'Matthew Hahn’s The Robben Island Shakespeare is indeed a manual for both the young and old in South Africa and the world, to help us charter the difficult journey of life and the survival of the human spirit, UBUNTU, against all odds.' - Tony Award Winning Actor and South African Cultural Activist John Kani, in his introduction to The Robben Island Shakespeare.
Monday 24 November 2008
the performance at the museum
well, it was an exciting day for us. we started the day in the auditorium of the Robben Island Museum to rehearse for our afternoon performance.
the actors, as previously noted, were excellent - hard working & focused on their work. and, as typical, i guess in my work, it was a shotgun performance. never enough time, but this turned the morning rehearsal into a pressure cooker of creativity and choices. it is never a good thing to have too much time in a rehearsal room. better, i think, to error on the side of 'shit, we have only 20 minutes until the performance, lets do this and this and this.' creativity out of time constraints.