On Friday, I had four excellent actors present a reading of the play to an audience of mostly school age children along with parents and others as well as former political prisoner on Robben Island, Eddie Daniels.
After the performance, Eddie addressed the audience and exorted them not to forget their collective past. He also honoured all of those abroad who helped, at first, gain better conditions within Robben Island [paying particular attention to the International Red Cross] and then towards the liberation of South Africa.
He said that he greatly enjoyed hearing and seeing the play and all of the hard work that had gone into it. I had the priviledge of having lunch with him and the actors following the morning performance and he filled me in with more details about the performance of Julius Caesar that happened during his time on Robben Island [in which he played Mark Anthony] in the game room of the prison. He told me the lovely antidote that Neville Alexander directed the play and, during the performance, would feed lines to the actors via the slot in the door usually used by the warders to spy on the political prisoners. He told me that Nelson 'greatly enjoyed it.'
