kagablog

REVIEW:THEATRE /VIBE – The Citizen – 21 July 2006

PLAY: The Shooting Gallery
Cast: Aryan Kaganof and Catherine Henegan
Director: Catherine Henegan

By Christina Kennedy

(photo nathalie payne)

Don’t go into The Shooting Gallery expecting straightforward theatre. It will twist, warp and mangle any preconceived notions you had of the traditional play. Go and see it with an open mind, ready to be challenged to the “nth” degree. This production is not really a play. It could possibly be better described as post-modern reality theatre. But the best description, really, is simply that it’s a multi-media mind f**k.

Aryan Kaganof has become renowned as the efant terrible of the South African literary and filmmaking scene. He has shifted - nay, demolished - boundaries with his work, including his film SMS Sugar Man, supposedly the first 35mm film shot entirely on a cell phone. Amsterdam-based Catherine Henegan has also worked extensively in video, performance and installation, and has collaborated with Kaganof before.
With their respective pedigrees, it comes as no surprise that The Shooting Gallery is uncoventional theatre.

(photo nathalie payne)

It revolves around the life of a war photographer, loosely modelled on the members of South Africa’s famous (or notorious) Bang Bang Club, who adhered to the notion “if it bleeds, it leads” when documenting township violence in the early 1990’s. As the audience enters the theatre, they are assailed by images, projected onto a large screen, of the war in the Middle East. This. it turns out, is a Reuters wire feed.

Henegan sits on stage behind a laptop - a sub editor who proceeds to copy-paste and lay-out pages of a newspaper on screen. She casually eats a sandwich and SMSes on a cell phone while the horrors of the world play out before her, as if she is disconnected from that reality. Meanwhile, Kaganof, who is a body under a blanket when we enter, gradually rewinds his life as he is hoisted aloft and suspended naked against the screen, across which flicker images of brutality.

The oblique tale unfolds of a conflict photographer who admits that war is good for his career - but at what personal cost? Torment and madness? We are reminded of Kevin Carter, whose Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a vulture stalking a starving child helped to propel him to commit suicide.
The play is light on literal spoonfeeding and heavy on symbolism, which is great as it gives the old grey matter a bit of a workout. Afterwards you can ponder whether the crucifix motif is deliberate and if so, what it means. It’s bold, risqué’ and unusual way of making an anti-war statement, as well as probing journalistic ethics and the way media manipulates the public agenda.

(photo nathalie payne)

For those who like their theatre combined with left-of-centre art, music and poetry, The Shooting Gallery is stimulating theatre. It’s profoundly odd, but innovative and thought provoking. Be warned: this avant-garde fare will not be easy for those who like their entertainment served up in a fast-food polystyrene box.