ETA’s reading of Ntsako Mkhabela’s new play, By the Apricot

Trees, for Northwestern University’s “South Africa On Stage: A Performance Festival,” I did

just that. Unsure what Mkhabela’s play was trying to tell me and unable to understand how

such a minimal reading could carry such a weight, I listened to Porter discuss the play, the

playwright, and the history being represented, and seemed to become more affected with each

answer she gave.

This reading of Mkhabela’s By the Apricot Trees was incredibly minimalistic—two actors

within a taped boundary, Porter reading stage directions, occasional recordings, basic stage

lighting, and a flickering lamp hanging from the ceiling were all the audience was allowed to

better understand the piece, but with Mkhabela’s text and the performances given, little more

seemed needed. As the show progressed, Mkhabela’s writing flowing from witty,

melancholic dialogue to abstract prose and back again, the audience watched two actresses

play one girl in solitary confinement as TK, played with biting wit and astonishing sobriety

by Miciah Long, interacted with her other self: the playful Thandeka, played by Almedia

Exum. Despite minor faltering on the part of Exum, as her energetic, childlike Thandeka

occasionally failed to match Long’s intensity, the performances given by both Long and

Exum carried enough energy and weight to leave the room in a stunned silence.
 My silence, in part caused by what performances I had just witnessed, was also caused

by a fundamental lack of understanding—who was TK? Why was she there? What initiated

this whole story? With no historical context, except a brief recording of Mkhabela dedicating

the play to her mother and the struggle her mother survived, it was hard to piece together a

complete picture of what By the Apricot Trees was. It wasn’t until I listened to Porter discuss

the children’s protest of 1976 in apartheid era South Africa, upon which play is based, as well

as the role that Mkhabela’s mother, the inspiration for TK and Thandeka, played in the

protest, that I better understood both the play.

The more I learned from Porter about the world in which the play was set, the

atrocities that the play grappled with, the more powerful and engaging the play seemed to be.

At first watch, and without much context, the writing was beautiful and the performances

were sturdy, but the play itself escaped me, as a young person and as an American. With

historical context, the play evolved from an engaging story of a young woman losing herself

to a harrowing story of resilience and revolution, and I only wish I could see it again, perhaps

in full production, equipped with the knowledge that I now have.