Staging, Style & Synopsis

Question 1

Who wrote Woza Albert!?

Answer 1

• Percy Mtwa
• Mbongeni Ngema
• Barney Simon

Question 2

What was the creation process used to create Woza Albert!?

Answer 2

• workshop theatre

Question 3

When and where was the play first performed?

Answer 3

• Market Theatre Johannesburg
• 1981

Question 4

What is the style of Woza Albert!?

Answer 4

• protest theatre and poor theatre

Question 5

What does the succession of small scenes of black life during apartheid show?

Answer 5

• the absurdity of racial oppression

Question 6

What does the succession of small scenes of black life during apartheid also illuminate?

Answer 6

• the logic of a plot in which South Africans seek the return of a saviour, Morena
• who fulfills the biblical prophecy that Jesus Christ will return

Question 7

What does the title of the play refer to?

Answer 7

• the deceased leader of the ANC and Novel Peace Prize winner, Albert Luthuli
• and symbolizing biblical prophecies that the dead will rise to join Jesus Christ when he is resurrected

Question 8

What does Morena do at the conclusion of the play?

Answer 8

• raises Luthuli from the dead as Jesus miraculously raised Lazarus in the New Testament
• summons other prominent past leaders

Question 9

Who else does Morena summon from the dead?

Answer 9

• Robert Sobukwe
• Lilian Ngoyi
• Steven Biko

Question 10

Why does Morena raise these prominent past leaders from the dead?

Answer 10

• to rise and make South Africa a “heaven on earth” for black people
• by addressing the atrocities of apartheid

Question 11

How is the play deliberately presented?

Answer 11

• using only basic resources

Question 12

What is the style of the play?

Answer 12

• improvisatory, rough and ready style

Question 13

What do we rely on to bring the scenes to life?

Answer 13

• the skill of the actors

Question 14

What is there that is cause for more informal staging techniques?

Answer 14

• an immediacy
• that using more formal staging techniques might now allow

Question 15

What is the relationship between the actors and the audience like?

Answer 15

• it is direct and it is given major importance

Question 16

What is the style of theatre of Woza Albert! called?

Answer 16

• poor theatre

Question 17

Who wrote about the style of poor theatre?

Answer 17

• theatre practitioner Jerzy Grotowski

Question 18

How is the stage set?

Answer 18

• sparsely set
• with 2 tea chests
• and a suspended wooden plank with nails that hold the ragged clothes that the actors use for character transformations

Question 19

What do the actors wear for use in scenes in which they portray white characters?

Answer 19

• pink clown noses held with elastic bands around their necks

Question 20

What do brief chronological scenes throughout the play reveal?

Answer 20

• a thematic unity

Question 21

How is a thematic unity revealed?

Answer 21

• as the two characters demonstrate the types of relationships and encounters that exist within South African society

Question 22

What do the successive scenes of transforming characters from inmates to train-hoppers demonstrate?

Answer 22

• South Africans’ reduced quality of life
• and their desires for freedom and personhood

Question 23

What are the contrasts between the prison inmates and train-hoppers?

Answer 23

• though they are the same people
• the inmates debate the merits of protest strategies versus religious perseverance
• the train-hoppers debate religion and the possibilities of Morena returning

Question 24

What do the interviews of international figures and local South Africans aim to do?

Answer 24

• these interviews mock modern media and television strategies of sensationalizing events for the sake of ratings
• while the locals reinforce the hopes and desires of an oppressed body of people

Question 25

With whom are conversations dramatised to reconstruct daily interactions that one would encounter in Johannesburg?

Answer 25

• a young meat-vendor, who sells rotten meat
• an old woman, who searches garbage cans for food
• a barber, who works in an open-air market with only a chair and old clippers
• a fragile, toothless old man, who shares a historical narrative in order to emphasise that Morena will be slaughtered if he chooses to come to SA

Question 26

What is the effect of the foreboding seriousness of the old man’s prophecy and why?

Answer 26

• has a limited effect
• as the next set of scenes comically portrays the national and international, media-frenzied, Hollywood-style anticipation of Morena’s arrival on a jumbo jet

Question 27

What is demonstrated in the most elaborate action of the play?

Answer 27

• the exact nature of day-to-day oppression by a system that has no regard for human needs, freedoms or one’s family

Question 28

How is Morena crucified?

Answer 28

• by being bombed from a helicopter while walking on the water to Cape Town

Question 29

What does Morena do when he rises on the third day?

Answer 29

• he resurrects South Africa’s past heroes,
• and shows that the human spirit of South Africans will survive

Question 30

What does the ritual repetition of a freedom song in the final scene signify?

Answer 30

• celebration