After approximately four years of negotiations and planning, executive producer, Bernard Jay, together with the Joburg Theatre succeeded in bringing the musical The Color Purple to the Nelson Mandela Theatre, making South Africa the first country outside the UK and the USA to stage the show.
The authors, composers and owners of the musical, including Oprah Winfrey, lent their enthusiasm and support to those who laboured to have the production performed in South Africa by South Africans. This achievement culminated in Jay assembling a top-notch creative team headed by internationally acclaimed and award-winning director Janice Honeyman.
Focussing on the exploitation and abuse of African-American women around the 1920s to ‘40s in the south of the United States, The Color Purple traces a journey from wretched subjection and total absence of self-worth to an identity of self-belief, value and power through the main character Celie, played by Didintle Khunou.
In the original book by Alice Walker, the unedited thoughts of Celie pour out in her letters to God and her sister, Nettie, giving a raw and honest account of her hardship, embarrassment and shame. No hope of change seems to be the plight to which she surrenders until belief in herself is teased out of her through the love she shares with Shug.
Set in the context of the musical production, this message of resilience and empowerment, infused with the mood-enhancing power of music, swells the audience’s emotional reservoir in successive waves.
Setting a truly South African stage
The success of the South African production depended on a strongly collaborative team effort, as Honeyman wanted a non-replica of the London and Broadway shows. This originality is primarily apparent in the design, especially that of the costumes designed by the production designer, Sarah Roberts, who opted for muted colours, remaining true to the period and, as Honeyman requested, resembling clothes not costumes.
The central to Sarah Roberts’ outstanding work as production designer for The Color Purple, is her constant self-examination of whether she has, “done the right work for the story – the interpretation, the style, the tone, and the feel,” she explains. Jacobs elaborates, “I aimed towards a low-tech, hand-crafted and raw edge to the production.” She states that this approach is intentionally contrary to the current trends that she perceives in major musicals and operas being staged nationally and internationally, which increasingly incorporate high-tech staging techniques. “I chose this approach to stress the human element in the work, and in the world that the characters and performers inhabit”.
As such, the set appears elegantly simple, yet it cleverly achieves swift and frequent location shifts. “Essentially, there is a constant flow between three primary locations throughout the play. The action needs to be able to move seamlessly between Juke Joint, Mister’ house and the City to drive the narrative forward. Therefore, I have included subtle, minimalistic suggestions of place and specificity to ensure that that the location of the action is communicated effectively in each scene,” Roberts explains.
Her idea was to create a set design that she describes as “a kind of ‘tic-tac-toe’- except with a fourth bar.” This novel approach allowed Roberts to anchor the action of the play left, right, centre, up and down-stage.
Roberts’ involvement in the show began 14 months before its opening night with the conceptualisation and design of the set. A cleverly understated design offsets the impact of this very actor-centric adaptation. “I’ve brought the action forward” explains Roberts, which she does by allowing a raised central path to jut out over the band, thereby creating a thrust section to the stage. “Mostly it’s a big empty space with the actors moving on the thrust area, the apron and lift 1. They barely go onto lift 2.”
A big empty space, however, creates the challenge of ensuring consistent and even lighting coverage over the entire stage.
Making the right sounds
The Color Purple is, first and foremost, an outstanding piece of musical theatre, and therefore achieving exceptional sound quality is of utmost importance in delivering the high-level production demanded by the producers of this award-winning theatrical experience.
Sound designer, Richard Smith had to ensure that feedback did not occur. “A lot of staging happened to the front of the stage, and my positioning of the speakers was fixed. So there were many occasions where sensitive moments played out very close to the speakers, where I had to fight particularly hard to resist feedback.”
Retaining clarity of diction in addition to maintaining the correct balance between volume of music and that of voices presented further important technical considerations.
The eight-piece band, playing music from diverse genres, including Blues, Rock and traditional Musical Theatre, included a drum kit and brass in an open situation in the orchestra pit. Within his strategies to contain the band, Smith enclosed the drummer in Perspex, draping and foam, and positioned him under the thrust projection of the stage. Above him, Smith placed five mics to cope with all the different instruments played through the diverse musical score.
A point of interest worth mentioning is that brass or reed player, Brian Smith, chose to play on period instruments – his flute and clarinet date from the 1920s; his sax from 1945 for the Juke Joint; and a wooden flute to represent the African section. “I used a very subtle combination of three condensing microphones that would pick up a very ambient true sound. So again, I based a technical choice on artistry,” says Smith.
“A good sound designer,” Smith elucidates, “should, to a large degree, allow artistry to motivate technical choices.” He expresses this, for example, through his use of reverb to portray memory recall and intuitively plays with volume to underline the emotional graph of the story. Smith – very slightly and subtly – bleeds reverbs and delays to the back speakers to create an ambience and fill any dead theatre space. Despite budget restraints, he made a strategic choice to double-mic Celie due to the intensity of her performance and her near-constant presence on stage.
Colouring it Purple
Highly decorated and celebrated theatre stalwart, Mannie Manim serves as lighting designer for the South African rendition of The Color Purple. Central to Roberts’ design for the show, is the use of a wide back projection screen or cyclorama.
“We had to find something that could light the whole surface, that the audience could see in colour,” Manim explains. Innovatively, he hired CityScape Xtremes from Gearhouse Splitbeam, which use 188 High power RGBW LED’s and are normally used to light outdoor structures. These fixtures enabled him to light the cyclorama in every conceivable colour. Each light is just short of two metres long, with a top and bottom fitting, which swivel and can be focussed higher and lower.
For the rest of the stage, Manim used all the fittings at his disposal – a combination of generic and intelligent lights which included Robe MMX, 700w, LED washers, placed on different lighting bars, booms and ladders, LED strips on the floor, and of course, the follow spots.
Remaining true to the narrative of this seminal work was clearly one of the most important factors influencing all of the choices made by the production design team. “The way I approach lighting is, first and foremost, to understand what the play is about,” says Manim, whose design uses a wide range of colours throughout the show.
“The most difficult aspect was making sure that I could create the mood that Janice wanted, and construct the look and feel that both Janice and Sarah envisioned across every corner of the stage,” adds Manim.
The cyclorama becomes the background for each scene, showing the time of day and creating the necessary atmosphere to carry the story forward. For some scenes, such as Mister’s nightmare, Manim created a moving, murky effect around the actor by using profile moving lights, specifically Robe MMX Spots with gobos which can spin in a predetermined speed and direction.
From a canvas of muted colours, the lighting transitions from moments of touching intimacy to the vast expanses of amber coloured Africa, to the warm, rallying finale song, “The Color Purple”.
Johannesburg celebrates The Colour Purple
The Color Purple is glorious amongst musicals in that it entertains and ultimately uplifts audiences to a state of sheer joy while taking them on a passionate journey of an inspiring family saga. Honeyman, together with her exemplary cast of local actors, and stellar production team, tells the unforgettable story of a woman who, through love, finds the strength to triumph over adversity and discover her unique voice in the world. The South African production of The Colour Purple delivers a heart-wrenching performance, carrying a poignant message which – unfortunately – remains timeless, resonating in the current international gender activism.
“This all-South African production of The Color Purple has been a huge career highlight for me,” says executive producer Bernard Jay. “I have been overwhelmed by the love and acclaim that Janice Honeyman’s brilliant staging has received.” The show has received positive reviews from all quarters, and following the initial run, Joburg Theatre and Bernard Jay announced additional performances of the production on The Mandela stage to celebrate Women’s Month in August.
The additional performances will be staged at Joburg Theatre from 7 to 26 August. These performances will include seven special students-only daytime shows for youngsters aged 13 and over. In recognition of Women’s Month, evening performances on August 8, 16 and 23 will be sold at special prices to ensure that people who are on a tight budget in these tough economic times are afforded the opportunity to experience the show.
