Sizwe Banzi is Dead
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| Sizwe Banzi is Dead | |
 Poster for the 2007 Royal National Theatre production |
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| Written by | Athol Fugard John Kani Winston Ntshona |
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| Characters | Styles Robert (Sizwe Banzi) |
| Date of premiere | 1972 |
| IBDB profile | |
Sizwe Banzi is Dead is a play by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona.
It opens with a 45-minute long monologue in which Styles, the owner of a photography studio, addresses the audience about his previous employment in a menial job at the Ford factory, his obedience to the wishes of his white boss, and his decision to break away and fulfill his dreams by opening the studio. He also tells of the people who can live out their own dreams by coming to him to get a photograph that makes them happy, even if only for just a moment.
Styles is interrupted by the arrival of Robert in his new suit and hat, who wants a picture to send home to his wife. What quickly unfolds via flashback is that Robert actually is Sizwe Banzi, who had an incorrect stamp in his passbook, a government document blacks were required to carry, that wouldn't allow him to stay in Port Elizabeth. He rails against a system that, by forcing him to return to a township where there was no work, would deprive him of caring for his family. He realizes that in order to stay, he must change his identity. The opportunity to do so presents itself when he and friend Buntu discover a corpse and they swap the man's passbook with Sizwe's to enable him to enact his plan. Robert lives, and Sizwe Banzi is dead.
The genesis of the drama can be traced to Fugard’s experiences as a law clerk at the Native Commissioner’s Court in Johannesburg. It was at that time a part of the apartheid policy that every black and colored citizen over the age of sixteen carried an identity book that restricted employment and travel within in the country. In court, Fugard saw the repercussions of this law: blacks were sent to jail at an alarming rate. One of those days, Fugard saw a picture in a photo studio of a smiling black man carrying a pipe, a walking stick and a newspaper, and had the idea of a photograph being a representation of a dream, and eventually, an identity. Although these restrictions are specifically South African, critics have noted that the play’s primary theme of identity is universal. Critics and scholars have also observed that Sizwe Bansi Is Dead contains elements of absurdism, especially its sparse setting and surreal subject matter.[1]
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[edit] Productions
In 1972, Fugard directed the play's world premiere in Cape Town, followed the next year by a staging at London's Royal Court Theatre which transferred to the Ambassadors, with Kani as Styles and Buntu and Ntshona as Robert/Sizwe. There, it won the The London Theatre Critics award. After six previews, the Broadway production, presented in repertory with The Island, opened on November 13, 1974 at the Edison Theatre, where it ran for 159 performances.
In an unusual move, Kani and Ntshona were named co-Tony Award nominees (and eventual winners) for Best Actor in a Play for both Sizwe Banzi and The Island, in which they also starred. The two reunited to star in a production staged at the Royal National Theatre in London [1] in 2007, the same year in which the play was translated into French by Marie-Hélène Estienne for a version staged by Peter Brook at the Barbican Centre.
For the first time in the Middle East, "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" was staged at The Mousetrap Theatre at the New English School in Jabriya, a popular suburb of Kuwait, with Abdalla Ali as Sizwe/Robert, Charbel Rached as Styles and Mohamed Mostafa as Buntu.
[edit] Awards and nominations
- Tony Award for Best Play (co-nominee with The Island)
- Tony Award for Best Actor in Play (Kani and Ntshona, winners)
- Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (nominee)
- Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play (Kani and Ntshona, co-nominees)
- Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play (nominee)
- Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Foreign Play (co-nominee with The Island)
