Part 53
I don’t mean to launch into my life story from this point, but I would like to continue with the events that developed after I had been fired from Lintas.
I had a small amount of money to tide me over through the next couple of months, but clearly I needed to find work. Still determined to get back into the movie industry, I learned that the British actor Stanley Baker, now as a Producer, was in South Africa setting up a big picture called “Zulu.” A young, upcoming actor by the name of Michael Caine had been given a leading role. It just so happened that I had met both men briefly during my television career in the UK. I applied for the job of Second Assistant Director and was interviewed by a member of the senior production team.
I had a good interview and I was quite optimistic that I would get the job. However, there was another candidate who had worked in theater for some years, but he also had another priceless asset: he was fluent in the Zulu language, having grown up on a farm in Northern Natal where the majority of the Zulus lived.
Rene, the other candidate contacted me and told me he had agreed to stage manage two plays for a theater director David Barnett in one of Durban’s biggest theaters. The timing conflicted with the movie schedule, so he suggested that, should he get the movie gig, he would put me forward as his replacement for the stage manager job.
I was much more interested in working on the movie but conceded that Rene’s knowledge of Zulu would give him a big advantage over me as the majority of the crowd scenes would consist of the Zulu Impis (regiment) which probably consisted of up to two hundred men. A major part of the 2nd assistant director’s job was to organize the crowd scenes. The Zulu extras were not actors but rather country folk who spoke little English but sometimes came together to do the traditional Zulu war dances. These were spectacular events consisting of a hundred or more men in their traditional finery, carrying spears and shields.
The war dances were provocative movements in unison accompanied by shouts and the rattling of their spears against the shield. It is a truly intimidating experience to have one of these dances performed as they advance upon the audience, stamping the ground in unison. Anyone who is familiar with the New Zealand hakas, the ceremonial dance or challenge in Maori culture, will get an idea of what these magnificent warriors do to arouse the senses. In the movie, the extras were required to pretend to fight, not dance; but, as with everything related to the rural Zulu people, there is an intuitive rhythm to their movements, their speech (Zulu was once rated as the most lyrical language in the world) and even their fighting skills. Their great King uShaka in the early 1800s was regarded as the black Napoleon in terms of his fighting strategies).
Despite my interest in Zulu culture and traditions, the job went correctly to Rene. I believe he carried out the task well and went on to carve out a successful career in the movie industry. I, on the other hand, became an instant theater stage manager. I had worked backstage on a couple of school plays but otherwise had no experience in theater. Fortunately, my TV experience had given me enough of a general idea of how to handle and organize actors.
It went well. David Barnett was a demanding and rather temperamental theater director, but I had encountered similar types in TV. The cast were mostly easy to work with. I only made one horrific mistake during the course of the two plays, “The Phoenix has Two Heads” and “Five Finger Exercise.”
The props person was sick for a couple of days, so I had to handle props as well. In one scene, a scrambled egg had to be placed on the table for the actor to eat. I was asked to keep it warm so that it was fairly edible by the time the actor actually had to take a few mouthfuls. In my extreme ignorance of matters culinary I put the scrambled egg into a yellow plastic container and placed into an oven to keep it warm.
I noticed that actor grimace as he ate a mouthful of the scrambled egg during the play, but he did not touch it again. Only afterwards was I told in no uncertain terms that scrambled egg and melted plastic was hardly a cordon bleu dish!
We also had the first black actor to appear on stage in a professional theater during the Apartheid years. It was my task to drive the actor back to his home in the township of Kwa Mashu every night after the show. Kwa Mashu had a reputation as a particularly violent place after dark, so it was always a rather nerve-wracking experience driving into the depths of the township.
One night, we were stopped by the police. They were dubious about a white man entering the township after dark, but they grudgingly accepted my explanation that the gentleman with me was an actor whom I was returning to his home. They took a hurried look in the car and waved us on. Only after I drove away did I remember with horror that amongst the props in the back of the car, was a revolver that was used in the dramatic climax of the one play. Had they found the gun when I was entering the township, I probably would have ended up in prison!
During the course of the play I became friendly with a photographer, Dennis Bughwan, who took publicity stills for both shows. Dennis’ father had a photographic studio in Durban. Dennis had studied under the famous British Portrait Photographer Baron, then returned to South Africa to take over the studios from his father who was in his nineties. Mr. Bughwan senior who had died before I met Dennis, seems to have been an extraordinary person. He came to South Africa from India as a young man. He would walk literally hundreds of miles around Natal taking photos of Indian families around the province. He would then return to Durban on foot, process the pictures, then walk back to deliver them. Over the years, the majority of Indian families had at least one photo from Bughwan’s Crown Studios. Dennis took over and, with his experience from Britain, he raised portrait photography to a new level in Durban, as well as publicity stills for the theater.
Dennis’ wife Devi, an incredibly beautiful woman, was a professor of literature and drama at the only Indian University in the country. Having won a British Council Scholarship to study in the UK, she chose to spend a year at the Bristol Old Vic theater company. She appeared in a couple of TV shows as well as being provisionally cast as Ghandi’s wife in Richard Attenborough’s movie “Ghandi.” Sadly, it would be another 25 years before Attenborough managed to finance the picture. By then Devi could have played Ghandi’s mother!
Dennis and Devi were in a strange position in South Africa in those years. They were totally accepted into white society and were highly regarded for their talents and personalities. Dennis also loved to race cars but was excluded from any white motor races. Finally, the racetrack outside Durban was opened for just one day for non-white drivers. Dennis broke the lap record for the white racers by about two seconds, but it hardly compensated for not being allowed to race against them. Dennis just laughed about it. He was not very political, whereas Devi was determined to do what she could to improve conditions for all races, particularly in the arts. She formed the first multi-racial theater group in the country, Durban Academy of Theater Arts (DATA). I immediately became a member.
Devi’s first production was a musical written by Alan Paton called “Sponono,” following on the worldwide success of his novel “Cry the Beloved Country.” She hired me as a driver. For budgetary reasons I had to cram about thirteen members of the cast into a van owned by the local dry cleaners and deliver them to the theater. Assisting Devi as a kind of co-producer was the already famous playwright Athol Fugard. He and I had many long discussions about writing and the political situation during which I learned a great deal from him.
DATA spawned a number of valuable future members of the arts in South Africa, including a young Zulu schoolboy Welcome Msomi, who was later to become famous for writing and producing “Umabatha,” a Zulu version of MacBeth.
It was a time when the first cracks started to appear in the Apartheid regime. I was never a radical, but I was certainly happy to help any activity that led to a normalization of the way in which people of all races could live in harmony. South Africa has still not yet reached that equilibrium but there is hope for the future.
In the same way, I believe that ExoBrain can make a significant contribution to stabilizing the turbulent affairs of so many nations today, providing a clean and honest means of disseminating true facts, rather than the fake news employed by so many power players both in business and in politics.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.