South African author Damon Galgut’s The Promise will premiere on stage in September. The novel on which it is based rose to prominence after winning the 2021 Booker Prize, telling some brutal truths about South African society to the world.
will premiere on stage in September. The novel on which it is based rose to prominence after winning the 2021 Booker Prize, telling some brutal truths about South African society to the world.
“My work is known for the work of the body and the poetic emotion that our bodies convey,” says Strike. “Here, text and storytelling will merge in a physicalised form. Marrying [Galgut’s] text with my style of theatre-making is going to produce a very specific style of story.” The kind of promise made to Salome should be looked in the eye in terms of doing what is right, such as honouring the promise of seeing those people who work for us who we often render invisible, says Strike.
The story is entrenched both within the apartheid era and the slow progress of post-apartheid South Africa where, despite new laws, the voices of people such as domestic workers are still rendered silent. “As a director, my actors transform in front of the audience’s eyes. I don’t ask them to change costumes and come back as a different person. The changes that I usually evoke are when [actors] are interpreting different characters,” says Strike. When Sopotela’s character Salome is introduced, she is in her forties, but by the end of the story, she is in her eighties. To achieve this kind of ageing process, actors need to understand what ageing does to the body, says Strike.
“The land that is [eventually] given to Salome is a scrappy little patch of land with a house on it that is falling apart and nobody needs nor really wants. But it has taken four decades for them to let it go and that is the problem,” says Strike.
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